The article contains some biblical references and scientific facts that need to be understood in its entirety and not in parts. There is no intention to hurt any sentiments here. Comments are welcomed in the corresponding section.
There is a growing need to understand the notion of race as we react instinctively- causing serious damage to many lives and at times to properties and thus social harmony – on the basis of an unknown popular belief that the status of man has an hierarchy in the society since the origin of human life. How true is- what some of us believe- that race was born along with the first cluster of human beings on this earth?
Do the morphological differences including color have any scientific proof to claim that certain sects of people are inferior or superior to others? We will analyze the possible origin and the other related aspects of ‘race’ and the manner in which it eventually entered the mainstream politics to make human beings unintentionally turn a blind eye towards the reality.
The understanding of the reason for the origin of race can be never possible or quite a lot abstruse for us to comprehend. But with a little effort, it is easy to realize the other facts about race and how has it been misguiding the human population for thousands of years resulting in conflicts and loss of lives.
As it makes sense to analyze race along with the origin of human life on earth, we need to see through the eyes of two major -often contradicting- ideologies on the creation of this universe: evolution and creationism or intelligent design or simply creation. To define it in simple terms, creationism advocates that everything including the universe is a result of a divine action whereas evolution says that every species develops its own traits and evolve eventually during successful generations.
Otherwise, creationism says that human beings are special creation of a supernatural power but evolution refutes it holding firm to its continuation of a certain process. Scientifically there are three races that exist in the world now: the Caucasoid or the Western people, Mongoloids or the Asians and Negroid or the Africans.
In biblical view, these races Caucasoid, Mongoloids and Negroid are the descendants of the three sons of Noah- Japheth, Sham and Ham respectively. The reason why some of the creationists believe that the descendants of Ham that is the Negroid race is considered inferior to the rest of the people is an untoward incident that made Noah curse Canaan, the son of Ham to be a slave.
Hence the descendants of Ham or the Negroid are considered as sinners and hence inferior. This is the biblical reason for the belief of some of the creationists that inferior race exists. Is it possible that such a schism is effectuated by divinity? Absolutely not! Dr Cooper P Abrams III, a biblical scholar gives evidence in his study that whatever divisions God has made as interpreted in bible are based only on language and geography but not on the basis of morphological differences.
However, it is irrational to believe that an intelligent design would make such dividends among rational beings. Thus a spiritual explanation for the racial differences can be deemed unfit. Also Dr Abrams accuses evolution for making a claim that man descended from primates; which according to him, spread a falsified idea called race. He argues that Darwin’s evolution proposes the idea that man passed through several stages and took the form of what he is today from his ancestors who are not human beings but a primitive life form, who resembled Negroid, the descendants of Ham the most.
Based on this idea, science could have arrived at the conclusion that the modern men who differed to a maximum degree from primates are the most intelligent life forms and are superior to those who differed little from the primitives. There is another possibility that science just made the classification based on the morphological differences, which in turn had a latent evidence for an unreal fact called race.
What science has studied is the obvious reflection of reality- the morphological variations among the three different types of a single human race. Because, it has found that the differences are least obvious between the three groups. Or in other words, science claims that the differences within a single group are more than that between any two different groups. Thus it affirms that all these three classes of people or the races are more or less similar with no big differences between them.
But there is a way science can assert that the human race is one. One of the most widely accepted theory of the human geographical origin on Earth is the ‘Out of Africa’ Model that has two parts, namely I and II. Dealing with the insights of both the models is not the subject of this article, but it can be inferred that modern men started moving out from a common origin on earth, which is Africa and expanded to other regions like Eurasia.
It can be argued that the expansion was necessary because the demand of natural resources for survival would have encouraged them to move apart. This could be correlated with the three biblical parents and their corresponding geographical legacy. Anyhow, as the origin of a single human race has happened in a common geographical point as explained both in biblical and scientific contexts, it is least possible for the single human race to be inherently different.
Then how did the differences come in to the picture through morphology? One possible answer could be the climatic variations in the different parts on the earth and the rest is taken care by the genes present in the human body that carry the characteristics from a parental generation to their filial ones.
For instance, genes responsible for both the skin colors are present in every human, but only the dominant among them reflect in the next immediate generation and the inferior gene remain hidden but can become dominant somewhere in the descent. Thus the skin color, texture, tone, hair color and whatever morphological differences that we identify to discriminate have an equal probability to get transferred to our next generation.
The chances as well as, we together as a race are, by any means equal.
Image Source: Howstuffworks.com
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