Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 02:40:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Wolf Factory <wolf_factory-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Racism & genes (reply to Joe Flanagan)


Joe, you wrote:
>I
>think is far easier to claim that if islanders HAD
interacted with 
>various
>groups, they would not have had so homogenous a gene
pool and thus it
>would be likely that some of them would have had
immunity to smallpox 
>and
>other diseases brought to them

Again this statement loads evolution with foresight.
You are expecting the islanders to have made the
effort to contact other communities in order to teach
their immune system about the diseases that the
colonists were to bring them.

Evolution is not a teleological process. Richard
Dawkins employed the helpful metaphor of a Ōblind
watchmakerÕ to describe evolution. Through evolution
biological machines such as humans come into being but
not through purposeful designing but through a
meandering process relying heavily on chance.

Further, having not come into contact, and hence
conflict, with other groups the islanders would not
have been prepared to deal with the colonists. In
fact, if racism is a trait shaped partly by genetics
then you would not expect it to have been selected
(and amplified) in the islander population. 

It really is not difficult to see how UNDER CERTAIN
CIRCUMSTANCES having alarm bells go off in the brain
upon encountering alien groups can confer a selective
advantage. Of course, like all traits, this is only
useful if applied in moderation. After all if you fell
into episodes of fear and frenzy every time you met
someone of a different race then you will miss out on
the benefits that cooperativity brings.

--- Joseph Flanagan III
<flanagan-AT-odin.english.udel.edu> wrote:
> Hey, apologize to WF if my own rhetoric got out of
> hand. What I meant to
> say is not the cooperative gene would have helped
> our hypothetical island
> population. My whole argument is that we can think
> of evolution as a
> teleogical process. All I meant to say is that
> interactions among early
> hominoids would have conferred evolutionary
> advantages--to wit. groups
> that interacted had a more diverse gene pool than
> those who did not. If we
> go back to the initial discussion "What would be the
> evolutionary
> advantages of racism?" I thought your example
> claimed that if islanders
> had a kind if instinctual wariness about interacting
> with white settlers,
> they might not have been wiped out. I just don;t buy
> that explanation--I
> think is far easier to claim that if islanders HAD
> interacted with various
> gropus, they would not have had so homogenous a gene
> pool and thus it
> would be likely that some of them would have had
> immunity to smallpox and
> other diseases brought to them (i.e. as much as
> plague ravaged parts of
> the world, it never wiped out entire populations
> where there is evidence
> of much group interaction. I don't understand how
> nursing fits into this,
> but that might be my own fault.  My only point is
> that the evolutionary
> advantage of avoiding other groups is far from
> clear...and, in many cases,
> it is easier to see the disadvantages of such
> isolation (more homogenous
> gene pool, less exposure to "foreign" contagions). 
> 
> About the feminist point, many (social) evolutionary
> scientists privilege
> of model of conflict over cooperation in nature.
> I've read critiques of
> that that assume aggressive masculine conflict (or,
> to settle everyone,
> the cliche of aggressive masculine conflict) over
> other models of
> interaction have plagued many models of (social)
> evolution. 
>   
> Finally, I don't know if I even get why people want
> to assign an
> evolutionary explanation to such social phenomon as
> racism. Probably,
> we'll never be able to prove it one way or the
> other, But I do think it is
> dangerous assuming a continuity between modern forms
> of racism and early
> hominoid behavior. There's a lot of assumptions that
> early behaviour is
> simply a more primitive model of advanced, so they
> start with the present
> and then can trace the "evolution" (from barbaric to
> civilized, as I think
> was implicit in the post concerning the Aztecs) in a
> linear, progressive
> way.  So my objections are not against the genetic
> component of racism per
> se--it's more the way I think some rather suspect
> notions of evolution get
> deployed. So it's the model of evolution I have been
> asking about in these
> posts...not the question of racism per se (although,
> as stated before, I
> am a bit skeptical about its value). And I still
> don't quite see the
> evolutionary advantages of racism--but I've a;lready
> explained my reasons
> for that. Joe
> 
> 
> 
> 
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