I perceive talk about “human races” as if they are believed to have sharp borders.  Within the “races” people are supposed to be genetically homogenous.  Now I may have been influenced by Swedish having the same word for “race” as for “breed”.  But I have seen how eugenists expressed themselves until the end of WWII.  They spoke about ethnic groups as if they were biologically adopted to practice a certain culture.  Having children with other ethnic groups was believed to be harmful to society.  It was believed to make the children sickly and generally maladjusted.  The individuals used as evidence had grown up under horrible circumstances.  Such conditions were not considered by eugenists of the time.

Homogenous and sharply defined races have turned out not to exist.  Humanity instead shows clinal variation.  This means different populations gradually transit into each other.  Neither have any imagined “pure human races” ever existed.  If people have the chance to be alone with each other different groups will interbreed.  Even if they practice endogamy groups will interbreed with each other just because they can.  It is surprising how little is needed to genetically mix ethnic groups.  Two ethic groups only need to interbreed once a generation.  Then they become genetically similar in just a few centuries.

Some tendency to interbreed with other groups must have been evolutionarily advantageous.  Humans originally lived in groups of a few dozens to hundreds of people.  Oftentimes these groups were so small they risked inbreeding in the long run if they did not interbreed with other groups.  Moreover, there was a need for internal genetic variation.  Otherwise, the entire group could be wiped out by a single contagious disease.  This was not realised by the eugenists.

Racism does not make sense in the light of evolution theory either.  In which habitat would it be beneficial to be stupid, naïve or barbaric?  What would make a certain group of the light-skinned less intelligent than another such group?  The discovery of the Flynn effect show the later not to be constant.  I think differences in averages are rather about opportunity to learn useful things.  In particular since East Asians has overtaken whites as the population with the highest average.

It does not help that racist stereotypes are applied on people of mixed origin.  In North America people of noticeably recent African decent are lumped together with those of overwhelming such.  Both groups are spoken about as if they had the same characteristics.  Instead, I think these groups have ended up in a vicious circle of prejudice.  The results of prejudices are treated as evidence the same prejudices hold true.  Same applies to the Gypsies which are the closest thing we have in Europe.  The difference is that they come here on their own.  For this reason, faulty beliefs about where the Gypsies came from arose.  Not until the late 18th century was their South Asian origin discovered.  Their language was then identified as most closely related to Hindi and Urdu.

Mestizos are also spoken about as if they all were bad people.  I instead think it is a matter of what societies they live in.  Most mestizos live in Central and South America.  Many of these countries have large income inequalities.  There is also a large overlapping with a poorly functioning government.  This combination makes these countries plagued by organised crime.  Then it has been misunderstood as the majority of people there being naturally prone to crime.  Nothing near that would work in reality.  If too many exploit and destroy for others economy quite simply does not add up.

Uploaded on the 27th of September 2023.