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This author is pretty much full of it. Biologically humans are all one species, so are dogs. Like different breeds of dogs there are different breeds of man.

Like it or not that is a fact and no amount of PC will ever erase it.

Myself, I do not care what color or breed you are; can you pull your weight in society ? If so, then we have no cause for true quarrel.

In The Descent of Man, published in 1871, Darwin outlined the basic reasoning that still stands today concerning the races of mankind. Darwin pointed out that if we used the techniques that naturalists used to identify race in nonhuman species, we would conclude that there really were no races in anatomically modern humans.

This is an outrageous misrepresentation. Here's Darwin:

There is however no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other, - as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain. ... The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatisation, and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental capacities are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual, faculties.

What Darwin argues, and what makes him liberal for his time, is that these differences are not enough to make different species out of the races, and that the variation among races is small compared to the features which distinguish humans from the other animals.

In reality, the differences between groups we have been describing as resulting form biological race are really the result of cultural evolution. The rules that govern cultural evolution are dictated by the views of the eighteenth-century biologist Jean Baptist Lamarck, not those of Darwin.

This writer clearly flags where he is coming from to all who know the history of the debate. Lamarck is the father of Socialist Biology--the concept refined by the Soviet Lyschenko, and considered a joke in serious scientific circles, for many years.

If you go closely through the article, you will notice that the writer engages in many slights of hand--changes the subject subtly and almost inobtrusively, to mislead the reader. In point of fact the present races have been observed with their present traits both physical and personality since Egyptian times, and have shown little or no deviation with cultural changes. To those not looking to prove human oneness, it should be obvious that men make their culture, not culture men.

To understand the mindset behind this verbose pseudo-science, that is so popular today in American "Higher" Education, see Myths & Myth Makers In American "Higher" Education. It is obvious that this fellow is following in the footsteps of Ashley Montagu, who is one of the "Myth Makers" discussed in the essay.

Interestingly enough, Montagu had a Rutgers position for some time--he was originally a product of the notorious Boas group at Columbia--and may have had a hand in this fellow publishing there. (Montagu was still alive, the last I heard, in his late 90s.)

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

. The tragedy of this is that virtually none of the people directly involved in addressing our political and social disparities fully comprehend how our racial confusion influences how we deal with the consequences of injustice.

Translation = The author understands the race issues better than the Socialist Populatory Mechanics in Gubment and is willing to help in exchange for a fat gubment grant.

EBUCK

Looks like the spirit of Lysenko strikes again.

The problem is the authors use of definitions in the article itself.

Using the term 'race' is a rhetorical construct the author uses to create a straw man to tear down and substitute basic biological theory with sociological theory. Its not quite intellectually honest or even particularly accurate.

The fact is there are no seperate races amongst humans but there are very identifiable and generally accepted ethnic groupings. This is just a simple fact. It is the same biological system that archeologists and forensic pathologists use to study human remains. There are several subgroupings that exist within those ethnic classifications and that is what accounts for our definition of race.

The objections of a minute few to the contrary, it is also the same rationale and school of thinking that has kept medical science back 10 years. Claiming that diseases like lukodistrophy and the auto-immune factors in diabetes were not genetically linked and instead were caused by outside physical factors has lead to much suffering for patients over the years. Thankfully the medical community is beginning to shake off the influence of these people and now people who suffer from crippling illnesses are being given the appropriate medicine and treatment they need.

But the fact remains that this article is essentially played out rhetoric given a new spin. Its really nothing new. More or less just recycled third rate sociology rhetoric.