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Laying the Sociological Foundation As unlikely as it seems, this is a true story. It really did happen. Seldom do race and eth- nic relations degenerate to this point, but reports of troubled race relations surprise none of us. Today’s newspapers and TV news shows regularly report on racial prob- lems. Sociology can contribute greatly to our understanding of this aspect of social life—and this chapter may be an eye-opener for you. To begin, let’s consider to what extent race itself is a myth.

Race: Myth and Reality With its more than 6.5 billion people, the world offers a fascinating variety of human shapes and colors. People see one another as black, white, red, yellow, and brown. Eyes come in shades of blue, brown, and green. Lips are thick and thin. Hair is straight, curly, kinky, black, blonde, and red—and, of course, all shades of brown.

As humans spread throughout the world, their adaptations to diverse climates and other living conditions resulted in this profusion of complexions, hair textures and colors, eye hues, and other physical variations. Genetic mutations added distinct char-

acteristics to the peoples of the globe. In this sense, the concept of race—a group of people with inherited physical characteristics that distinguish it from another group—is a reality. Humans do, indeed, come in a variety of colors and shapes.

In two senses, however, race is a myth, a fabrication of the human mind. The first myth is the idea that any race is superior to others. All races have their geniuses— and their idiots. As with language, no race is superior to another.

Ideas of racial superiority abound, however. They are not only false but also dangerous. Adolf Hitler, for example, believed that the Aryans were a superior race, responsible for the cultural achievements of Europe. The Aryans, he said, were destined to establish a superior culture and usher in a new world order. This destiny required them to avoid the “racial contamination” that would come from breeding with inferior races; therefore, it became a “cultural duty” to isolate or destroy races that threatened Aryan purity and culture.

Put into practice, Hitler’s views left an appalling legacy—the Nazi slaughter of those they deemed inferior: Jews, Slavs, gypsies, homosexuals, and people with men- tal and physical disabilities. Horrific images of gas ovens and emaciated bodies stacked like cordwood haunted the world’s nations. At Nuremberg, the Allies, flush with vic- tory, put the top Nazis on trial, exposing their heinous deeds to a shocked world. Their public executions, everyone assumed, marked the end of such grisly acts.

Obviously, they didn’t. In the summer of 1994 in Rwanda, Hutus slaugh- tered about 800,000 Tutsis—mostly with machetes (Cowell 2006). A few years later, the Serbs in Bosnia massacred Muslims, giving us the new term “ethnic cleansing.” As these events sadly attest, genocide, the attempt to destroy a group of people because of their presumed race or ethnicity, remains alive and well. Although more recent killings are not accompanied by swastikas and gas ovens, the perpetrators’ goal is the same.

The second myth is that “pure” races exist. Humans show such a mixture of physical characteristics—in skin color, hair texture, nose shape, head shape, eye color, and so on—that there are no “pure” races. Instead of falling into distinct types that are clearly separate from one another, human characteristics flow endlessly together. The mapping of the human genome system shows that hu- mans are strikingly homogenous, that so-called racial groups differ from one an- other only once in a thousand subunits of the genome (Angler 2000; Frank 2007). As you can see from the example of Tiger Woods, discussed in the Cul- tural Diversity box on the next page, these minute gradations make any at- tempt to draw lines of race purely arbitrary.

264 C h a p t e r 9 R A C E A N D E T H N I C I T Y

race a group whose inherited physical characteristics distin- guish it from other groups

genocide the systematic anni- hilation or attempted annihila- tion of a people because of their presumed race or ethnicity

Humans show remarkable diversity. Shown here is just one example—He Pingping, from China, who at 2 feet 4 inches, is the world’s shortest man, and Svetlana Pankratova, from Russia, who, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, is the woman with the longest legs. Race– ethnicity shows similar diversity.