FOPPINGTON: Welcome to my very scientific race laboratory.

May the pure light of reason guide us.

We’ll begin by measuring the superior dimensions of the Caucasoid skull.

‘Tis evident to every scientific inquirer that Nature hath seen fit to separate the creature man into several distinct classes, whereof a manifest hierarchy subsists.

DOC: Foppington, what are you doing in my lab?

FOPPINGTON: Delineating the crania of the plurality of human kinds.

DOC: Well, the 18th Century called, they want their ideas back.

FOPPINGTON: Well, the anime convention called, they want their wig back.

DOC: Foppington! Get out of my lab. Before I slice you on the slab.

FOPPINGTON: Nay! Naaaay! [runs down hall]

DOC: [Steps on set, sits down] The fucking people you have to talk to in this line of work. Where’s my Pepsi?

Part 1: Race and Biology

Because racist pseudoscience has often served as an alibi to genocide, slavery, eugenics, discrimination, imperialism, medical abuse and torture, many people are understandably uneasy with broaching the subject of biology and race.

Unfortunately, this reluctance can look like a kind of “politically correct” avoidance of the truth. 

So let’s do away with all reluctance and begin by seeking out a direct answer to the question, “is there any biological reality to race?” following the evidence wherever it may lead.

FOPPINGTON: [coming out of door] Yea verily!

DOC: How did you get there?

FOPPINGTON: Apparently this hallway is just one long circuit.

DOC: Well, go away [waves away].

FOPPINGTON: [closes door]

DOC: [looks back at cam] Now, if we’re being honest with ourselves, it’s very difficult to approach a topic as politically loaded as race without bringing a lot of baggage to the table.

But one way we might try to start from a more objective standpoint, is to try a thought experiment proposed by the YouTuber C0nc0rdance, namely, to imagine that an alien species comes to Earth with our contemporary understanding of genetics, but without our knowledge of human social and political history.

Would it occur to these alien scientists to divide human beings into the conventional racial categories of white, black, Asian, and so on?

The answer to this question is a pretty definite “no.” Let’s take a look at why.

{picture: Y-DNA haplogroups, one way of defining populations (omits subgroups)} 

Geneticists measure human variation by comparing the frequency of genetic markers between different populations. It’s pretty well known that around 85% of genetic variation is found within groups, meaning that any two individuals from different populations are not likely to be much more different than any two individuals from the same population. And only around 6-10% of total variation is found between continental groups, what might imprecisely be called races.

Now, 6-10% is not 0, so you might think there is some justification for traditional race categories based on continental origin. However, for most of human history there has been continuous gene flow between local populations, including across continental divides. So there are no distinct boundaries separating continental populations from each other, and the continental populations themselves are not homogenous.

This is evident when you look at, for instance, the distribution of Y-chromosome haplogroups across the globe.

Categories like “white,” “black” and “Asian” are therefore extremely arbitrary ways of dividing up the genetic continuum. In fact, there is no purely genetic justification for using, say, five race categories as opposed to just one, or 300 or 3 million.

And because of global gene flow, there are no “pure” races no matter how many categories you choose, with the possible exception of some Pacific Islanders. This is especially true in countries with recent global immigration, like the U.S. and Brazil, where mixed European, African and Amerindian ancestry is the norm.

These points are all made more eloquently, and in much more detail in a two-part video by C0nc0rdance, which I highly recommend and have linked to in the description.

The upshot is that while geneticists or physical anthropologists can divide humans into populations based on ancestry, there is no scientific reason for those divisions to track traditional race categories.

This is because race is a pre-scientific folk taxonomy based on superficial phenotypic attributes like skin and hair color, which are what biologists call polyphyletic, [that is, derived from multiple ancestral sources. Compare, for instance, the dark skin of sub-Saharan Africans with that of the genetically distant Australian aborigines.

Race, as commonly understood, is therefore a social construct. But this is not to say that there is no biological variation due to ancestry, only that the traditional racial categories are not a good way to understand that variation.

Race realists like to use dog breeds as a counterexample that’s supposed to show that everything I’ve said so far would imply that the distinction between Chihuahuas and Great Danes is a social construct, which they take to be self-evidently absurd.

