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The Race Question
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The Race Question is a UNESCO statement issued on 18 July, 1950 following World War II. Signed by some of the leading researchers of the time, in the field of psychology, biology, cultural anthropology and ethnology, it questioned the foundations of scientific racist theories which had become very popular at the turn of the 20th century, alongside eugenics. These racist theories had been a main influence of the Nazi racial policies and eugenics program. The original statement was drafted by Ernest Beaglehole, Juan Comas, L.
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The Race Question is a UNESCO statement issued on 18 July, 1950 following World War II. Signed by some of the leading researchers of the time, in the field of psychology, biology, cultural anthropology and ethnology, it questioned the foundations of scientific racist theories which had become very popular at the turn of the 20th century, alongside eugenics. These racist theories had been a main influence of the Nazi racial policies and eugenics program. The original statement was drafted by Ernest Beaglehole, Juan Comas, L. A. Costa Pinto, Franklin Frazier, sociologist specialized in race relations studies, Morris Ginsberg, founding chairperson of the British Sociological Association, Humayun Kabir, writer, philosopher and Education Minister of India twice, Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the founders of ethnology and leading theorist of cultural relativism, and Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and author of The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, who was the rapporteur. The text was then revised by Ashley Montagu following criticisms submitted by Hadley Cantril, E. G. Conklin, Gunnar Dahlberg, Theodosius Dobzhansky, author of Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937), L. C. Dunn, Donald Hager, Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO and one of the many key contributors to neo-Darwinian synthesis, Otto Klineberg, Wilbert Moore, H. J. Muller, Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944), Joseph Needham, a biochemist specialist of Chinese science, and geneticist Curt Stern. The statement included both a scientific debunking of race theories and a moral condemnation of racism. It suggested in particular to "drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of "ethnic groups."
Introduction
The Race Question first recalled the recent World War and, interestingly, made no direct reference to the Holocaust. The Constitution of the UNESCO stated that:
A 1948 UNESCO resolution called upon the world organisation to consider the timeliness "of proposing and recommending the general adoption of a programme of dissemination of scientific facts designed to bring about the disappearance of that which is commonly called race prejudice." Thus, following the philosophy of the Enlightenment, the UNESCO aimed at struggling against popular racism through the vulgarisation of scientific facts, which demonstrated the inanity of race theories. In 1949, the UNESCO adopted three other similar resolutions, recommending the institution to
- "study and collect scientific materials concerning questions of race,"
- "to give wide diffusion to the scientific material collected"
- and "to prepare an education campaign based on this information."
Furthermore, the statement recalled that by these resolutions, the UNESCO was taking...
The aim was clear. However, the UNESCO was not so naive to believe that science alone could convince humanity to let aside racial prejuidices which were deeply rooted in emotional factors:
The UNESCO statement condemned any attempt, on both scientific and moral grounds, to relate intelligence to racial factors, stating that "At the moment, it is impossible to demonstrate that there exist between 'races' differences of intelligence and temperament other than those produced by cultural environment." It considered racism as a "particularly vicious and mean expression of the caste spirit," thus paying close attention to theories issued for examply by eugenicist Georges Vacher de Lapouge (1854-1936), who equated race with social class.
The Race Question asserted that...
Not only scientific racist theories were thoroughly disqualified by modern research, but racist ideology in itself was adamantly criticized as contrary to the humanist foundations which had laid the groundworks for the creation of the United Nations at the June 1945 San Francisco Conference. The nature versus nurture debate was thus rejected as irrelevant to politicals or legal concerns.
The statement
The statement itself was composed of various points:
mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species: Homo sapiens...""From the biological standpoint, the species Homo Sapiens is made up of a number of populations..." defined by genetic factors. However, the genes "responsible for the hereditary differences between men are always few when compared to the whole genetic constitution of man and to the vast number of genes common to all human beings... This means that the likeliness among men are far greater than their differences.""A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens... These represent variations, as it were, on a common theme." Differences are attributed to "somewhat different biological histories.""In short, the term 'race' designates a group or population characterized by some concentrations, relative as to frequency and distribution, of hereditary particles (genes) or physical characters, which appear, fluctuate, and often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and or cultural isolation..."The fifth point criticized the layperson use of the term "race": "To most people, a race is any group which they choose to describe as a race. Thus, many national, religious, geographic, linguistic or cultural groups have, in such loose usage, been called 'race', when obviously Americans are not a race, nor are Englishmen, nor are Frenchmen, nor any other national group. Catholics, Protestants, Moslems and Jews are not races... People who live in Iceland or England or India are not races; nor are people who are culturally Turkish or Chinese..." UNESCO also advocated that: "National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term "race" altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'."Further points stressed the "educability" and "plasticity" of the human being and the variability of biological populations, which evolved and interbred together. It adamantly rejected any "degeneration" theory claiming that such miscegenation "produces biologically bad effects." "There is, therefore, no biological justification for prohibiting inter-marriage.."The 14th point asserted that : "The biological fact of race and the myth of 'race' should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes, 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth" which has "created an enormous amount of human and social damage." It "deprives civilization of the effective co-operation of productive minds." The UNESCO cited Charles Darwin's praise of cosmopolitanism in The Descent of Man (2nd ed., 1875, pp.187-8). It criticized theories of psychological egoism, underlining that "the whole of human history show that a co-operative spirit is not only natural to men, but more deeply rooted than any self-seeking tendencies. If this were not so we should not see the growth of integration and organization of his communities which the centuries and the millennia plainly exhibits."The last points underlined that equality was a moral principle that had nothing to do with any biological or cultural differences. It recalled that "scientific evidence indicates that the range of mental capacities in all ethnic groups is much the same." It underlines the difference and non-correspondence between great "social changes" and change in the constitution of ethnic groups.
The 1950 UNESCO statement concluded by asserting once more that "biological differences as exist between members of different ethnic groups have no relevance to problems of social and political organizations, moral life and communication between human beings" and implicitly referred to Aristotle's definition of humankind by stating that "Man is born a social being."
Legacy and Others UNESCO statements
The UNESCO later published other similar statements on racism. In Race and History (1952), the ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss argued in favor of cultural relativism, through the famous metaphor of cultures as different trains crossing each other in various directions and speeds, thus each one seeming to progress to himself while others supposedly kept immobile.
UNESCO later published Cyril Bibby's monograph (1959), and Lévi-Strauss Race and Culture (1971). Others books published by renowned scholars, on the influence of Alfred Métraux, anthropologist at the UN, included titles such as Race and Psychology, Race and Biology, Race Mixture, Racial Myths, The Roots of Prejudice, and The Concept of Race: Results of an Inquiry.
In 2005, Claude Lévi-Strauss, then 97 years old, declared at the 60th anniversary of the UNESCO :
In the wake of the Second World War and the horror inspired by the racist doctrines that gave rise to the massacre of entire populations and concentration camps, it was only normal that UNESCO give top priority to the scientific critique and moral condemnation of the notion of race,
While the director-general Koïchiro Matsuura recalled that since 1951 UNESCO had prepared several declarations on race, Claude Levi-Strauss praised the work of the UNESCO, stating in response to Matsuura:
A task made all the more necessary by certain recent and worrying publications from biologists attempting to give new recognition to the notion of race – albeit with a different interpretation than in the past – but which nonetheless must be handled delicately.
The 1950 UNESCO statement contributed to the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court desegregation decision in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka".
See also
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. , , Boston (First edition 1902; 1955 paperback (reprinted 2005), includes Kropotkin's 1914 preface, Foreword and Bibliography by Ashley Montagu, and The Struggle for Existence, by Thomas H. Huxley) ISBN 0-87558-024-6
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