What Accounts for Variations of Race?

RACE​—today the very word brings to many minds the prejudices displayed in some way in almost every part of the world. Understandably, lack of knowledge is the seeming source of so much prejudice. People ask, ‘What accounts for the variations in race?’

Answering this question requires, first of all, that we find out what the term “race” means. Numerous definitions have been suggested, usually varying from one another only in small points. Generally speaking, however, a “race” is a group of persons descended from a common ancestor and who bear certain physical similarities, such as the color of their skin or their stature.

Strictly speaking, there is only one human race! Virtually all anthropologists agree on this point. Thus, in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s Third Statement on Race, twenty-two experts say: “Mankind is one . . . all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. . . . all men are probably derived from the same common stock.”

But, if that is true, why all the variations in human body size, color, shape and abilities? For one thing, men branching off from this “common stock” were so made genetically as to allow for great variation. Understanding how human genes work helps one to appreciate this.

Genes are the tiny particles that determine what traits a person will inherit. For each trait, it is believed, individuals ordinarily inherit two genes, one from the mother and one from the father. Of these two genes, the “dominant” will overpower the “recessive” one and determine the particular trait the individual will have.

Suppose, for instance, one parent has a gene for black hair and the other parent has a gene for blond. If the offspring has black hair, it is apparent that the gene for dark hair was the dominant one.

As the human family grew from its original mother and father there would be a great deal of mixing. Girls with genes for curly black hair, to cite an example, would meet and marry boys with genes for straight blond hair. This, of course, would be true of other characteristics also, such as skin color, shape of the mouth, nose and ears.

However, as groups of people isolated themselves from the larger part of mankind by geographical, linguistic and other barriers, marriage mates were necessarily selected from a smaller sphere. Variation was limited to the restricted “pool” of genes immediately available. Thereafter, in that restricted area, certain features such as straight hair or dark skin appeared regularly. In time, these traits distinguished that group or “race” of people from others. For this reason people today in Scandinavia ordinarily have fair skin, while those isolated from them, as in India, are darker.

Of course, there are limits to this variation. Races may vary in size, as from a Pygmy of less than five feet to a Watusi of some seven feet, but human genes never allow for a one-foot-high man or a twelve-foot-high one. Proving, however, that all men are really part of a common race is the fact that even individuals at “extremes” in stature or color can intermarry with other members of the human family and produce offspring. Therefore, the differences in men are not of great magnitude. Quite the opposite, as noted by anthropologist Ashley Montagu:

“All competent students who have considered the subject believe that by far the greatest number of genes are held by mankind in common, and that there are probably not more than 10 per cent of the total that are held apart. Since scientists believe that mankind drew its genes originally from the same gene pool, this great likeness is not surprising.

“As soon as we get beneath the skin, the likeness on a physical basis would suggest that the number of gene differences existing between even the most ‘extreme’ ‘races’ of man is much less than 10 per cent.”

Have Races Evolved to Fit Their Environment?

But, since all men come from a “common stock,” why is it that men of different races seem so well fitted to their environment? Did the Eskimo, for instance, acquire adaptation to a cold climate by evolutionary process? Or, at the opposite extreme, did evolution prepare only people with dark skin to live in the warm tropical climates?

Some scientists make this claim. But is it really true? In the past some speculated that characteristics acquired by a parent were passed on to the offspring. The error of this now-abandoned theory is readily evident. For example, if two light-skinned parents develop deeply tanned bodies, their offspring are not born with dark bodies, are they? No. Rather, their children must be exposed to sunlight to darken in the same way. The genes of the parents were not altered to pass on dark skin.

Nevertheless, scientists today do believe that changes in racial characteristics have resulted from gene mutations, that is, sudden alterations in genes. These alterations, it is believed, are then transmitted to offspring. But observed mutations have resulted largely in harmful changes, not in improvements. Furthermore, there is great uncertainty as to how these assumed mutations took place. Columbia University’s L. C. Dunn acknowledges:

“How [certain bodily changes] happened in history is not known; nor is it known exactly how mutations occur today, in spite of the extensive biological research on this question during the last 30 years.”

