Dorset Race Equality Council

"Biological race" * is a scientific invention. It is part of an important toolkit used by scientists to bring some order to the world they study. However, there is no longer any scientific credence to the notion that modern humanity (Homo sapiens) can be divided meaningfully into separate races on biological grounds. This was not always thought to be the case and was once regarded as good science. It is clear that as a body of empirical evidence grows scientific opinion often changes to accommodate. This is the way in which science refines and evolves its understanding of our world. However, if bad or insufficiently understood scientific ideas are used for political purposes this can proved to be a murderous combination. Biological race is one example.

Taxonomy is the science and practice of classification. It is often seen as a big yawn by many biology students. Although now a massive topic, most historians of science trace the origin of scientific biological classification to Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, and his publication of Systema Naturae in 1735. This marked a revolutionary point in the development of botanical science. For the first time researchers had a reliable way of knowing that they were talking about the same plant even though they might live oceans apart. Knowing this brought a new confidence to botanical research. Johann Blumenbach followed in 1775 with the publication of his book, "On the Natural Varieties of Mankind".

Gregor Mendel is regarded as the father of the science of Genetics. Its birth is usually dated to 1865 when Mendel read a paper at a couple of meetings of the Byunn Natural History Society (Moravia, Czech Republic). The most popular theory of heredity pre-Mendel is usually known as the blending or blood theory of heredity. Charles Darwin the father of the theory of evolution ascribed to the blending theory. However, he also speculated that it had to be wrong, but had no better explanation for the transmission of human traits. Darwin died in 1882. The continuing use of terms such as "pure blood" and "half blood", and so on, in common parlance are testimony to the former popularity of this theory (this is actually a misnomer because the evidence never justified the use of this term).

The most unfortunate consequence of the blending theory of heredity is that it provided a seemingly scientific justification for "pure race". Blending theory claimed that each parent contributes an equal amount of hereditary material (the nature of which was a mystery) to their offspring. Children were thus a blend of the characteristics of both parents. There was limited evidence for this being the case, but there was also a substantial body of contrary evidence. For example, the theory only works if a child's height falls somewhere between those of his/her parents. If the child's height falls outside that range blending theory has no credible explanation. This is also the case for a wide range of other easily observable physical characteristics such as eye colour.

If blending theory were correct then populations sharing the same gene pool would become more and more alike with each passing generation. That simply put is the basis for the belief in "pure race". It is blending theory that has provided us with the term "cognate blood" - meaning "of the same blood or race". Should a person of "non-cognate blood" such as a dark skinned person, marry into a white population, his/her "blood line" would be slowly diluted out with each passing generation (thus half-blood, quarter-blood, eighth-blood and so on). There was a time in the USA when any suspicion that a person had just one drop of Afro-American blood would have a serious impact on that individual's life.

Another undesirable consequence of compiling racial classifications of humankind, in a near state of ignorance, was the division of humanity into races and the attribution to them of various supposedly typical character/cultural types. Almost inevitably the compilers saw their own race as superior and blessed with all things wonderful and other races as somewhat less so. Even today it is not uncommon to hear tell of the alleged character of "the French" or "the Germans" and so on. Rarely are these character types in particular seen as positive. More often than not they are crude racial/ethnic stereotypes.

I have yet to see anything approaching a believable explanation as to how the foregoing notions of what we might describe as gene-coded character/culture can be reconciled with blending theory. However, rigorous logic was never some people's strong point. The word "racism" was first coined in 1933 to describe the claim that a person's culture is determined by his/her race. ¹ Since then it has gone through a series of redefinitions reflecting our growing understanding.

The Toxic Mix - Politics and Bad Science
It was not until the second half of the 19th century that biological race gained widespread acceptance and importance. This coincides with the emancipation in the USA of Afro-American slaves in 1865 and their rise as a strong political force. ² This was also the period when European colonialism had reached its zenith. Is it that the power elites of the time were seeking to justify their privileged and exploitative position by claiming it to be a natural state sanctified by science? A crude mechanism to give a seemingly rational scientific gloss to occupation, exploitation and the misappropriation of the resources of the racially inferior colonised other?

The Holocaust and the End of the Road for Biological Race?
Negative attitudes to the Jews of Europe in the second half of the 19th century can be expressed on a sliding scale with anti-Judaism at one end and Judenhaas at the other. The former represents a theological opposition to Judaism. The latter is hatred directed at the Jewish person. Some Christians would claim that anti-Judaism is a perfectly legitimate stance for a Christian to adopt. After all both Christianity and Judaism reach very different conclusions regarding the role of Jesus from the same source document (the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament). There is much to divide Jews and Christian if one is determined to have it that way.

One of the most serious issues in terms of violence against the Jewish person is the question of who is actually responsible for the death of Jesus? Was it the Jews as the Gospels claim or was it the Romans? Considering that Jesus was tried before a Roman judge in a Roman court and executed by a Roman method of execution I would vote for the Romans. However, this did not sit too well with the writers of the Gospels considering that Christianity was at the time they were writing rapidly becoming a Roman religion. Since at least the time of the Early Church Fathers, some Christians have said some very unkind things about the Jews. Nonetheless, in a sense one can be said to be pro-Christian by being anti-Judaism.

Other Christians would disagree saying that one should respect Judaism as a living faith and a separate expression of God's will. Many of these Christians have struggled to reach a more "Christ-like" interpretation of the Gospel narrative. Some such as Rev. James Parkes ³ (until his death a Dorset resident) have shown great personal courage in the defense of the Jewish People.

