Jane Buck, Ph.D.
Race Is a Myth
The Myth of Race
Keynote Speech for Unity Day
Legislative Hall, Dover, Delaware
25 November 1991
Race is a myth. There is no sound biological basis for the concept of race. The complex genetic code that tells the developing embryo to become a human being rather than a toad is the same for all of us. Of course there are differences. Dr. James Lyons, former Vice President for Academic Affairs at DelState and now President of Bowie State, put it very well. If we were all exactly alike, we'd only need one of us. We differ from one another in many, and sometimes significant, ways. We are male or female. We are brown or beige or pink. We have blue or green or brown eyes. We have straight or curly hair. We are tall or short, thin or fat, fast or slow. And all of these differences are, in part, genetically determined. But only in part.
If a pregnant woman's body fails to provide enough male hormones to the fetus genetically programmed to be male, the fetus will develop as a female. A child who fails to receive an adequate diet will fail to reach its genetically coded height. Hair can be straightened or curled, bleached or darkened. Eye color can be temporarily changed with contact lenses, and armies of pale blonds achieve color, at the risk of cancer, by baking on the beach.
But even if genetic differences were fixed and immutable, on what rational basis can we reliably categorize a human being as a member of one race rather than another? Hair color? Eye color? Shape of the nose? Skin color? Position of the ears? A moment's thought reveals the utter silliness and impossibility of such an attempt.
Aha, the racialists reply, we'll do it on the basis of proportions. Those with a certain percentage of a certain racial strain will be considered pure, and all others, impure. Let's trace the ancestry of one person for the most recent period of human history, the last 5000 years. We're talking about roughly 200 generations of human beings. Over a period of 200 generations, each person has ancestors numbering 1.6 times 10 to the sixtieth power. That translates into 16, with 59 zeroes after it, a number so large that we can't even name it, let alone comprehend it. Let's look instead at a more modest slice of our ancestry. Just the last 20 generations, back to about the time Christopher Columbus set sail. In twenty generations, each of us has one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred seventy-six ancestors. If anyone would care to guarantee the identity and the racial purity of each of those one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred seventy-six ancestors, I have some very valuable underwater property I'd like to sell.
Ridiculous? Of course. But ultimately extremely dangerous. Hitler, David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan, and their kind have successfully sold these racialist notions to significant numbers of people. We all know that Hitler's distorted vision of ethnic purity led to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War. We all know of the savage attacks on African-Americans, Jews, and other minorities engineered by the Klan. Yet David Duke and his fellow Klan members deny that the Holocaust ever took place, a lie so preposterous that it is difficult to find words to counter it. Now they would have us believe that they have miraculously turned into a benign organization. David Duke has learned the lesson of the big lie very well.
But what of Duke's crushing defeat in Louisiana? Surely, a hopeful sign, you say. Yes, it is a hopeful sign. But, as a number of analysts have pointed out, there is a negative side to the outcome. Although Duke managed to garner only 39% of the total vote, that figure translates into 700,000 individuals who voted for a man who once paraded the streets of Chicago in a Nazi Storm Trooper's uniform, complete with swastika, and a sign reading, "Gas the Chicago 7." Why? How could this happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
There are plenty of psychological, sociological, and economic reasons for perpetuating the myth of race. As long as we see ourselves, not as members of a single human race engaged in a common struggle for life, decency, and dignity, those who profit from our differences will continue to exploit them out of greed, and lust for power.
Too many of us now live in economic terror. And economic terror breeds feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. The helpless and the hopeless have few avenues open to them. They can numb themselves with alcohol and other drugs. They can take a job at minimum wage, a wage that is no longer sufficient to provide even the naked necessities of biological survival, let alone a crumb of human dignity. They can take to the streets and beg or steal. So we should not be surprised when they lash out violently at those whom they perceive as competitors for an increasingly elusive adequate standard of living. For too many, the American dream has become a nightmare.
What is to be done? There's a lot of talk lately about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. A very interesting figure of speech. It means getting ahead on one's own, without help. But upon closer examination, it seems a rather odd way of starting a trip. Being a rather curious and literal-minded person, I tried to imagine what it would be like to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I wasn't completely successful in imagining the result, so I actually tried it, just to see what would happen. Can you guess the result? I pitched forward and fell on my face. Perhaps we should start to think of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps as a metaphor for failure. I submit to you the proposition that anyone who claims to have attained success in this society by pulling him- or herself up by the bootstraps is either lying or very, very forgetful, indeed. To paraphrase one presidential hopeful, being born on third base is NOT the same as hitting a triple. It is far more likely that one has achieved success by standing on the shoulders of parents, friends, and co-workers.
The only way we'll solve the enormous social and economic problems of this society - and they are overwhelming - is through co-operative political and economic action. The sole reason that Louisiana does not now have a Nazi governor is that enough people of conscience took twenty minutes away from their normal Saturday pursuits and voted. Important as it is to vote, it is not enough. We must become more politically active on a daily basis. It is not enough to pray and hope.