Now, this is a bad analogy, since dog breeds are deeply inbred by human design, whereas human populations are constantly mating outside the group.

However, the example does provide an interesting illustration of the relationship between social constructs and biology. 

Dog breeds are biologically real because of human social practices. So in a sense dog breeds are biologically distinct, although they are not “natural.”

And this biology/nature distinction is a useful distinction to have, since racial injustice can lead to conditions of poverty, malnutrition, environmental toxins and so on that then have biological effects.

So, just like with gender, we shouldn’t think of race as either biological or a social construct. It’s both, and the relationship between biology and society is very complex, and it involves causation in both directions.

So when I say race is a social construct, I’m not saying that biologists and anthropologists shouldn’t use categories like clines or haplogroups to describe human populations. I’m simply saying that race is at best a very crude approximation of these categories. 

And that crude approximation may well be useful in certain specific medical or forensic contexts. But we should keep in mind that categories of race are based on social and political divisions more than pure biology. The racial categories used in the U.S. census are the product of the political history of the United States. People who we’d consider white, black, and Hispanic here might be categorized totally differently in Brazil, where different demographics and history have led to different race concepts.

FOPPINGTON: This is all good and well, but when are we going to measure the skulls?

DOC: If I may quote a friend of mine, what is it with you people and skulls?

FOPPINGTON: Is it so wrong to enjoy the touch of cold bones?

DOC: touches skull

Part 2: The origin of the idea of race

Race realists like to talk about race as if it were a natural, intuitive human concept believed by everyone except a few politically correct postmodernists who’ve somehow deceived themselves into not seeing the obvious.

It’s therefore worth looking at the history of the concept of race, to see if it’s really as universal as they say.

Let’s start, like any true defender of Western Civilization™, with Ancient Greece.

I can find no evidence that the Greeks had anything like our concept of race, that is, a division of human beings into different kinds with unique physical and psychological attributes, on the basis of ancestry.

This is not to say that the Greeks had no concept of ethnicity. They definitely did, and a very ethnocentric one at that. There were Greeks, and there were the obviously inferior barbarians, that is, non-Greeks.

But the Greeks defined themselves, and distinguished themselves from say, the Persians or Egyptians, by their language and customs, not their biology or ancestry.

Aristotle’s political philosophy included the idea of “natural slaves,” people who by nature are the tools and property of the natural masters.

Now, Greek slavery was not based on race, so there was no need to introduce a concept of race to justify it. Instead Aristotle introduces a “natural slave” class in order to explain why slavery is totally natural and fine, don’t even worry about it like literally at all.

But clearly this is just a post hoc biological rationalization for the political hierarchy of the time. There are no natural slave Greeks and master Greeks. But that’s a lot easier to see when your society is not founded on the notion of there being slave Greeks.

So with that in mind, it should not come as much of a surprise that Europeans first really started talking about race in the 17th Century, around the time that colonialism and slavery were really kicking into gear.

FOPPINGTON: My time has come!

DOC: Your time has gone.

FOPPINGTON: Awww.

DOC: Arguably, the ideas of this goddamn bastard were foreshadowed during the Spanish Inquisition, when Christian converts became suspect and Torquemada began inquiring into defendants’ ancestry, using pure Christian bloodline as a criterion for religious authenticity.

Race first became the object of scientific study with François Bernier’s 1684 treatise on the subject. Until around the time of Charles Darwin, scientific racism was the only game in town, with naturalists, anthropologists and philosophers generally ranking the races, always with the Caucasians at the top, using such scientific criteria as dietary and sartorial customs, physical beauty, and alleged sexual appetite.

Here’s Carl Linnaeus, creator of our genus-species nomenclature, on the subject of “the Asiaticus”: yellow, melancholic, stiff; black hair, dark eyes; severe, haughty, greedy; covered with loose clothing; and regulated by opinions.”

And here’s Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, on term the “Caucasian,” which he coined: “I have taken the name of this variety from Mount Caucasus, both because its neighborhood, and especially its southern slope, produces the most beautiful race of men, I mean the Georgian; and because all physiological reasons converge to this, that in that region, if anywhere, it seems we ought with the greatest probability to place the autochthones (birth place) of mankind."

