The idea of Race is dangerous. It has become taboo to talk about people belonging to a particular race because it opens the door to racism, one of the greatest insults of the 21st century. But racism is not new. At various times in our past it was considered acceptable. Its genesis is buried deep in our psyche under the heading ‘survival’, and it figures beside other less noble human instincts, such as the instinct to kill when under threat — or even to strategically weaken those who pose a threat (imagined or not). The power struggles that underpin racism have always been with us, and need to be rationalised and understood if we ever wish to become totally civilised. But what does ‘totally civilised’ mean in the first place, and how does it connect to race?
We have, throughout human history, been preoccupied with the subject of race; we have politicised it, held it up as the cause of all our problems and perversely, the solution to them. In our more recent history, Adolf Hitler did this so successfully that he managed to convert a whole nation to the idea of racism as a solution, and in doing so gained the largest number of seats by a huge margin for his party in 1932.
The result was a plan of action that engaged almost all the world in an intense conflict and cost millions of lives before it was finally cast aside. When it was all over the very mention of racism was enough to set alarm bells ringing on every politician’s desk — for a while at least, until racism reared its political head again in the 21st century as a result of the refugee crisis, with the cause and effect of more warmongering elsewhere. Naturally it is easier to blame others for our misfortunes than it is to blame ourselves, but if the issue of race become so important in the first place it was because we habitually took to dividing the population of our world into groups based on visible criteria: black and white, brown and yellow.
Skin colour has always been the primary indicator of race, whether we call our common ancestor Lucy, Adam, Eve or King Kong.
And yet ironically skin colour is incidental, really, when seen in the context of our evolution as a species. Light-coloured skin only evolved out of a change of environment; as prehistoric people moved north they were exposed to less sun. As anthropologists have recently discovered, “people in the tropics have developed dark skin to block out the sun and protect their body's folate reserves. People far from the equator have developed fair skin to drink in the sun and produce adequate amounts of vitamin D during the long winter months” (pbs.org). Skin, like everything, adapts, and those that stayed in the southern hemisphere retained their dark coloured skin because it protected them from the damaging effects of the sun. In reality we probably all had the same colour skin in prehistoric times, once we shed our body hair and started to become ‘civilised’.
In the dictionary, race is defined as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior”, and more specifically, “the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics, abilities, or qualities specific to that race, so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races”. People naturally buy into the idea of race because it reinforces a sense of identity, and identity matters to us because it tells us who we are and where we came from. But how does the idea of superiority fit in? To find out we need to go back to environment.
Biological evolution, as Charles Darwin pointed out, depends on environment. Humankind branched out from a common ancestry far back in the mists of time, and formed into distinct groups, which eventually coagulated into ‘races’. As Jared Diamond points out in his book, Guns, Germs and Steel
, which I recently reviewed HERE, these ethnic groups or races evolved at different speeds according to what they had available to them in terms of natural resources. More resources, particularly in the form of plant life, meant more crops, more farming and consequently more social complexity. Societies need food in order to develop. Food, made available to the wider community through adequate farming, gave people fuel to grow. Toolmakers, artists, and even politicians (in their early manifestations) arose as they were freed from the need to hunt and forage. The evolution of people into races was, in fact, dependant on luck. But inevitably, some of us were luckier than others. Those who did not have the same resources at hand took longer to evolve into complex societies through no fault of their own, were more easily conquered by their now greedy neighbours and in the long run became labelled as ‘inferior’.
Civilisation grew up in the shadow of these struggles, and was defined by them. If we look at what unites us rather than what divides us it is probably (and unfortunately) our ability to conquer our neighbours and plunder their homes with no questions asked.
Human history has been characterised by exploitation on a massive scale, right from the word go. Nice of us, really, but that’s human nature for you. How would the world have been if everyone had had the same opportunities, the same ability to grow, if Environment had levelled out the playing field in every corner of the globe right from the start? We may never have become totally civilised, but we might have let our neighbours keep their crops.
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Winning
Historical Fiction
The Sultan, the Vampyr and the Soothsayer
A compelling tale of prophecy and intrigue
Gioconda
A novel about the life of Leonardo da Vinci