When I was a child, I used to accompany my grandfather, a country veterinarian, on calls to local farmers. One day we visited a farm that had recently changed hands. It had been a disaster — fields gone to weed, barn and outbuildings unpainted, windows broken, animals diseased and malnourished. The new owner, in a matter of months, had transformed the place. Buildings sparkled with new paint. Windows were replaced. Fields were neatly planted and fertile. Animals appeared to be sleek and contented. My grandfather said, "Jake, it's really amazing what you and God have accomplished in such a short time." Jake, in the thoughtful and measured way of farmers, replied, "Yeah, Doc, but you should have seen it when God had it alone."
If a bill is proposed in the State Legislature or the Congress, ask who benefits and by how much. Write to your state and federal legislators on matters that concern you. They DO listen. They want to be re-elected. It's what they live for. But I'm not speaking here only of electoral politics, important as that may be. We must become aware of what is going on around us. Read newspapers. Read more than one. Read with a very skeptical attitude. Learn to translate political code words. Talk to each other. Argue. Debate. Question. Question everything. Your own assumptions about race and gender and religion. The right of those in positions of power to exercise that power in the way that they do. Ask what the real message of advertising is. Buy from companies that have demonstrated a commitment to hire and promote minorities and women. Don't buy from those that discriminate on the basis of sex or race or religion. If you give to charitable organizations, find out what they do with the money. Are they really doing with it what you want them to do? What would happen if we all rejected the myth of race and started answering "Human" when asked our race? Give up one rented video a week. Give the money and the time you save to an organization that IS doing what you want it to do. Start a new group, one that is genuinely committed to cultural diversity. Form alliances with other like-minded groups. Go to another rally. March on the White House. March on the Supreme Court. The sight of half a million people, united in a just cause, pouring over the hills surrounding the Washington Monument is an awesome one, one that cannot be ignored. We CAN make a difference. We CAN be heard. But we can only be heard if we speak up. If we are committed to truth and justice, if we speak out wherever and whenever we can — in opposition to those who would divide us and rule by hate, we SHALL overcome.
Let me end with the words of the Rev. Martin Niemöller, a crusading pastor of the German Evangelical Church who spent years in a concentration camp because of his opposition to Hitler: "In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."
Keynote Speech for Unity Day
Legislative Hall, Dover, Delaware
25 November 1991
Race is a myth. There is no sound biological basis for the concept of race. The complex genetic code that tells the developing embryo to become a human being rather than a toad is the same for all of us. Of course there are differences. Dr. James Lyons, former Vice President for Academic Affairs at DelState and now President of Bowie State, put it very well. If we were all exactly alike, we'd only need one of us. We differ from one another in many, and sometimes significant, ways. We are male or female. We are brown or beige or pink. We have blue or green or brown eyes. We have straight or curly hair. We are tall or short, thin or fat, fast or slow. And all of these differences are, in part, genetically determined. But only in part.
If a pregnant woman's body fails to provide enough male hormones to the fetus genetically programmed to be male, the fetus will develop as a female. A child who fails to receive an adequate diet will fail to reach its genetically coded height. Hair can be straightened or curled, bleached or darkened. Eye color can be temporarily changed with contact lenses, and armies of pale blonds achieve color, at the risk of cancer, by baking on the beach.
But even if genetic differences were fixed and immutable, on what rational basis can we reliably categorize a human being as a member of one race rather than another? Hair color? Eye color? Shape of the nose? Skin color? Position of the ears? A moment's thought reveals the utter silliness and impossibility of such an attempt.
Aha, the racialists reply, we'll do it on the basis of proportions. Those with a certain percentage of a certain racial strain will be considered pure, and all others, impure. Let's trace the ancestry of one person for the most recent period of human history, the last 5000 years. We're talking about roughly 200 generations of human beings. Over a period of 200 generations, each person has ancestors numbering 1.6 times 10 to the sixtieth power. That translates into 16, with 59 zeroes after it, a number so large that we can't even name it, let alone comprehend it. Let's look instead at a more modest slice of our ancestry. Just the last 20 generations, back to about the time Christopher Columbus set sail. In twenty generations, each of us has one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred seventy-six ancestors. If anyone would care to guarantee the identity and the racial purity of each of those one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred seventy-six ancestors, I have some very valuable underwater property I'd like to sell.
Ridiculous? Of course. But ultimately extremely dangerous. Hitler, David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan, and their kind have successfully sold these racialist notions to significant numbers of people. We all know that Hitler's distorted vision of ethnic purity led to the horrors of the Holocaust and the Second World War. We all know of the savage attacks on African-Americans, Jews, and other minorities engineered by the Klan. Yet David Duke and his fellow Klan members deny that the Holocaust ever took place, a lie so preposterous that it is difficult to find words to counter it. Now they would have us believe that they have miraculously turned into a benign organization. David Duke has learned the lesson of the big lie very well.
