Is appropriate to use the “anthropological” concept of race?

Abstract

The term “race” was introduced to the scientific vocabulary in the mid-eighteenth century by the French philosopher, scientist and mathematician Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon. In anthropology, this concept settled primarily through the German scientist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. From the outset, the concept has aroused controversy among scholars. Even Charles Darwin himself expressed clear skepticism towards using the concept of race in reference to people. Clear doubts about the scientific basis of racial typology were reported in the early twentieth century by the American anthropologist Franz Boas, and later, in the 1940s, by the British-American anthropologist Ashley Montagu. In the 1960s, the American anthropologist and geneticist Frank Livingstone, on the basis of genetic evidence, sought to undermine the concept of human races. At the same time, a prominent American geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky expressed a similar opinion, claiming that there were no races which would be “discrete units”. In the 1970s, the American geneticist Richard Lewontin, on the basis of his own research, proved that there is no possibility of isolating races based on genetic criteria.

In this article, we refer to the achievements of modern biology, especially genetics, to find out whether it is appropriate to use the “anthropological” concept of race. For a fuller picture of the issues of interest, we refer also to the historical sources, recalling the arguments put forward by various authors over the centuries against the concept of race in relation to human beings.