And here’s Immanuel Kant, who never left his hometown: “The yellow Indians do have a meagre talent. The Negroes are far below them, and at the lowest point are a part of the American people.”

Wow. Very science. Much objective. So reason.

Basically what happened is that “scientific insights” not much exceeding the drunken hunches of any backwoods doofus were used, along with some self-interested biblical hermeneutics, to justify centuries of slavery and imperialism.

And the situation didn’t improve much by the beginning of the last century, when crude biological determinism was used to justify an American eugenics program of immigration restriction, forced sterilization, and “euthanasia” that later inspired the Nazis.

Speaking of which, let’s not forget about ze Jews.

Hitler’s deputy Rudolf Hess famously said that National Socialism is applied biology. We could call this way of thinking biopolitics.

The idea is that the nation is the race, and the race is like an organism. So people of other races, homosexuals, degenerates, criminals, “race traitors” and so on, are contaminants, vermin, or agents of infection.

It follows from this view that immigration should be banned, homosexuals should be “euthanized” or “cured” (by the way this also applies to trans people), and criminals and degenerates should be sterilized.

Now, I know you’re probably saying Godwin’s Law! You compare everyone you disagree with to Hitler and the Holocaust!

But look, the historical facts are what they are. I realize that it’s upsetting to you that I would dare bring this up, but I don’t respect your willful obliviousness to historical precedent.

The historical record shows that race has always been a political concept, and an extremely dangerous one at that. So my view that “race” is not a valid biological concept is not a case of “political correctness” invading biology. 

It’s exactly the opposite: an effort to liberate biology from an inherently political concept that it doesn’t need and that humanity is better without.

FOPPINGTON: yes, but then how will we know to which of the four humors the races correspond?

DOC: Well gee. I guess we’ll never know.

Part 3: Race as a social construct and individual identity

Race may be a social construct, but it’s not an “illusion.” It’s real in the way that money is real. It affects the way we all experience the world, and real people are privileged and disadvantaged because of it.

So even if our goal is a society where race doesn’t exist, we can’t get there by denying the political reality of race and racial injustice. “Colorblindness,” in other words, is not the answer.

However, as society becomes more multiracial, and as there are more mixed-race people around, it does get harder and harder to say what exactly the nature of race as a social construct is.

The ambiguity of race was highlighted by the case of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who fabricated her biography and lived for a decade “passing” as a black woman.

Now, I’m not convinced there’s a legitimate analogy between race and gender when it comes to psychological self-identification, so I don’t think Rachel Dolezal is black. But, I do think her story raises complicated questions about what makes a person black or white. Is it the way people perceive you? Or a certain cultural upbringing? Or having certain racial experiences, maybe being disadvantaged or oppressed in certain ways?

Because Rachel Dolezal lied about so many of her experiences, she’s maybe not a great case study. But suppose, hypothetically, it turned out that one of her parents was black after all. Or suppose she really were the victim of hate crimes, or was discriminated against due to her perceived blackness, or suppose she was raised by black parents.

I don’t think there is a definite answer to whether a person in those circumstances is black or white. But I do think that asking the question reveals the inherent ambiguity of the concept of race.

FOPPINGTON: Alright, Doc, I can’t stand it anymore. When are we going to measure these bones?

DOC: Oh my god. Shut up about the fucking bones.

FOPPINGTON: Well can I at least do blackface?

DOC: Absolutely not.

FOPPINGTON: Why not, are you too politically correct?

DOC: Well, I did this fucking shit and people still haven’t forgiven me.

FOPPINGTON: Alright. So hear me out here. It’ll be ironic blackface, like the joke is that it's racist.

DOC: No. No. You are an actual lord of shit, you know that.

FOPPINGTON: What if I only do half my face in blackface? That’s not racist is it? One dot of black paint isn’t racist. So how much of my face has to be painted black before it’s racist?

DOC: Still no. No it’s still racist. Shut up. 

DOC: You wanna measure some bones? Why don’t we start with yours? [cleaver]

FOPPINGTON: [Backs away]

DOC: I like to grind the dust of racist bones. I like to mix it with my milk. That’s how I stay so white. It’s how I stay so pure.