Well, if not by genetics, how do we explain why the races seem so well adapted to their environments?

More than Genes Responsible for Races

Such adjustments are largely cultural. Cultural or environmental influences are extremely persuasive. In fact, even before a child is born the emotional state of its mother, greatly determined by her own environment, begins to affect the child’s mind and body. Then, from the moment the child is born, it is immersed in a manner of life made up of local sights, sounds, smells and climate, as well as “peculiar ways” of doing things.

For instance, Eskimos have developed special bulky clothing, also housing that protects them from sub-zero temperature. Moreover, with time has come an invaluable familiarity with Arctic geography and the ways of animals that provide the Eskimo many of life’s necessities.

But, is not the Eskimo protected from cold by an inherited higher metabolism? No. While the Eskimo metabolism is sometimes one third higher than that of strangers who come into their cold surroundings, it is not inherited, but is dietetic in nature. Taken off their usual high-protein meat diet, the Eskimo metabolic rate drops within days.

Regarding this and other seemingly “inborn” adaptations, evolutionists J. F. Downs and H. K. Bleibtreu state in Human Variation (1969):

“We can see that the Eskimos have developed many cultural devices for dealing with cold . . . His narrow nose, and that of certain neighboring peoples in Siberia, has been called an adaptation that helps him avoid taking large quantities of cold air into his lungs. The fact that some people live in equally cold climates without this trait suggests that its adaptive importance is only presumptive. Similarly, the broad nose often found in Africa, Australia, and New Guinea is said to be a device which cools air; but much of Australia is very cold at night and the highlands of New Guinea are never excessively hot. In Africa, once we look past the stereotypes, we find a variety of nose widths . . . Generally speaking, biological adaptations to cold then are not well understood and seem, where they do exist, to be short-lived physiological adjustments​—not genetic alterations evolved through natural selection.”​—Pages 201-203.

But what about skin color? Has this not resulted from evolution so that the black man, for instance, is better adapted for the tropics? Note the answer of London medical biologist Alex Comfort:

“We may suppose that skin-colour is or was adaptive, but the fact remains that, save for those white individuals who burn without tanning, no race seems to be at a marked advantage or disadvantage today by reason of colour in their encounters with heat or sunlight. The only exception is in the slightly higher resistance to skin cancer seen in dark-skinned peoples over the parts of the body exposed to sun. Apart from this and the fact that they do not suffer from sunburn, Negroes do not have any very great advantage in standing up to heat compared with adapted white men.”

However, white-skinned people, newly arrived in the tropics, often do have problems because of the unusual ways of life and a variety of diseases there. The natives, on the other hand, thoroughly adapted to this way of life, can thrive.

God’s Purpose and the Races of Men

Surely, Jehovah, man’s Maker, knows of man’s marvelous genetic and cultural potential. He originally purposed for men to branch out and fill the earth. When men, contrary to his expressed decree, sought to concentrate around the tower of Babel, God confused their languages and they were spread over the earth anyway.​—Gen. 9:1, 2; 11:1-9.

Therefore, as men scattered out and, in certain cases, were isolated from one another, differences due to genetics appeared. But man’s capacity to be educated to his surroundings, his cultural adaptability, enabled him to settle virtually anywhere on this earth.

Also, in God’s grand providence, wherever these “races” of men went, they would in time learn of God’s purpose for man. As the apostle Paul summarizes:

“[God] made out of one man every nation of men, to dwell upon the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of the dwelling of men, for them to seek God.”​—Acts 17:26, 27.

Today, men who “seek God” in some 208 lands and islands of the sea are being taught his purpose by Jehovah’s witnesses. Have you not heard of their genuine Christian international brotherhood? And of their lack of racial discrimination? Let them show you how to be among the “great crowd, that no one could count, out of every race and tribe and people and language . . . [crying loudly:] ‘Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the lamb.’”​—Rev. 7:9, Byington translation.