I call it “Gorilla in Baby Hat at Dawn.”
Now I must decide whether this is a girly sort of hat, so I should make something blue and perhaps Viking-ish for the boy twin, or if it is a boy-type hat, so I should go with a pink lacy thing for the girl, or if it is a neutral hat, and I can make another neutral-type hat and not start stereotyping the little darlings while they are still tiny.
I was surprised to learn from Dawkins that there are hundreds of species that don’t bother to have any males. And there are apparently a bunch of books, all written by men, discussing whether, from a biological standpoint, males are worthwhile or not.
This discussion followed a discussion on race. Now, I am sure that you know that the concept of race is a Victorian one, completely outdated in the social sciences and without any foundation in the natural sciences. But, as Dawkins, points out, we humans are still able to determine race quite easily, even though it doesn’t exist.
Human beings have almost no genetic diversity — we are all so similar to one another, compared with other species, that it is apparent that there was some kind of Noah-like situation in our relatively recent history when our population must have gotten very small and resulted in severe inbreeding. The differences among what we speak of as “races” (those of us who do) are so slight as to be biologically unimportant. In the U.S., where there is a high level of intermarriage, the whole idea of classifying people by race is laughable.
But, Dawkins points out, the few differences that there are among different “races” of people are all highly visible. Most of us can look at a headshot of an individual, even in America, and make a stab at guessing their ethnic background.
Dawkins uses Colin Powell as his example. I am influenced in this by the fact that both my husband (not an American) and my children have frequently been subject to wrong guesses about their ethnicity. I think that this supports Dawkins’s later point, though, by the sheer fact that people continue to guess, and indeed, when there are forms to be filled out, to argue over it.
I am not making this up. I have stood there in the office where you get vaccinations, arguing with the clerk who wants to write down that my child is Hispanic. There is no shame in being Hispanic, but there is also no point in writing down that a child is Hispanic when he isn’t. The same child also had an argument on the schoolbus in kindergarten when the bigger kids were telling him he was Native American.
“I’m an Indian,” he said when he got home and told us about this, “because I have bright brown skin.” We had to explain that he couldn’t be an Indian if no one else in the family was.
But I digress.
In physical anthropology class, we learned that visible differences among human populations were a response to environment. Northern people developed pale skin so they could get more vitamin D from the sun. People in windy places developed eye shapes that provided some protection from wind. Apparently this is not supported by the evidence. We have no important responses to environment. The only differences we have are the ones that allow us to discriminate.
We are in this like grasshoppers (yes, Dawkins has gotten around to insects) who can tell their own in-group from the outgroup by the pitch of their stridulations. Grasshoppers use this information to avoid mating with the outgroup.
Dawkins implies that having some visible distinctions in facial features allowed our ancestors to avoid inadvertent reproduction with people who might turn out to be at war with us or something. Since humans, unlike most other creatures, have a really long bringing-up relationship with offspring, it might even be good to avoid inadvertent reproduction with people who don’t share our language and culture, and might be inclined to wander off with their hunter-gatherers and the kids just when our agricultural society needed us for the harvest.
Obviously, the very idea of inadvertent reproduction presumes a very early human.
And so we are left with just enough differences to allow us to discriminate against one another pointlessly, now that inadvertent reproduction is hardly an issue.
How is it, then, that we keep carrying on with this idea of race if it is clearly outmoded? Is it simply because we are in the habit of it? Or is it truly so that we have the ability to discriminate?
LOL, I’m still trying to decide if hanty/panties should be singular or plural (from sewing site) This Dawkins book sounds very interesting. Did they suggest in the book that instead of calling us humans we should be called hums. That might be a little more politically correct for the times. : ) I like the hat and think the colour will work for a boy although it could be border line for a teenager. Ha, Ha, the gorilla gives good face.
I think we humans just like categorising things and people so the concept of categorical races hasn’t gone away yet. I didn’t know that the idea of ‘race’ didn’t come into vogue until the Victorian Age. Might that have been as a consequence of Darwin and his theory?
We refer to “race” because it’s human nature to try and get ahead of everybody else. Speaking of a head, the hat gives off strong “cute” vibes! A fine color for a baby boy, but he might become disgruntled by such a shade in Kindergarten.
It looks gender neutral to me.
I’m not convinced melanin doesn’t have something to do with ancestral sun exposure. And blue eyes with grayer climes. I guess I should open that book.
I heard a interview with Desi Arnez jr on TV one time, and he was asked about growing up with Lucille Ball for a mother.
He said that she encouraged him to be his own person, told him he could be anything he wanted when he grew up, and exposed him to lots of vocations. At the age of about six or seven, he announced that he wanted to be an indian! Lucy had to redefine her description of “anything you want.”
The concept of race does seem to be an excuse for humans to treat each other badly. I can’t think of any other purpose it fulfills, other than showing off the low IQ of people who discriminate, which is useful when getting to know someone.
I’ve met several people who were such loosers in so many ways (intelligence, strength, agility, sense of humor aesthetic sense, looks, etc), that they find one trait they posess that they can consider “superior,” and judge everybody else by that one trait.
One of the stupidest people I ever met judged by whether you graduated college. I don’t have a clue how he got through.
Another one was so bad off, he felt you had to be male to be OK. He had a long list of things I couldn’t do because I’m female. Unfortunately for him, he managed to pick things I had already done, such as serve in the military, fly a plane (I flew fighter trainers in the Air Force), ride a motorcycle, drive a bulldozer, be accurate with firearms, etc., etc.
He finished up his litany of questions with “Have you ever had a horse try to roll on you?” This started my mother laughing because it happened to me when I was twelve. He didn’t believe me until I added “and then he got up and tried to kick me in the head.”
No matter how far the human race evolves, there will always be ones that are far stupider than is normal.
Just be happy you’re not one of them.
Wow, this is a great post. Very deep and thought provoking. And I would also like to order two prints of Gorilla in Baby Hat at Dawn. 🙂
grizzmemphizz: When you look at the original ideas of race particularly in the rise of Nineteenth century anthropology, you realize that in a modern context race doesn’t even exist. People viewed race in a manner comparable to how we view dogs – some breeds are big and hearty, some or small and cute, some work hard, some are lazy – and that’s not the case with human beings. The phenotypical differences are minute (phenotypes are genetic codes that are physically determinable whereas genotypes are not like eye color, eye folds, hair color those are phenotypes). Tendency for heart disease, adult onset diabetes, etc are genotypical. There is genetic code for just about every physical or physiological aspect of our existence and it’s fits into one of those two catagories
Bouthdi: ok
grizzmemphizz: just putting that out there
Bouthdi: that’s very interesting
grizzmemphizz: you know, if you were going to put down asian as your race or whatever, you should have tried to go to medical or law school
That is pretty much the most amazing picture ever.
wonderful post!
now.. if we could all stop using the word *race*, it might be a nice start to get on with things. There is only one race i am aware of ….. the human race…… and our fallibilities are numerous…..