The Jews of Germany were emancipated in 1848 and were relatively free until the rise of the Nazis. That not withstanding the fact that this "relative freedom" would probably be considered unbearable oppression by modern standards in the UK. In 1879 Wilhelm Marr, an anti-Jewish rabble rouser, wrote, "Der Weg zum Siege des Germanentums über das Judentum" (The Way to Victory of Germanicism over Judaism). This pamphlet claimed that the Germans and the Jews were engaged in a race war to the death. As one might expect Marr moved away from theological Judenhaas to the racialisation of Jewish identity. Instead of a conflict between two faiths we now have a conflict between two races (not that Marr seemed too sure of what he meant here by race). Marr is responsible for coining the word antisemitism in 1879.

Even within the Church anti-Judaism has often mutated into Judenhaas. Some scholars would go as far as claiming that the Church in general is guilty of antisemitic agitation and that this partly laid the foundation for the Holocaust. ⁴ | ⁵

Hitler in his time condemned what he called emotional antisemitism (Judenhaas). He seemed to regard most other antisemites as well meaning but uninformed as to the real nature of the Jew. Despite the often strong anti-Jewish feeling in the Church and society generally a Jew could be freed from its consequences by conversion to Christianity. In general, assuming they did not subsequently backslide and did their best to assimilate, Christian converts from Judaism were treated well by their newly found faith. They we sometimes feted as some sort of prize. Hitler argued that this would never work. He claimed that everything that people found objectionable to the Jew, Judaism and Jewish culture would remain even after conversion and even if not immediately apparent in the convert. Jews could never be divested of their "Jewishness" because the Jews are a race. Thus the only solution to the Nazis' self-imposed "Jewish problem" was the physical extermination of the Jewish People. ⁶

As already pointed out the foregoing understanding of race gave rise to the first definition of a newly coined word - racism in 1933. Even so substantial sections of German academia set out to give Hitler's nutty ideas about race a seemingly scientific justification. It has even been suggested that the role of German science in this respect was so crucial that a representative sample of German scientists should have been harangued at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. ⁶

The treatment of Gypsies (Roma and Sinti) followed a similar pattern. The Nazi racialisation of the Gypsy population also built on pre-existent social and institutional prejudice.

"Like other ethnic minorities, Roma in Europe have been the object of racial practices and racialised conceptual structures. Unlike most other ethnic minorities, they have existed at a curious juncture between racial categories, sometimes held up as romantic bohemian outsiders, at other times subject to rapid processes of racialisation and destruction. Nazi ideology combined both perspectives, romanticising 'true Aryan Gypsies' at the same time as Roma and Sinti were herded into the concentration camps (Willems 1997: 222-6, 45). The connection between Nazi racial science and pre-Nazi mainstream social thought has been made many times (Friedlander 1995: 248-9). Less often examined is the degree of continuity between the racialisation of the Roma before, during and after the Nazi regime, which continues to have a legacy for Roma today. There are common themes running through the state's treatment of Roma and Sinti in Wilhelmite Germany, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi regime and the Federal Republic. The Nazis were able to rely on the work of the Munich police centre dedicated to monitoring Roma and Sinti (1997: 197) which was set up in 1899 and remained in place until the 1970s. Post-war German courts also accepted the Nazis' claim that Roma had been interned as members of a 'criminal underclass' (1997: 196)." ⁷

So did we reach the end of biological race with the Holocaust? I suspect not. As a former Archbishop of York once wrote in a private letter, race is too attractive an idea for some people for it to disappear in our lifetime. Race can make some people feel good about themselves in spite of personal circumstance. Race is also an excellent political weapon with which to beat other people over the head.

Personally? I stand side by side with the young man I saw on the BBC. He was of so-called "mixed race". In response to one question he simply replied, "I wish race had never been invented".

References & Notes
* After this initial use I have refrained from placing race in inverted commas thus - "race" - because I feel that it interferes with the flow of the text. However, the absence of inverted commas should not be taken to mean that I give any credence whatsoever to the notion that modern man (Homo sapiens) can be validly divided into separate biologically determined races or indeed "races". Return to the top of the page.

1) Banton, M., "Racial Consciousness", Longman, 1988.
2) Better, S., "Institutional Racism", Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008. A primer on theory and strategy for social change. Well worth reading.
3) Parkes, J. W., "Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue", Macmillan, 1969. There are numerous editions of this classic work. This one just happens to be the one I own. Good starting point for anyone interested in the history of European antisemitism.
4) Modras, R., "The Catholic Church and Antisemitism - Poland, 1933 - 1939", Routledge, 2004. In some circles Poland has the reputation of being irredeemably antisemitic. This always seemed suspect to me considering that Poland once had the largest Jewish community in Europe. Why would so many Jews flock to a country that was so antisemitic and then stay? I also knew that at times the Jews of Poland had been granted a freedom not enjoyed by any European Jewish community again until modern times. The key according to this book lies in the differing attitudes of the secular and church leadership.
5) Ritter, C., Smith, S.D. & Steinfeldt, I., "The Holocaust and the Christian World", Kuperard, 2000. This book would make a good study guide for a group of people interested in this topic.
6) Steinweis, A. E., "Studying the Jew - Scholarly Antisemitism in Nazi Germany", Harvard University Press, 2008.
7) Bancroft, A., '"Gypsies To The Camps!": Exclusion and Marginalisation of Roma in the Czech Republic' Sociological Research Online, vol. 4, no. 3, para. 4.3, 1999.