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Charlotte Amalie
Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeNewsArchivesRacism and the Science of Race

Racism and the Science of Race

Dear Source:
Recently a person called into a V.I. radio talk show and stated that 90% of the people discussing the issue of race didn't know what they were talking about. That percentage is comparable to those living in the states as the issue of race is increasingly popping up with the presidential election. The responses to that comment indicated that many people were offended. To clarify some of the issues, carefully consider and research the following. One error in discussing racism is the view that reverse racism is black people discriminating against white people. Technically, the opposite of racism is favoritism according to race. Each act of racism usually contains an act or favoritism of one's own so-called race, i.e. reverse racism. Another misconception is that black people cannot be racist. Racist behavior can be on an individual basis, a community basis, a religious basis or a national basis. As an example, in "Annie's Mailbox" 10/14/08, a white father refuses to allow his daughter-in-law and son to "adopt a child of any race." The rest of the family is fully supportive of their potential adoption of a person of a so-called different race. Allowing slavery to exist according to one's so-called race reflects the previous national policy of the U.S. As far as religious beliefs are concerned, the concept that one's family or tribe or "race" is better than another is dominant among some Whites and some Blacks. (When a term designating a so-called race is used as a proper noun, it is capitalized. The media continues to use lower case letters, as a common noun with other capitalized letters for other groups such as Italians, Asians, Hispanics, etc.; this is similar to the previous racially biased use of the term negro rather than Negro until 1925.) Racial discrimination is most often based on the psychological need to feel superior to others, i.e. God's chosen people, as exemplified by "Abraham's seed." The white Christian Identity Movement and Church of the Creator are equally as biased towards people, especially the "mud people" of a different so-called race; their bias is comparable to the black supremacist wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement which has been alleged to have stated "Every white person who doesn't get killed by Christ when he returns is going into slavery."
The designation of races is not a genetic or biological term; they are cultural misconceptions in the U.S. dating back to 1738 with Carolus Linnaeus and Johann Blumenbach in 1775; the latter divided people according to skin color and cranium size. Technically, there is only one race, i.e. the human race, which is one species as designated by the Bible and Evolution. The cultural designation of race leads to the hypo-descent racial classification of the "one drop theory." Barrack Bema is a classic example. If his mother is 100% white and his father is 100% black, he is biologically and genetically 50% white and 50% black; he is a mulatto! A person who was 1/32 Negroid and 31/32 Caucasoid would be considered black or colored as Ms. Phipps was legally classified in 1982. (Black blood must certainly be more powerful than white blood if that is the "true" biological case.) Another fact to consider in supporting racial bias in designating people of different colors as being of different races, due to miss-education or ignorance, is the fact that if a Nordic looking person who is 7'1" mates with a person who is 3'6" and dark complexioned, their offspring would be able to reproduce, thus proving that the "extremes" of physical differences are of the same species, unlike horses and donkeys. In fact, the genetic characteristics of both individuals would be 78% alike; one is simply a B- version of the other. Blood transfusions also support the major similarities among so-called different races. There is no scientific foundation to establish the concept of racial categories based on color. As an example, human beings have different colors because of heredity, physical environment and dominant and recessive genes. (There is a dark complexioned woman on St. Croix who has a white child. Some people might think she stole the baby from a white woman when if fact, her husband who is white had a dominant gene.) Super fecundation was established when a woman had white and black fraternal twins; that adds support to the concept of one human species rather than different racial designations. Genetically speaking some black Africans who have the same color as some Australian Aborigines are not as closely genetically linked as they are to "white Europeans" or "yellow Asians," respectively. In addition, there are more genetic variations within a so-called racial group than there are between two so-called racial groups.
Since there is no adequate scientific foundation to establish "race" and that racial categories are primarily cultural, we should all love Lucy or the incestuous relationships of Adam's and Eve's children or Noah's three children. Thus to talk about race indicates an ignorance of factual information related to "race".
Hap Clark
St. Croix
Editor's note: we welcome and encourage readers to keep the dialogue going by responding to Source commentary. Letters should be e-mailed with name and place of residence to visource@gmail.com.

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