Race: The Reality of Human Differences [Hardcover]

Vincent Sarich (Author), Frank Miele (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0813340861 | ISBN-13: 978-0813340869 | Publication Date: January 6, 2004 | Edition: 1st

When the head of the Human Genome Project and a former President of the United States both assure us that we are all, regardless of race, genetically 99.9% the same, the clear implication is that racial differences among us are superficial. The concept of race, many would argue, is an inadequate map of the physical reality of human variation. In short, human races are not biologically valid categories, and the very ideas of race and racial difference are morally suspect in that they support racism. In Race, Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele argue strongly against received academic wisdom, contending that human racial differences are both real and significant. Relying on the latest findings in nuclear, mitochondrial, and Y-chromosome DNA research, Sarich and Miele demonstrate that the recent origin of racial differences among modern humans provides powerful evidence of the significance, not the triviality, of those differences. They place the "99.9% the same" figure in context by showing that racial differences in humans exceed the differences that separate subspecies or even species in such other primates as gorillas and chimpanzees. The authors conclude with the paradox that, while, scientific honesty requires forthright recognition of racial differences, public policy should not recognize racial-group membership.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sarich, a Berkeley emeritus anthropologist, and Miele, an editor of Skeptic magazine, cannot resist calling the current view that "race does not exist" a "PC dogma." They make cogent, if not convincing, arguments of their case in three areas. Race as a concept, they argue, considerably antedates colonial Europe, presenting such examples as an "Egyptian tomb with four races" (as one caption calls a tomb painting) that may point up "awareness" of difference, but whether that awareness correlates to concepts of "race" as currently defined remains unproven. Several chapters are heavy going on DNA-based research into the origin and differentiation of Homo sapiens, here interpreted as branching off from the other hominids recently enough to make differences among people very minor but, in the authors' view, significant. They move from the Human Genome Project into their final section, in which differences in intelligence are said to correlate to a concept of race (but are not said to be a justification for discrimination). This last argument is predicated on what will seem to many readers an excessive faith in IQ tests. Nevertheless, the book lacks vitriol, other than that needed to fuel the skeptic's attempt to debunk.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Sarich and Miele, both respected academicians, challenge the much-hyped, popular notion of race as an illusion, or mere social construct. Instead, they contend that significant human racial differences exist. Those differences are being increasingly identified and quantified via medical research and law-enforcement techniques, most notably in DNA testing, which has led to convictions and acquittals. Inquiries into the genetic influences behind racial differences in educational achievement and intelligence, despite inflammatory resistance, are justified by cost-benefit analyses, the authors contend. Assessing the future of racial politics in the U.S and internationally, Sarich and Miele offer three scenarios: meritocracy with race-sensitive safety valves (which they prefer), affirmative action or quotas, and rising resegregation and ethnopolitics. This is an important work, despite its conservative inferences, that challenges both the existence and the value of America's obsession with color blindness. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 287 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press; 1st edition (January 6, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813340861
• ISBN-13: 978-0813340869
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #877,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Long overdue, July 3, 2004

By 

R. Kaiser (New Hampshire) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Hardcover)

I agree with Dr. Ralph L. Holloway, Professor of Anthropology, at Columbia University. He states that "Miele is exactly that antidote to the pernicious loss of respect for our own evolutionarily-derived biological diversity, and it will hopefully reach all who are ready and willing to think more clearly and empirically about our diversity and celebrate it. This reader has been very favorably struck by the careful and non-sarcastic exposure of some of our most common chestnuts regarding racial diversity, and in particular some of the sillier pronouncements regarding within- and between-group differences in genetic frequencies that have abounded in all of the media, academic and non.

As more genetic research, particularly at the molecular level comes to our attention, it seems clear to this writer that this book will represent an important milestone in reducing the millstone of the myths that have accumulated denigrating and/or ignoring our genetic diversity. This book will certainly be a must for my students, and it is surely long overdue!"

226 of 286 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Solid science and common sense, January 6, 2004

By 

Steve Sailer (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Hardcover)

Most people who consider themselves intellectuals pride themselves on how far removed their theorizing is from contact with mundane reality. After all, if daily life could provide answers to lofty questions, we might not need so many professional intellectuals. And that subversive thought must be suppressed at all costs!

Consider the topic of race. The trendiest idea among intellectuals is that Race Does Not Exist. Last year, a three-night PBS documentary summed up the new orthodoxy: Race: The Power of an Illusion. That this strikes the vast majority of Americans as a self-evidently stupid notion only heightens its appeal to those who view themselves as superior because of their ability to mentally juggle esoterica.

Geneticist Vincent Sarich, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Berkeley, and journalist Frank Miele, senior editor of Skeptic magazine, have stepped in to this debate with a new book Race: The Reality of Human Differences. It documents overwhelmingly that the weight of scientific knowledge is on the side of the man-in-the-street's commonsense view of race. Sarich and Miele demonstrate that all ten of the PBS documentary's summary statements on the nonexistence of race are wrong. Indeed, they bring so much firepower to bear against the series' assertions that it's a little like breaking a butterfly on a wheel. (Or, considering the mendacity of the PBS offering, a more accurate phrase might be "like crushing a cockroach with a cannonball.")

