Posted on 08/08/2002 1:54:09 PM PDT by Richard Poe
IF YOU’RE LIKE most Americans, you’ve probably winced in annoyance many times when official documents prompted you to state your race. Not surprisingly, activist Ward Connerly’s Racial Privacy Initiative – which would bar government busybodies in California from asking such questions – is enjoying huge and growing popularity.
Every good cause attracts some lunatics, however. In the case of racial privacy, the lunatic fringe includes respected scientists who say that race does not even exist.
They’re called the "No-Race" school. They claim that there is no scientific basis for categorizing people into races because – among other things – some people don’t fit neatly into racial categories. Ward Connerly, for instance, is one quarter black, and three quarters white and American Indian.
Until now, ordinary people had to scratch their heads and reserve judgment on the "No-Race" school, keeping their mouths shut for fear of being called "racist," but nonetheless wondering how we were going to describe the difference between people in Iceland and Nigeria, if the word "race" became taboo.
Enter Steve Sailer, founder and president of the Human Biodiversity Institute, and editor of the popular blog-site isteve.com. Ward Connerly recently invited Sailer to debate "no-race" guru Peter Wood. At the conference, Sailer drove a stake through the heart of every cherished No-Race argument, in a paper entitled, "It’s All Relative."
Sailer argued that it’s perfectly okay for races to be "fuzzy" and ambiguous. After all, scientists aren’t even sure whether dogs and wolves belong to the same species, yet we still use the word "species."
Sailer then unveiled his masterpiece – the first-ever, easy-to-understand, scientifically bullet-proof, working definition of race. Here it is:
"Racial groups are extended families that are inbred to some degree."
Okay, so it’s not Beethoven’s Ninth. But these words have power – power that writers and poets may appreciate more than scientists.
In my book Black Spark, White Fire, I wrote that certain European peoples, "such as the Basques of Spain and southern France – seem to have been direct descendants of the Stone Age Cro-Magnon race."
A copy-editor flagged the sentence, during final corrections.
"What does `race’ mean in this context?" she wrote between the lines. "There are various dictionary definitions, and I’m not sure which apply."
Somewhat testily, I penned into the margin, "I think most literate people understand a `race’ to be a `people," which can, of course, mean different things in different contexts."
My copy-editor backed off. But I was left with the nagging worry that I had indeed done something wrong – confused my readers, perhaps, by using an archaic and ambiguous expression.
It was all very well for Winston Churchill to declare, in reference to the English, that, "It was a nation and race dwelling all around the globe that had the lion heart. I had the luck to be called upon to give the roar."
Churchill could get away with speaking of an English "race." He lived in a different age, when men were men, and words were words. But today, the term "race" mainly appears on applications for federal small-business loans and the like. There seemed no place any longer for such romantic conceits as a British race, much less a Cro-Magnon one.
Yet, "race" was the perfect word for my sentence – sonorous and hoary, like the Basques themselves. I stubbornly insisted upon using it. Yet I felt guilty afterwards.
Thanks to Steve Sailer, my guilt has dissipated.
If indeed a race is nothing more than an extended family that is inbred to some extent, the concept becomes remarkably flexible.
For instance, Sailer says that the fight between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland is really a racial conflict. The two groups do not intermarry. They are genetically distinct.
"Even though outsiders can’t generally tell the two sides apart by looking at them, this is, in essence, a struggle between two large families," writes Sailer.
Likewise, the British, Basques, Zulu, Bavarians, Manchu and Croats also constitute distinct races – though each of these races, in turn, may be a subset of some larger race or "extended family."
Sailer has done more than clarify a scientific principle. He has rescued an ancient word from oblivion and restored it to poets’ tongues.
No longer must we dismiss Winston Churchill as a senile windbag, blowing stale Victorian rhetoric before an uncomprehending audience. Churchill’s reference to a British "race" is as scientifically sound as it is stirring and beautiful.
Copy-editors take note. A race is a race is a race. Thanks to Steve Sailer, we can say that again.
_________________________________
Richard Poe is a New York Times bestselling author and cyberjournalist. His latest book is The Seven Myths of Gun Control.
If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)
Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.
If they're inbred to a profound degree you have to spell it with a 'K'.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.