278 CHAPTER 12 | Modern Human Diversity: Race and Racism
From male to female, short to tall, light to dark, biological
variation can be categorized in a number of ways, but in
the end we are all members of the same species. Minute
variations of our DNA give each of us a unique genetic
fingerprint, yet this variation remains within the bounds
of being genetically human. Visible differences are ex-
pressed within the framework of biological features shared
throughout the species, and as a species, humans vary.
Human genetic variation generally is distributed
across the globe in a continuous fashion. From a biologi-
cal perspective, this variation sometimes follows a pattern
imposed by interaction with the environment through the
evolutionary process of natural selection. At other times,
the variation results from random genetic drift. The signif-
icance we give our biological variation, however, is always
patterned because the way we perceive variation—in fact,
whether we perceive it at all—is determined by culture.
For example, in many Polynesian cultures, where skin
color is not a determinant of social status, people pay little
attention to this physical characteristic. By contrast, in
countries such as the United States, Brazil, and South Af-
rica, where skin color is a significant social and political
category, it is one of the first things people notice. Further-
more, our brains appear to be hardwired for categorical
thinking that, once learned, predisposes us to use these
kinds of distinctions. We use different parts of our brain to
think about people we consider to be like ourselves com-
pared to the parts of the brain used when we are think-
ing about others. Biological diversity, therefore, cannot be
studied without an awareness of the cultural dimensions
that shape the questions asked about diversity as well as
the history of how this knowledge has been used.
When European scholars first began their systematic
study of worldwide human variation in the 18th century,
they were concerned with documenting differences among
human groups. Soon afterward, some began to divide these
groups hierarchically into progressively “better types” of
humans. Today, this hierarchical approach has been appro-
priately abandoned. Before exploring how contemporary
biological variation is studied, we will examine the effects
of social ideas about race and racial hierarchy on the inter-
pretation of biological variation, past and present.
The History of Human
Classification
Early European scholars tried to systematically classify
Homo sapiens into subspecies, or races, based on
geographic location and phenotypic features such as
skin color, body size, head shape, and hair texture. The
18th-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus
originally divided humans into subspecies based on geo-
graphic location and classified all Europeans as “white,”
Africans as “black,” American Indians as “red,” and Asians
as “yellow.”
The German physician Johann Blumenbach (1752–
1840) introduced some significant changes to this four-
race scheme with the 1795 edition of his book On the
Natural Variety of Mankind. Most notably, this book for-
mally extended the notion of a hierarchy of human types.
Based on a comparative examination of his human skull
collection, Blumenbach judged as most beautiful the skull
of a woman from the Caucasus Mountain range (located
between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea of southeast-
ern Europe and southwestern Asia). The skull was more
symmetrical than the others, and he saw it as a reflection
of nature’s ideal form: the circle. Surely, Blumenbach rea-
soned, this “perfect” specimen resembled God’s original
creation. Moreover, he thought that the living inhabit-
ants of the Caucasus region were the most beautiful in the
world. Based on these criteria, he concluded that this high
mountain range, not far from the lands mentioned in the
Bible, was the place of human origins.
Blumenbach concluded that all light-skinned peoples
in Europe and adjacent parts of western Asia and northern
Africa belonged to the same race. On this basis, he dropped
the “European” race label and replaced it with “Caucasian.”
Although he continued to distinguish American Indians
as a separate race, he regrouped dark-skinned Africans
as “Ethiopian” and split those Asians not considered
Caucasian into two separate races: “Mongolian” (referring
to most inhabitants of Asia, including China and Japan)
and “Malay” (indigenous Australians, Pacific Islanders,
and others).
Convinced that Caucasians were closest to the original
ideal humans supposedly created in God’s image, Blumen-
bach ranked them as superior. The other races, he argued,
were the result of “degeneration”; by moving away from
their place of origin and adapting to different environ-
ments and climates, they had degenerated physically and
morally into what many Europeans came to think of as
inferior races.^1
We now clearly recognize the factual errors and eth-
nocentric prejudices embedded in Blumenbach’s work,
as well as others, with respect to the concept of race.
Especially disastrous is the notion of superior and inferior
races, as this has been used to justify brutalities ranging
from repression to slavery to mass murder to genocide.(^1) Gould, S. J. (1994). The geometer of race. Discover 15 (11), 65–69.