Reading Response "RACE" URGENT DEADLINE 4PM TODAY Please read the readings posted below. Then write a 200-400 response to the reading. Responses can consist of intelligent questions, disagreements wit

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The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological

Association on May 17, 1998, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American

anthropologists. It does not reect a consensus of all members of the AAA, as individuals vary in

their approaches to the study of "race." We believe that it represents generally the contemporary

thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists.

A A A S tate m e n t o n R a c e 7/14/2019 AAA Statement on Race - Connect with AAA

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In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human

races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical

dierences. With the vast expansion of scientic knowledge in this century, however, it has become

clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct

groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation,

about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings dier

from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within

"racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes

and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever dierent groups have

come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained

all of humankind as a single species.

Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic

areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range

of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin color varies largely from light

in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not

related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly

or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among dierent indigenous peoples in tropical

regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations

both arbitrary and subjective.

Historical research has shown that the idea of "race" has always carried more meanings than mere

physical dierences; indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the

social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many elds argue that "race" as it is

understood in the United States of America was a social mechanism invented during the 18th

century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other

European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide

slave labor.

From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the

Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature.

Thus "race" was a mode of classication linked specically to peoples in the colonial situation. It

subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment

of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century

used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnied the dierences among

Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories

underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status dierences, and provided the rationalization

that the inequality was natural or God-given. The dierent physical traits of African-Americans and

Indians became markers or symbols of their status dierences.

As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the

cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with

Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and ctitious

beliefs about the dierent peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American

thought.

Early in the 19th century the growing elds of science began to reect the public consciousness

about human dierences. Dierences among the "racial" categories were projected to their 7/14/2019 AAA Statement on Race - Connect with AAA

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greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were

separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes.

Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human dierences was subsequently spread to other areas

of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by

colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial situation. In the latter part of the

19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic,

and political inequalities among their peoples. During World War II, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler

enjoined the expanded ideology of "race" and "racial" dierences and took them to a logical end:

the extermination of 11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans,

homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the Holocaust.

"Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human

dierences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human

species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories. The

myths fused behavior and physical features together in the public mind, impeding our

comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are

genetically determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or

behavior. Scientists today nd that reliance on such folk beliefs about human dierences in

research has led to countless errors.

At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned,

conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modication. No human is born

with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of

genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture."

Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in

forming who we are.

It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to

learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of dierent

language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and

behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have

learned dierent cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves

millions of immigrants around the world.

How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a

direct impact on how they perform in that society. The "racial" worldview was invented to assign

some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power, and

wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the policies and practices stemming from

this worldview succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among Europeans,

Native Americans, and peoples of African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of

normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day

inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance

but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political

circumstances.

[Note: For further information on human biological variations, see the statement prepared and

issued by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 1996 (AJPA 101:569-570).] 7/14/2019 AAA Statement on Race - Connect with AAA

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Y o u M ig h t A lso L ike

Proposal Submission Types

ANTHROPOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (Formerly the Society for the Anthropology of

Counsciousness)

AAA Interest Groups

SOCIETY FOR PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

SOCIETY FOR MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY

SOCIETY FOR CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

AAA Position Paper on "Race": Comments?

As a result of public confusion about the meaning of "race," claims as to major biological

dierences among "races" continue to be advanced. Stemming from past AAA actions designed to

address public misconceptions on race and intelligence, the need was apparent for a clear AAA

statement on the biology and politics of race that would be educational and informational. Rather

than wait for each spurious claim to be raised, the AAA Executive Board determined that the

Association should prepare a statement for approval by the Association and elicit member input.

Commissioned by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, a position

paper on race was authored by Audrey Smedley (Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a

Worldview, 1993) and thrice reviewed by a working group of prominent anthropologists: George

Armelagos, Michael Blakey, C. Loring Brace, Alan Goodman, Faye Harrison, Jonathan Marks,

Yolanda Moses, and Carol Mukhopadhyay. A draft of the current paper was published in the

September 1997 Anthropology Newsletter and posted on the AAA website for a number of months,

and member comments were requested. While Smedley assumed authorship of the nal draft, she

received comments not only from the working group but also from the AAA membership and other

interested readers. The paper above was adopted by the AAA Executive Board on May 17, 1998, as

an ocial statement of AAA's position on "race."

As the paper is considered a living statement, AAA members', other anthropologists', and public

comments are invited. 

See also Statement on "Race" and Intelligence

See also AAA Response to OMB Directive 15: Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and

Administrative Reporting

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