During my senior year in undergraduate school, I took a class called “Darwinism”.  This class was designed to explore the far-reaching impact of the theories of Charles Darwin.  I learned how he influenced the political, artistic, economic, and scientific communities with his landmark books The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man.  It was then that I first began to consciously think on the interdisciplinary level and to look for truths that manifested themselves micro- and macrocosmically.  One such idea I explored was the faith and confidence people placed in social systems.  It led me to the following thoughts on monetary exchange as it relates to capitalism or economic Darwinism.  One, the usefulness of currency as “legal tender for all debts public and private” is directly proportional to the amount of faith we have that the next person will see it as such.  Two, the dollar is fiat money; it has no intrinsic value, so, if all those in possession of this currency lose confidence in it, it would cause the economy to collapse.  Our economic system requires confidence in order for it to work.  If there is no confidence, no belief in the system, the system would crash.  Money is merely a token of this belief.  This led me to my third point: the success of any social construct depends on the strength of belief of the people who support that system.  Any system can be destroyed by undermining people’s faith in that system’s fundamental principles.  So, since we’re on the topic of Darwinism, let us take a look at how this principle of belief applies to the social construct of racism, a system of oppression co-opted by social Darwinists and used to justify colonization, slavery, genocide, and prejudice,

There is no such thing as race or the subdivisions of the species Homo sapiens sometimes referred to as Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid.  There is no anthropological or biological scientific proof to support the idea of race within the human population.  Genetic differences between people of dissimilar geographical origin are a direct result of at least two factors: adaptation to environment and prolonged isolation from other human groups.  For example, people with a higher percentage of body fat like the Inuit are well-adapted to cold climates, whereas people with a smaller percentage of body fat to body weight ratio are better suited for warm climates.  This would not constitute a separate race between the peoples with these different characteristics.  However, it is an indicator of how the peoples have responded to their environment over several millennia.  Not only does fat keep you warm, but it also is stored energy which allows a person to go longer without eating in a cold ecosystem where food is a little harder to come by.  

If there is no such thing as race, then why is it so widely believed in?  The answer lies in our genetic programming.  As a species, we are hierarchal by nature.  This trait is present in our closest relatives (chimpanzees) and in many of our distant ones.  While I can understand why an adaptation for hierarchal social structure benefitted our prehistoric ancestors—the individuals who were best adapted to their environment (alpha males and females) mated and produced offspring better suited to survive—I believe that this genetic trait contributes greatly to our self-destructive tendencies.  Octavia Butler writes in her novel Dawn, “You are hierarchal…When human intelligence served it instead of guiding it, when human intelligence did not even acknowledge it as a problem, but took pride in it or did not notice it at all…That was like ignoring cancer.  I think your people did not realize what a dangerous thing they were doing.”  In order to reinforce this hierarchal genetic trait that we take pride in, we form and build ideas to support it.  Racism is such an idea. 

Although there is no such thing as race, racism exists as a construct that serves to satisfy a primal need to procure the requisite resources for survival.  Capitalism is no different.  Nor is sexism.  These –isms fall under a larger category called social Darwinism—survival of the fittest for civilized humans. 

Take note that racism, sexism, and capitalism create divisions within the species.  Racism separates humans into categories largely determined by physical appearance, mental capability, and continent of origin.  Sexism, instead of the view that male and female are one species called human, divides the species along gender lines.  Capitalism parts the community into socio-economic groups.  Because of this separateness, there is inequality, as the landmark case Brown vs. the Board of Education proved.  

What does a continued belief in race prove?  It proves that too many of us are still more concerned with differences than commonalities.  It proves that many of us are not yet ready give up ridership on the American express to success; afterall, membership has its privileges.  It proves that we are xenophobic and not the neighborly people we profess ourselves to be.  

Yet, the belief in race is not always malevolent.  There are those who believe in race because there was a psychological, political, and physical safety in adopting the attitude of race consciousness (i.e. you may not believe you’re black, but the people who are coming to terrorize, disenfranchise, and hang you do).  There are those who hold on to the idea of race as a means to preserve their culture.  Indeed, there are those who believe that race and culture are one and the same.  I applaud their drive to protect their culture, for I believe diversity to be a biological and ideological imperative.  In much the same way Malaria would never wipe out the entire human race because of the sickle cell trait, so too will the cultural importance of respecting the Earth prevent its less caring inhabitants from ravaging it.  The more diverse human culture is, the better suited we are to survive and the more enriched our lives will be.  Still, culture, a sociological construct, should not be equated with a biological one.

How can we defeat racism? Like the stock market, racism will crash once the underlying principles that support it receive a vote of no confidence.  Scientists have already done much of the groundwork. They have exposed the idea of race as simply not true .  Though the idea of race may benefit some in the short term, in the long run, there is little or nothing to gain for those who hold on to this sociological currency.  There is only the sentiment of those clutching to a threadbare illusion: the existence of races.