Stephan: Racism is inherently irrational, genetically we are one species. This is a scientific fact. Yet racism or, I think, more accurately fear of the other, is genetically inbred, and I think it dates back hundreds of thousands of years to when there were multiple hominid species -- Neanderthal, Denisovan, most prominently -- existed, in tribal and family groups. When you came over a hill and looked across at some hominid group the first question you would ask is, "Are those people one of ours, or something else. There was clearly contact. Research shows, that 1-4% of the genomes of non-African modern humans, that is Whites, depending on what part of what is now Europe your forebearers came from originated with Neanderthals. Archaeologists have discovered that contemporaneous homo sapiens who lived about 40,000 years ago had up to 6-9% Neanderthal DNA. On enough occasions, however, the contact must have had a high enough probability of violence that the people who avoided contact lived, their genes were passed on, whereas a certain number of people faced violence and were killed, and their gene lines did not pass on. After thousands of years, longer than recorded history, fear of the other was genetically programmed in, and it takes an act of will to overcome that. Some of us have done that, some of us have not.
Neanderthal man Credit: Smithsonian
In his 1940 essay, “Dusk of Dawn”, the renowned scholar W.E.B. Du Bois reflected back to his early-career appointment, some 44 years prior, as a temporary instructor at the University of Pennsylvania — a time he described as coinciding with a clarifying vision he had on America’s “race problem.” At that time, near the dawn of the 20th century, Du Bois says he believed the primary impediment to enlightenment on racial issues was “stupidity” — and the cure was simple: “knowledge based on scientific investigation.”
But where the youthful Du Bois had faith in the power of science to overcome ignorance, the older Du Bois admitted that this faith was waning: “I regarded it as axiomatic that the world wanted to learn the truth and if the truth was sought with even approximate accuracy and painstaking devotion, the world would gladly support the effort,” he wrote. “This was, of course, but a young man’s idealism, not by any means false, but also never universally true.”
Rev. Dean
on Tuesday, December 27, 2022 at 6:30 pm
You are absolutely right, Stephan; just look at what we did to America where the Native Americans had hundreds of Nations. and look at Hawaii and how many of their traditions were thrown out and replaced by our Christian leaders of the time, along with the killing of many Hawaiins in the process.
You are absolutely right, Stephan; just look at what we did to America where the Native Americans had hundreds of Nations. and look at Hawaii and how many of their traditions were thrown out and replaced by our Christian leaders of the time, along with the killing of many Hawaiins in the process.