UNESCO Statement (1951)
UNESCO statement on race was drafted at UNESCO house, on 8th June This statement was drafted by a group of scholars from various disciplines like, Anthropology, Zoology, Genetics, Biometry and so on; Ashley Montague (United States of America) was one of the scholars. Other notable scholars involved Ernest Beaglehole (New Zealand), Juan Comas (Mexico), L. A. Costa Pinto (Brazil), Frankiln Frazier (United States of America), Morris Ginsberg (United Kingdom), Humayun Kabir (India) and Levi-Strauss (France). The major extracts of UNESCO statement are as follows:
- 1) Scientists are generally agreed that all men belong to a single species, Homo sapiens, and are derived from a common stock, even though there is some dispute as to when and how different human groups diverge from this common stock. Anthropologically, ‘race’ should be reserved only for groups of mankind possessing well-developed and primarily heritable physical differences from other groups.
- 2) Some of the physical differences between human groups are due to differences in hereditary constitution and some to differences in the environments in which they have been brought up. In many cases, both influences have been at work. The science of genetics suggests that the hereditary differences are the results of the action of two sets of processes. On the one hand, isolated populations are constantly being altered by natural selection and by occasional changes (mutations) in the material particles (genes) which control heredity. Populations are also affected by fortuitous changes in gene frequency and by marriage customs and breeding structure. On the other hand, crossing is constantly breaking down the differentiations so set up.
- 3) National, religious, geographical, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups; and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated connexion with racial traits. Americans are not a race, nor are Englishmen, nor Frenchmen, nor any other national group. Serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term ‘race’ is used in popular parlance: the term should never be used when speaking of such human groups.
- 4) Human races can be, and have been, classified by different anthropologists in different ways. Most agree in classifying the greater part of existing mankind into at least three large units, which may be called major groups (in French, grand-races). Such a classification does not depend on any single physical character. From the morphological point of view, moreover, it is impossible to regard one particular race as superior or inferior to another.
- 5) Most anthropologists no longer try to include mental characteristics in their classification of human races. Studies within a single race have shown that both innate capacity and environmental opportunity determine the results of tests of intelligence and temperament, though their relative importance is disputed. In any case, it has never been possible to separate members of two groups on the basis of mental capacity, as they can often be separated on a basis of religion, skin colour, hair form or language.
- 6) The scientific material available to us at present does not justify the conclusion that inherited genetic differences are a major factor in producing the differences between the cultures and cultural achievements of different peoples or groups. It does indicate, on the contrary, that the major factor in explaining such differences is the history of the cultural experience which each group has undergone.
- 7) There is no evidence for the existence of so-called ‘pure’ races. We know the earlier races chiefly from skeletal remains and our knowledge is therefore limited. In regard to race mixture, the evidence points to the fact that human hybridisation has been going on for an indefinite but considerable time. Indeed, one of the processes of race formation and race extinction or absorption is by means of hybridisation between races. As there is no reliable evidence that disadvantageous effects are produced thereby, no biological justification exists for prohibiting inter-marriage between persons of different races.
- 8) We now have to consider the bearing of these statements on the problem of human equality. We wish to emphasise that equality of opportunity and equality in law in no way depend, as ethical principles, upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment. It is worthwhile to set out in a formal manner what is at present scientifically established concerning individual and group differences:
- 1) In matters of race, the only characteristics which anthropologists can effectively use as a basis for classification are physical (anatomical and physiological).
- 2) Available scientific knowledge provides no basis for believing that the groups of mankind differ in their innate capacity for intellectual and emotional development.
- 3) The biological differences between human beings within single races may be as great as the biological differences between races.
- 4) Vast social changes have occurred which are not in any way connected with changes in racial type. Historical and sociological studies thus support the view that genetic differences are of little significance in determining the social and cultural differences between different groups of men.
- 5) There is no evidence that race mixture as such produces disadvantageous results from a biological point of view. The social results of race mixture, whether for good or ill, can generally be traced to social factors (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization Statement on Race, 1951)
American Anthropological Association Statement (1998)
The Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association adopted the following statement on race on 17 May 1998: “Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical areas in the south; its intensity is not related to nose shape or hair texture. Dark skin may be associated with frizzy or kinky hair or curly or wavy or straight hair, all of which are found among different indigenous peoples in tropical regions. These facts render any attempt to establish lines of division among biological populations both arbitrary and subjective. Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences among the “racial” categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes.
Ultimately “race” as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic and political inequalities among their peoples.
“Race” thus evolved as a worldview a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into “racial” categories. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior.
At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call “culture.”
It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The “racial” worldview was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to privilege, power and wealth. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called “racial” groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances” (American Anthropological Association Statement on Race, 1998).