the Myth of Race

In his article, entitled Mixed Blood and first published November 1995 in Psychology Today Magazine, Jeffery M Fish examines the cultural foundation of racial ideology and determines that “race is a myth.” Fish designs his argument by first providing an overview of human evolution. He establishes that humans vary physiologically as the result of biological adaptations to regional environments, and that these relative adaptations do not delineate humans into separate races. The American racial terms black and white do not distinguish between separate human species any more than the terms tall or short. Instead, Fish suggests that our understanding of race is culturally arbitrary.

Fish uses the example of a traditional American system of racial classification called hypo-descent, or “blood” descent, to support his argument. In this system, race is determined through an individual’s “blood” history. If an individual has a black parent, grandparent, or other “blood” relative, that individual may be classified as black, despite the color of his or her skin. The cultural ideals of “black blood” and “white blood” do not reflect the physiological reality of human variation. On the contrary, the ideological language of culture often acts as a filter that biases one’s perception of the physical reality.

The Brazilian tipo (“type”) system of classification is another example cited by Fish to support his argument. The tipos are complex descriptive terms that vary regionally. A tipo defines an individual’s race according to the individual’s physical traits, such as light hair, curly hair, dark skin, blue eyes, thick lips, think nose, and any other combination of attributes. Examples are loura (whiter than white, straight blonde hair, blue or green eyes, narrow nose and thin lips), mulata (dark tight curly hair, dark skin, broad nose, thick lips) and branca (light skin color, hair not tightly curled, nose that is not broad, and lips that are not thick). A tipo will describe what a person looks like, but it doesn’t carry the baggage of ancestry. Fish juxtaposes the two examples of cultural race classification by using his daughter as an example of cross-cultural racial ambiguity. Fish’s daughter considers herself black according to American standards of racial classification because her mother is black. However, under the Brazilian system of racial classification, his daughter is not “black” but “morena” because she has dark, wavy hair, tan skin, and a nose and lips that are not narrow.

Fish uses the phrase, “garbage in/garbage out” to crystallize the idea that science shouldn’t depend upon socially defined racial information when developing demographic models. The symbolic language used when classifying an individual will inevitably bias one’s perspective, thus contaminating even the best of scientific intentions. Fish cites the Bell Curve controversy and how subjective racial classifications have led to the misinterpretation of IQ tests and measurements. He states that human beings are a collective species, and that “people from anywhere on the planet can mate with others from anywhere else and produce fertile offspring.” If racial classification had a biological origin, this could not be true.

The idea that race is culturally arbitrary is an important one to recognize, chiefly because, as Fish points out, to engage in a scientific endeavor using racial classification as an objective standpoint is essentially useless. However, humans have a propensity for classifying things, regardless of the symbolic accuracy. Humans depend on those classifications for maintaining perspective and identity. The social myths of racism and social darwinism have precipitated some of history’s most atrocious acts of inhumanity. I agree with Fish’s sentiment that racial classification should be approached with an open mind and a cautious step. Race might be a myth, but people have a knack for believing in myths, often at the expense of some one else’s life.

The Supreme Court's opinion on religious hallucinogens

Click on the above link to read an article highlighting the breadth of knowledge exercised by the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the religious nature of psychotropic entheogens.

(hint- it's a bit like using Latin to rap. Don't get the simile? Just read the article, bearing in mind that while the legal Sadduccees debate, the law is at work fostering shadow economies and catalyzing an atmosphere of ontological oppression.)

The real issue in the case is not whether Schedule I, as a whole, needs to be uniformly enforced, because the drugs covered by Schedule I are quite different from one another: Schedule I encompasses a variety of chemicals, which - while they may be similar in danger as a general category -- are not similar in effect, use for recreational purposes, potential for addiction, source, effect on children, or in their effect on international trafficking. Had the UDV asked for heroin or marijuana (as other churches have), this point would have been patently obvious.

Rather, the issue is whether the ban for each of these dangerous drugs needs to be uniformly enforced - that is, enforced the same no matter who the would-be user is, or what his or her reason for using may be. Indeed, it may be true, roughly, that the greater the danger, the more reluctant the government ought to be in allowing departures from uniformity of application.

A Peyote Exemption Does Not Entail a Heroin Exemption

Put another way, the exemption for peyote shows only that the government is willing to tolerate use of peyote - with all of its individual characteristics -- within the United States, not that it must be willing to tolerate religious exemptions to prohibitions on other Schedule 1 drugs, like heroin or marijuana or DMT.

The reason many states and the federal government have been willing to exempt religious peyote use is because it is not a terribly pleasant drug -- reportedly often causing headaches and nausea, and rather unreliable in its effect. Thus, it is not a desirable recreational drug with an active black market. Moreover, it is domestically grown, which relieves the United States of its obligations under the UN treaty.

The same cannot be said for DMT, about which much less is known, and which is grown in South America, raising the United States' obligations under the UN's treaty. The potential for this relatively new hallucinogen in the United States to foster an active black market simply is not known.

The author of this article knows too much about law and too little about humanity's spiritual and medicinal ancestry. The "dangerous drugs" she mentions are really no more dangerous than many socially accepted prescription drugs, and no more addictive than alcohol or cigarettes. But then, such great mis-information as the kind expressed in Marci Hamilton's article is clearly evident in the thoughts and suggestions of the members of the Supreme Court. How long will American legislators and judges draw such ignorant conclusions and repress the promises of the Bill of Rights?

More on prehistoric cave art