Creating the Other

1
Creating the Other

• Why is it so important to people that they
  distinguish themselves from others?

2
The Social Importance of the Group

• Familiarity
• Important Learning Environment
• Support
• Defense

3
The Social Importance of the Group

• Enjoyment of privilege, status, power

4
By what means are these distinctions made?

• 1. Differences in
• Rules governing behavior manners
• Language and Speech
• Ethnicity
• Religion
• Education
• Wealth
• and many other ways

5
By what means are these distinctions made?

• Gender
• (social repesentation of sex, distinct from
  23rd chromosome)

6
By what means are these distinctions made?

• Race (based on phenotype)
• Origins of race-based distinctions are
• Political domination (be careful slavery has a
  long history unconnected with skin color
  distinctions)
• Religious Explanations (the late medieval Great
  Chain of Being)
• Colonialism (a comforting tale about how
  indigenous peoples had to be saved from eternal
  backwardness by the civilizing hand of the
  conqueror)

7
Race and Intelligence

• the IQ debates get a lot of media attention, but
  actually differences are correlated with poverty
  and with educational opportunities, not race.
• The WW I-era Army Alpha Test http//www.holah.karo
  o.net/gouldstudy.htm
• Results correlate with per-capita spending on
  education by states

8
What explains phenotypic variation in populations?

• Selection evolutionary response to environmental
  variations
• Variation mutation, gene drift

9
Genetic Traits

• Most are clinal (expressed geographically, as
  isobars of of population with a trait)
• Most are non-concordant (height does not predict
  skin or eye color or shoe size)
• Traits chosen to distinguish race are arbitrary
  (Diamonds article in PB about resistance,
  digestion, fingerprints etc)
• Traits chosen to distinguish race are visual
  (phenotype) for quick recognition

10
Lewontins Findings

• His statistical study of blood groups found that
  94 of the variation in blood forms occurred
  within perceived races, while only 6 could be
  explained by variations among perceived races

11
Self-Assignment of Race

• Why is a social assignment accepted?
• Social and political advantages for those
  considered superior
• Defense, Solidarity, etc (see Social Importance
  of the Group)
• Prejudice
• Racist laws (such as miscegnation)
• Ignorance of the biological truth about race

12
Ethnocentrism

• The belief that one's own race or ethnic group is
  superior to those of other groups.

13
Cultural Relativism

• The principle that an individual human's beliefs
  and activities, in general, make sense in terms
  of his or her own culture.
• The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that
  experience of the world is mediated through the
  mind, which forms perceptions through learned
  behavior.
• race is a cultural, not a biological
  construction.
• A child can be taught not to see race.

14
Teach the Children