SECTION II
Traits of Living Populations
“Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes."
Chico Marx, in Duck Soup

    This section presents the case for race-realism, that there are real and important racial differences. The race-deniers insist that we believe “there is no such thing as ‘race’,” but in this section we examine what our lying eyes tell us. 1 Sergeant Friday, on the old TV show “Dragnet,” always wanted “Just the facts, ma’am,” so let us examine the facts, as best they can be found, about living human populations, particularly the three major races. 2 Egalitarians do not take kindly to this information, but no progress can be made without facing the facts and dealing with them. 3
    Racial differences arise for the same reasons that different species do – populations become isolated and gradually change, and there is little or no inflow of alleles from other populations. Although it is widely taught and accepted that “’race’ is just a social construct,” 4 the scientific evidence tells a different story. 5 The egalitarians may insists that a black person is no different than a white person with nappy hair and a sun tan 6 but, as this Section will document, there are actually hundreds (if not thousands) of racial differences besides skin color and hair and, to a scientist who studies racial differences, those are not even the most important differences. The focus of the race-deniers solely on skin color is an attempt to trivialize racial differences. Of far greater importance than skin color are differences in bone and tooth shape and structure, muscle size, brain size and intelligence, and behavior. All of the traits discussed in this section are heritable, which means that they are largely controlled by genes, not the environment.
    Since any theory of human origins must account for the presence of living ethnic and racial groups and the differences between them, it is important to know exactly what those differences are. First, we will examine the three principal populations (races) indigenous to Africa, Europe, and Asia. Since races have mixed somewhat almost everywhere, we will limit the discussion primarily to those populations that have mixed less and better epitomize the three major races.
Figure II-1

    There are genetically different populations within each of those three races, 7 but the populations in s-S Africa (“Negroids”) differ the most. For example, in the s-S Africans, 8 there are Capoids (Bushmen and Hottentots, who live around the Cape), Nilotids, who live around the Nile River basin, and the Congoids, who live around the Congo and Niger River basins (West Africa). The Capoids and Nilotids have some Asian and Caucasian features due to interbreeding, but the Congoids are less hybridized so they will be used as the prototypical s-S Africans (Fig. II-1; Coon, 1962, plate IV). Most African Americans came from the Slave Coast of West Africa 9 and their African ancestors were Congoids. Africans living north of the Sahara Desert will be “North Africans.”
    “Blacks” will mean people of noticeable African heritage (e.g., tightly curled black hair, broad nose, large lips), regardless of where they are living or their degree of admixture with other races. “Europeans” or “whites” will mean Caucasoids who are of European heritage and have no obvious mixed heritage. “Mongoloids” or “East Asians” will refer to NE Asians who are at least somewhat cold-adapted.

Chapter 9

Table of Contents

FOOTNOTES

1. “[T]he various [human] races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other,—as in the texture of hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even the convolutions of the brain. But it would be an endless task to specify the numerous points of difference. The races differ also in constitution, in acclimatization and in liability to certain diseases. Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties.” (Darwin, 1871, pp. 461-474). “[T]he people in 'race denial' are in 'reality denial' as well. … Numerous individual methods involving midfacial measurements, femur traits, and so on are over 80 percent accurate alone [in determining race], and in combination produce very high levels of accuracy. … I am more accurate at assessing race from skeletal remains than from looking at living people standing before me. …The idea that race is 'only skin deep' is simply not true, as any experienced forensic anthropologist will affirm.” (Gill, G.W., “Does Race Exist?,” 2000). “In the context of forensic anthropology, the term race is unambiguous.” (Rhine, S. "Forensic Anthropology"). Back

2. The egalitarians, who insist that we “celebrate diversity,” have done their best to prevent anyone from determining just what that diversity is so that it can be celebrated. Thus, the reader will find that for many traits older data had to be used, if any data at all could be found. Back

3. Physical anthropology, the science which initially studied racial differences, has surrendered to the Equality Police and abdicated that role. Fortunately, the egalitarians have not yet persuaded the public that murderers should go free rather than admit that bones and other remains can be identified by race, and forensic science has filled in some of the gap. Forensic manuals and journals (e.g., The Journal of Forensic Sciences) provide techniques for determining what egalitarians insist does not exist – race. Back

4. One might wonder how adults can think race is just a social construct when babies as young as 3 months old prefer faces of their own race (Bar-Heim, 2006; Kelly, 2005), genetic analysis can identify the (self-identified) race of people with nearly 100% accuracy (Tang, 2005), and pathologists and forensic anthropologists can easily tell the race of a person from examining only a fleshless skull. Some egalitarians are even farther from reality: “Many social scientists have gone so far as to claim that kinship is a social construction with no connection to biology." (Steven Pinker, “The Genealogy Craze in America: Strangled by Roots,” The New Republic, Aug. 6, 2007). Back

5. “Races differ in the extent and manner in which the fine subcutaneous muscles of the lips and cheeks have become differentiated from the parent mammalian muscle body; in the chemical composition of hair and of bodily secretions, including milk; in the ways in which different muscles are attached to bones; in the sizes and probably secretion rates of different endocrines; in certain details of the nervous system, as, for example, how far down in the lumbar vertebrae the neural canal extends; and in the capacity of individuals to tolerate crowding and stress.” (Coon, 1962, p. 662). Back

6. The fact that many whites want darker skin, but do not want to be black, shows that race is not skin deep. Back

7. Europeans are sometimes divided into Nordic (northwestern Europe), Alpine (central and eastern Europe), and Mediterranean (southern Europe and northern Africa). (Boyd, 1955). Back

8. North Africans (north of the Sahara) have so much Caucasian heritage that they are usually classified separately from the s-S Africans. Back

9. See “Forest Negroes” in Figure 26-2. The Slave Coast is present day Togo, Benin, and western Nigeria. Slavery began on the east Coast of Africa, where Arabs went deep into the continent capturing mostly female slaves. On the Slave Coast, Europeans traded goods for slaves captured by other Africans and wanted workers, not concubines. (Wikipedia, “History of Slavery”). Back