Race is an interesting concept that is uniquely applied to humanity and to no other living or dead creature on the planet today. When we wonder what race actually is, a whole host of informal definitions are drawn up, but it all matches up with an existing term already: subspecies. In nature, we readily observe superficial and behavioral differences in animals and classify them accordingly, without conflict or disorder in how we categorize what, and it makes sense that in the world we live in, where humans across the planet have evolved ever so slightly to better suit their own environments, that we’d apply the same levels of objectivity to ourselves. However, man is not a rational animal, but a rationalizing animal, and it stands to reason that just as animals scarcely comprehend who or what they are when they look in the mirror, that man hesitates to comprehend what he is when he applies the same levels of scientific rigor to himself.
- The definition of a subspecies is as follows:
“In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics, but that can successfully interbreed.”
- The definition of race is as follows:
“the various groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits, these traits being regarded as common among people of a shared ancestry.”
Given that human beings that evolve in different areas can vary in size, shape, and other physical characteristics, while possessing the ability to interbreed, it is easy to see that, applying objective science to our own species, humanity has multiple subspecies. As the lowest level in biological taxonomy, the term “subspecies” has to be applied to different groups of humans because no other terms would suffice in a purely scientific context to describe our differences. With all this being said, the concept of “race” is indeed a social construct, in that it has been generally accepted as the truth without an inkling of evidence in reality. Just as many children believe in Santa Claus, most people in the world today believe in race.
As a counterpoint to this new way of looking at things, scientists have stated that the term “ecotype” is a better descriptor than race for what different human populations are. Rather than acknowledging that humanity has subspecies, scientists say that humanity just has different and distinctive population groups that have evolved to suit the environments they evolved in. While this may seem less harsh than applying conventional taxonomy to us, this racial pseudoscience falls apart when we simply ask, “what is the actual definition for an Ecotype?”
- “Ecotype,” according to Merriam-Webster, is defined as follows:
“: a population of a species that survives as a distinct group through environmental selection and isolation and that is comparable with a taxonomic subspecies.”
So the answer, no matter the attempts to obscure the truth, remains the same: humans are divided into different subspecies. While races may not exist, subspecies or ecotypes – whatever you prefer to call it – do exist, and we all descend from one or more subspecies of human beings. When we take what we know about the biological world and apply it to human beings, interesting things emerge when we consider the different subspecies of humanity. Even entertaining the idea that different human groups are simply “ecotypes” – using the loose and modern sense of the word -,that originate in a variety of different environmental conditions, what does that mean when we ask about how agriculture, stable community life, and technologies have impacted the evolution of different ecotypes over time?
In a multicultural society such as ours, the ramifications of considering ourselves in a more scientific light may strain the social fabric, but these are nonetheless things worth considering. Can different ecotypes, essentially adopted into modern civilization, remain as competitive with other ecotypes that have evolved over thousands of years within the folds of civilization? Removing the cultural context for a moment, let’s imagine that a Caucasian baby was adopted into a Bajau village in Indonesia. The Bajau, who are a seafaring people that have existed off the coasts of Indonesia for thousands of years, have evolved larger spleens and a menagerie of genes that allow them to dive deeper and stay under the water for far longer than normal humans could. When it comes to things like economic production, the Caucasian would always severely underperform compared to his native peers in such an environment, because at the end of the day, he’d be much more limited in his ability to extract value from the sea and the sea floor.
For the rest of the Bajau, who earn a living off of working underwater, this man would be forever behind the pack. While most people wouldn’t conflate being able to stay under water longer with any notion of innate superiority, it doesn’t matter because these differences would still reveal themselves and be felt. For that Caucasian man who was adopted into a Bajau village, he’d be doomed to living within the underclass of a society in which his attributes were not able to be as effectively utilized. For all intents and purposes, anyone adopting that Caucasian child would be consigning him to a life of underachievement and poverty, unless the Caucasian was relocated to a more appropriate environment. If an example like that is palatable and works appropriately in demonstrating my point, then how would people with psychologies and physiologies adapted to hunter-gathering lifestyles fare in societies that have reached the digital age?
Questions of that nature aren’t permitted for quite obvious reasons, since most of the global population has been technologically uplifted by thousands of years through commerce, subsidies, and grants. If industrial civilization was created by several different ecotypes, all of which are declining in numbers and political power precipitously across the board, then what is to come of any of this? At the end of the day, these questions matter, the answers aren’t pleasant, and this globe-spanning civilization will shy away from pursuing any solutions until it’s already too late. If you’re not building a raft, you’re going to drown.
