‘Human Races’ Do Not Exist!

For more than a century man has been fooled by a myth, that people of different ‘races’ exist. Not true say scientists at the annual meeting of the German Zoological Society (DZG2019) held September 10-13, 2019, where they endorsed the 5-page ‘Jena Declaration’. In short:

• Racism created races.
• All people are one human species.
• There is no biological (genetic) basis for race.

'Among the 3.2 billion base pairs in the human genome, there is no fixed difference that separates, for example, Africans from non-Africans. ... not even a single base pair. ... The light skin colour of modern-day northern Europeans goes back less than 5000 years.'

I was very glad to read this because my Doukhobor ancestors instilled in me the notion that all people are brothers and sisters, not divided by ‘races’. It always bothered me that so much persecution, war and death were caused by racial prejudice and hatred.

In the mid-1960s, my first job as an anthropologist was to study First Nations in Saskatchewan. The native locals called me the ‘camera man’ who insisted that he was ‘neither black nor white’.

It was historically significant that the ‘Jena Declaration’ was endorsed at Jena University, Germany, 100 years after the death of its most famous zoology professor Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) who co-founded scientific racism, which led to eugenics, antisemitism, involuntary sterilizations, racial wars, the racial policy of Nazi Germany, xenophobia, apartheid, forced labor (including slavery), etc. Haeckel divided human beings into 10 races, and believed Negroes were savages doomed to extinction and that Whites were the most civilised. He is now declared wrong. Will racism stop?

The English Jena Declaration was copied at the Max Planck Institute for the science of human history. Here is the German text : Jenaer Erklärung (Jena Declaration), which links to the English.

The science for the Declaration was presented in 2 papers published in German last year. The images are educational, and you can translate the text online.

• Fisher, Martin S., Uwe Hoßfeld, Johannes Krause, and Stefan Richter. 'Es Gibt Keine Menschenrassen: Jenaer Erklärung: Das Konzept der Rasse ist das Ergebnis von Rassismus und nicht dessen Voraussetzung' (There are no human races: Jena Declaration: The concept of race is the result of racism and not its prerequisite), BLN/SVMMARVM, October 2019, pages 20-24.
• 'Jenaer Erklärung – Das Konzept der Rasse ist das Ergebnis von Rassismus und nicht dessen Voraussetzung'. Biologie in unserer Zeit (Biology in our time) 49(6):399-402 · December 2019

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This Republished

Koozma J. Tarasoff. 'Jena Declaration: The Concept of Race Is the Result of Racism, Not Its Prerequisite', Featured Research Paper, Transcend Media Service, March 23, 2020. — Jena Declaration add, and links back to this blog.

Reviews

• Steve Sailer. German Scientists: "Scientific Decency" Means Not Using The Term "Race", VDare.com, , September 12, 2019.
• appalachiablue. Don't Use The Term 'RACE' German Scientists Urge, Anniv. Of 'German Darwin'. Democratic Underground. September 12, 2019.
• Lance Welton. Who Really Won The Cold War? Race-Denying “Jena Declaration” More Evidence Science Entering New Dark Age, VDare.com, September 21, 2019.
• Michaela Cavanagh. Don't use the term 'race,' German scientists urge, Deutsche Welle, November 9, 2019.

More

• 'Race'. Featured Research Paper, Transcend Media Service, March 23, 2020. — Enhanced from Peter Wade, Audrey Smedley and Yasuko I. Takezawa, 'Race: Human', Encyclopedia Britannica.

Update

• Kappier, Maija. 'Bill Nye Uses Science To Prove Racism Is Stupid in Viral TikTok'. Huffington Post, July 20, 2020. — Dr. Nye shows on world map that humans originating in Africa had lots of melatonin (dark skin), but those who moved away from equator needed more Vitamin D and Folates made when sunlight penetrates skin. Lighter skin people are same species (race) as ancestors.  
• Kolbert, Elizabeth. 'There's No Scientific Basis for Race — It's a Made-Up Label.' original in National Geographic, copied at Information Clearing House, June 4, 2020.
• Two German legislators proposed removing the word "race" from the German Constitution, resulting in a variety of news reports. Google search added 4 June 2020.
• Moses, Yolanda. Why Do We Keep Using the Word “Caucasian”?, Sapiens blog, 1 February 2017.