Just saw Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr., PhD, Professor Evolutionary Biology/Life Sciences, Arizona State University West, Phoenix, AZ on Tony Brown's Journal. I'm simultaneously saddened and gladdened by the Work of this distinguished researcher and scholar. On the one hand, it's heartening to see someone cooly and authoritatively demolish racist psychopathology across multiple sectors of its expression. On the other, it's just plain sad that a brother even has to bother wasting so many of his valuable and irreplaceable cycles on the uniquely American mental illness and moral plague.
Racism is not a necessary feature of human society though but coalitional allegiances might be ingrained. They have been and are a feature of present American society. People ask, 'Professor Graves, you say biological races are not real?' I say, 'Yes. Biological races are not real, but socialized races are real as a heart attack, and do not confuse those two.' There are no genetic barriers to dismantling racist ideology; it is a question of whether we want to.
A comprehensive discussion and presentation by Dr. Graves on the Myth of Race.
I was chilling at the Marriott and the wife turned on the same program. He hadn't gotten through a paragraph or two when I blurted "I really hate it when scientists start talking about history." Finally, he got to some vaguely interesting stuff on genetic variability which redeemed him somewhat.
When you sit back and think about it for a moment, the very fact that we are appealing to genetic science to refute the ideology of racism is rather pathetic. It's going to take party bosses in the end. That's why all the action is going to be in the GOP.
Posted by: Cobb at July 24, 2005 07:19 PM