EVOLUTION OF MAN 253 



as belonging to one race or another. John Doe, for example, has dark 

 brown skin and kinky hair; he belongs to blood group A, is Rh-positive, 

 round-headed, and a "taster." Richard Roe has dark brown skin and wavy 

 hair; he belongs to blood group B, is Rh-negative, long-headed, and a 

 "non-taster." Despite all the differences between them people generally 

 would classify them both as of the same race on the basis of their one point 

 of similarity: dark brown skin (particularly if their ancestors came from 

 the same continent). A third individual, George Goe, has little skin pig- 

 ment, has wavy hair, belongs to blood group B. is Rh-negative, long- 

 headed, and a "non-taster." Despite the many similarities between 

 George and Richard people generally would probably not classify them as 

 belonging to the same race, their decision being based on the point that 

 George has little skin pigment while Richard has much. 



Of course our imaginary example is oversimplified; many more char- 

 acteristics than these are involved in classifying people, and the matter of 

 geographic origin is also considered important. As will be noted below, 

 each race probably originated as a group of people isolated geographically 

 from other groups. Eventually the groups expanded and migrated (some- 

 times unwillingly, as in the case of African slaves migrating to the United 

 States), thereby coming into contact with other groups. Intermarriage be- 

 tween groups occurred. But despite such intermingling attempts are made 

 to classify people by the geographic origin of their ancestors. Thus if some 

 of the ancestors of John Doe and Richard Roe of our preceding paragraph 

 came from Africa, John and Richard would be called Negroes. On the 

 other hand, if John's ancestors came from India and Richard's ancestors 

 came from Africa, John and Richard would be considered to belong to 

 different races. The artificiality of this whole system of classifying people is 

 emphasized by the fact that individuals are not necessarily classified on 

 the basis of the geographic origin of the majority of their ancestors. The 

 extreme of absurdity is reached in the case of people most of whose an- 

 cestors were European, a minority having been African; such people by 

 custom are classified as Negroes! 



As indicated, our greatest lack of perspective concerns skin pigmenta- 

 tion inherited from African ancestors. Of all the genetic characteristics by 

 which individuals differ from one another, why should skin color be the 

 one about which we become emotional? It would be just as sensible for 

 blood group A people to develop a "race prejudice" against blood group B 

 people! The principal difference is that the one characteristic is exposed on 

 the surface for everyone to see, while the other is hidden away, detectable 

 only by serological tests. But the one difference is no more "important" 



