Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1996 18:19:38 -0400 (EDT) From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena) Subject: Re: Race Rakesh, poking out from his footnote maze, informs us that: >... that it makes no more biological sense to classify >Hungarians and Finns in different races as it does blacks and whites. (See >John Vandermeer's *Reconstructing Biology* for a brief, clearly argued >presentation from which the above has been gleaned or the work of Richard >Lewontin, *Not In Our Genes*.) True enough, Rakesh, advances in immunology and protein chemistry over the past fifty years have had the corollary of proving that fully 75 per cent of human monomorphic proteins are common to ALL populations. Nor do exhaustive studies of highly polymorphic gene types reveal any discrimination in occurrence between one "racial group" and another. There is, as you imply, simply no sound genetic basis for the division of humanity into categorically defined races. Unfortunately, MIM believes that it is sufficient merely to assert. A reflection, no doubt, on their own efforts to fashion a "scientific" thesis based on such hasty pudding productions as Mr. Saki's *Settlers*, quite possibly the most foolishly argued bit of reductio ad absurdum I have ever read. Speaking of fools, few would willingly cross swords with Mr Rakesh over the murky subject of bibliography, but I would like to suggest a rare revision to his helpful note. True, R.C. Lewontin is listed as one of the authors, with Stephen Rose and Leon J. Kamin, of *Not In Our Genes*, but Rose wrote most of the book, including Chapter 5 ("IQ: The Rank Ordering of the World"), which is most relevant to our discussion here. In fact, Rose wrote the book while a visiting scholar at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, where Lewontin himself is headquartered. Much of *Not In Our Genes* came directly from the now famous Dialiectics of Biology Conference held in Bressanone, Italy a few earlier (Rose himself edited a two volume summary of this remarkable symposium, Towards a Liberatory Biology & Against Biological Determinism [1982]. These contain several useful essays on racial concepts as a pedigree of reductionist thinking reach back to Descartes. For us mere mortals on the list, may I suggest a more germane work (written for the general reader) by Lewontin himself, entitled, simply *Human Diversity*, a 1982 volume in the Scientific American Library (WH Freeman)? Especially Chapter 2 ("Genes, Environment and Organism"). His *Dialectical Biologist* (a collection of essays written by him and Richard Levins and published in 1985) contains what in my view is the best introduction to the whole ontology of modern racism (Chapter 1: "Evolution as Theory and Ideology"). Finally, since Rakesh was so kind as to cite the estimable John Vandermeer, may I point to his excellent essay "Ecological Determinism" in *Biology as a Social Weapon* edited by the Ann Arbor Science for the People Editorial Collective (1977: Burgess Publishing Company, Minneapolis--"love it or loathe it, you can never lose it or leave it" Or is that "Duluth"?). Anyway, it should be available in most academic libraries. If anyone REALLY wants a copy, and can't otherwise obtain it, let me know. As for the late (and appropriately unlamented Prof Herrnstein), let us recall that it was his infamous 1971 article in the Atlantic Monthly that spawned--with the cloak of Harvard respectability--the revival of "respectable" academic racism that had laid dormant since the days of the German Nazis. The very stuff of history. Louis Godena --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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