Rejecting the straw man argument that the existence of race would require a race for everyone and everyone in his race, Sarich and Miele call races "fuzzy sets." They write, "Human races are not, and never were, distinct, mutually exclusive, Platonic entities into which every living person, unearthed skull, or set of bones could be pigeonholed."

Miele is perhaps the best interviewer of scientists in the business. He's also a dog enthusiast, and his deep knowledge of breeds (which are artificially selected races) adds perspective to "Race."

Sarich won't make himself popular with the politically correct at Berkeley, but he is a hard man to intimidate. A hawk nose and piercing eyes make him look like the world's tallest ayatollah. Approaching 70, he still has the dimensions of an NBA quick forward at 6'6" and a muscular 215 pounds. (In fact, he holds the world record for his age group in the small sport of indoor rowing.) Being the rare scientist who is also an enthusiastic fan of spectator sports makes Sarich far more aware of racial differences than his colleagues, who tend to only pay attention to unthreatening subjects for which they can win grants from the government or big foundations.

In a 1989 book review in the New York Times, Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, praised "the enormously important work of the American biochemist Vincent Sarich." As Sarich recounts in an autobiographical section of Race, as a graduate student back in 1967, he famously teamed with Allan C. Wilson to launch the use of the "molecular clock," which led to a revolution in evolution studies. At a time when experts on fossils believed that proto-humans had diverged from our closest ape relatives around 25 million years ago, Sarich and Wilson estimated, by counting the number of mutations that distinguished humans from chimpanzees and gorillas in a single serum protein, that our ancestors had broken away only about five million years ago. Although greeted with howls of protest from famous paleontologists, their figure has stood up well, and their molecular clock technique has become fundamental to both physical anthropology and population genetics.

Stephen Jay Gould insisted we chant along with him, like Dorothy trying to get home from Oz, "Say it five times before breakfast tomorrow: ... Human equality is a contingent fact of history." As a staunch Darwinist, however, Sarich understands that natural selection requires hereditary inequalities. Sarich and Miele write, "Simply stated, the case for race hinges on recognition of the fact that genetic variation in traits that affect performance and ultimately survival is the fuel on which the evolutionary process runs."

Sarich became the rare physical anthropologist expert on both genes and bones. So, when he saw PBS proclaim, "Despite surface differences, we are among the most similar of all species," he dusted off the measurements of 2,500 human skulls from 29 different racial groups and compared them to 347 chimpanzee skulls from the two separate species of chimp (the common chimp and the bonobo). Sarich discovered that the dissimilarity in head and face measurements between these species was less than half that found between the two most morphologically dissimilar human racial groups in the sample (the narrow-faced Taita of Kenya and the wide-faced Buriat of Siberia). Sarich concludes, "I am not aware of any other mammalian species where the constituent races are as strongly marked as they are in ours... except those few races heavily modified by recent human selection; in particular, dogs."

The book is packed with fascinating information. For instance, in response to PBS's claim that, "Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies did not divide people according to physical differences..." Miele writes a definitive chapter showing, "The art of the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, and China, and the Islamic civilization from AD 700 to 1400 shows that these societies classified the various peoples they encountered into broad racial groups. They sorted them based upon the same set of characteristics -- skin color, hair form, and head shape -- allegedly constructed by Europeans when they invented 'race' to justify colonialism and white supremacy."

Will Race: The Reality of Human Differences change the minds of the prominent advocates of the Race Does Not Exist theory? No, because I can't imagine they'll even read it. One striking difference between the two schools is that the realists pore over the writings of the social constructionists, while the No Race theorists prefer to keep themselves ignorant of all troubling facts.

48 of 66 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars good introductory book to race and evolution using modern DNA science, August 21, 2005

By 

Michael Y (Australia) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Race: The Reality of Human Differences (Hardcover)

This is the first serious book i have read about race and I learnt alot about the early evolution of ape and man and how the development of DNA testing proceeded to reach its current accurate stage of been able to differentiate not only individuals but races.
This book covers 3 basic topics in order-
1) a historical account of how ancient civilizations like Aztecs, Egytians and Romans etc recognised and treated the racial groups in their empires.
2)Early anthropolgy and its disputes between its famous scientists, leading to DNA methods that prove the birthdates of man-ape and modern man.
3)Showing how real race differences exist today, in sport, medicine and measured IQ. Also examples of how race can be integrated into modern societies by either Meritocracy, Affirmative Action or EthnoStates.
The author Sarich? is occasionally a bit glib in some of his remarks but there is nothing controversial or heretical in this book. Both authors do get a bit personal with their ideological opponents but anyone with any interest in DNA/race is aware of the ideologies that some vehemently proscribe to in the name of denying race.
I really enjoyed this book and although i would have liked it to contain more data on the modern race groupings it really brought my understanding of race and evolution into the new millennium.