But what of Duke's crushing defeat in Louisiana? Surely, a hopeful sign, you say. Yes, it is a hopeful sign. But, as a number of analysts have pointed out, there is a negative side to the outcome. Although Duke managed to garner only 39% of the total vote, that figure translates into 700,000 individuals who voted for a man who once paraded the streets of Chicago in a Nazi Storm Trooper's uniform, complete with swastika, and a sign reading, "Gas the Chicago 7." Why? How could this happen in the land of the free and the home of the brave?
There are plenty of psychological, sociological, and economic reasons for perpetuating the myth of race. As long as we see ourselves, not as members of a single human race engaged in a common struggle for life, decency, and dignity, those who profit from our differences will continue to exploit them out of greed, and lust for power.
Too many of us now live in economic terror. And economic terror breeds feelings of helplessness and hopelessness. The helpless and the hopeless have few avenues open to them. They can numb themselves with alcohol and other drugs. They can take a job at minimum wage, a wage that is no longer sufficient to provide even the naked necessities of biological survival, let alone a crumb of human dignity. They can take to the streets and beg or steal. So we should not be surprised when they lash out violently at those whom they perceive as competitors for an increasingly elusive adequate standard of living. For too many, the American dream has become a nightmare.
What is to be done? There's a lot of talk lately about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps. A very interesting figure of speech. It means getting ahead on one's own, without help. But upon closer examination, it seems a rather odd way of starting a trip. Being a rather curious and literal-minded person, I tried to imagine what it would be like to pull myself up by my bootstraps. I wasn't completely successful in imagining the result, so I actually tried it, just to see what would happen. Can you guess the result? I pitched forward and fell on my face. Perhaps we should start to think of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps as a metaphor for failure. I submit to you the proposition that anyone who claims to have attained success in this society by pulling him- or herself up by the bootstraps is either lying or very, very forgetful, indeed. To paraphrase one presidential hopeful, being born on third base is NOT the same as hitting a triple. It is far more likely that one has achieved success by standing on the shoulders of parents, friends, and co-workers.
The only way we'll solve the enormous social and economic problems of this society - and they are overwhelming - is through co-operative political and economic action. The sole reason that Louisiana does not now have a Nazi governor is that enough people of conscience took twenty minutes away from their normal Saturday pursuits and voted. Important as it is to vote, it is not enough. We must become more politically active on a daily basis. It is not enough to pray and hope.
When I was a child, I used to accompany my grandfather, a country veterinarian, on calls to local farmers. One day we visited a farm that had recently changed hands. It had been a disaster — fields gone to weed, barn and outbuildings unpainted, windows broken, animals diseased and malnourished. The new owner, in a matter of months, had transformed the place. Buildings sparkled with new paint. Windows were replaced. Fields were neatly planted and fertile. Animals appeared to be sleek and contented. My grandfather said, "Jake, it's really amazing what you and God have accomplished in such a short time." Jake, in the thoughtful and measured way of farmers, replied, "Yeah, Doc, but you should have seen it when God had it alone."
If a bill is proposed in the State Legislature or the Congress, ask who benefits and by how much. Write to your state and federal legislators on matters that concern you. They DO listen. They want to be re-elected. It's what they live for. But I'm not speaking here only of electoral politics, important as that may be. We must become aware of what is going on around us. Read newspapers. Read more than one. Read with a very skeptical attitude. Learn to translate political code words. Talk to each other. Argue. Debate. Question. Question everything. Your own assumptions about race and gender and religion. The right of those in positions of power to exercise that power in the way that they do. Ask what the real message of advertising is. Buy from companies that have demonstrated a commitment to hire and promote minorities and women. Don't buy from those that discriminate on the basis of sex or race or religion. If you give to charitable organizations, find out what they do with the money. Are they really doing with it what you want them to do? What would happen if we all rejected the myth of race and started answering "Human" when asked our race? Give up one rented video a week. Give the money and the time you save to an organization that IS doing what you want it to do. Start a new group, one that is genuinely committed to cultural diversity. Form alliances with other like-minded groups. Go to another rally. March on the White House. March on the Supreme Court. The sight of half a million people, united in a just cause, pouring over the hills surrounding the Washington Monument is an awesome one, one that cannot be ignored. We CAN make a difference. We CAN be heard. But we can only be heard if we speak up. If we are committed to truth and justice, if we speak out wherever and whenever we can — in opposition to those who would divide us and rule by hate, we SHALL overcome.
Let me end with the words of the Rev. Martin Niemöller, a crusading pastor of the German Evangelical Church who spent years in a concentration camp because of his opposition to Hitler: "In Germany, the Nazis first came for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me."
