2． "Race:" Social Construct vs. Biological Reality

BRACE, C. Loring　 （Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA, clbrace@umich.edu）

Human biological traits that have been shaped by graded selective forces acting over long periods of time are distributed according to the gradients of those forces.  Different forces have gradients that are not constrained by population or regional boundaries but cross these as though they did not exist. Using local or regional groups as the starting point for analysis cannot produce any meaningful understanding of biologically important traits.  Biological sense can only be made by studying each adaptive race separately. Skin color, tooth size, ‘abnormal’ hemoglobins, and blood groups among other traits are distributed in gradients or ‘clines’ that are completely unrelated to each other. Traits that do cluster in given regions then are only indications of relationship. In effect they constitute “family resemblance writ large” and have no other biological meaning. Such traits as skull shape, eye opening and cheekbone form can be taken as having no adaptive significance. Adaptive traits such as ‘intelligence,’ blood-clotting capabilities or other physiological variables are of equal importance to all humans and there is no justification for an expectation that they should differ from one human population to another. The concept of “race” then does not emerge from the study of human biological variation and can only hinder our attempts to understand the various aspects of human biology.

BRACE, C. Loring Professor of Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, USA Curator of Biological Anthropology, Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, USA My main interest for the last forty years and more has been in documenting the course of human evolution and exploring the reasons why the observed changes have taken place.  In particular, I have been interested in how and why modern human form has emerged from non-modern predecessors. Major Works: The Stages of Human Evolution, 5th edition (Prentice-Hall, 1995); Evolution in an Anthropological View (AltaMira Press, 2000); Race is a Four-Letter Word: America and the Genesis of the Concept of Race (in print).

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