On race: Diversity or Difference?

I have been moved today to address an issue that’s likely to come off as both personal and perhaps too sentimental – given the stain of impersonality, formalistic relations and non-affection that has slowly diffused into the social waters of our human existence.

A few minutes of reflection that slowly grew into apprehension caused me to lament – at least mentally – how deeply rooted the weeds of disunity are in the world today. It is my submission that all human misery, pain and lack of progress can perhaps be effectively reduced, in its causation, to the dire dearth of a sense of community in the world.

With all the scientific, philosophical and cultural progress made by human society in the past few centuries, at least in the material sense - one would imagine that our world should be a warmer, more amiable and more supportive place to live. That the ease of communication, the expediency of transport, the expansion in education and the dynamism of modern human society should all conspire – in a total effort of human experience – to make us enjoy each other’s company better and more often. That these hallmarks of how much ‘civilisational’ ground we can cover if we route our unique knowledge tributaries into a single pool of multi-cultural and multi-racial cooperation, should only serve to point out how productive combined efforts can be!

It should be manifest that men – despite their eternal and essential diversity – should have learnt how destructive and ruinous the paradigmic substitution of ‘diversity’ for ‘difference’ can be, and has been, throughout man’s history of inter-personal and inter-societal engagements down the passage of time; and therefore seek to destroy any pretensions to the same.

I am of the view that society is not marked by difference, but by diversity.

And indeed - what we see as an ‘alternative’ view of the world, an alternative culture and philosophical narrative is really – at its most basic – an alternative experience of the same phenomenon.

Having different cultures, and having different experiences of the same culture, is not quite the same thing.

The former implies a distinction at the basic level of ontology – that the foundations and premises for our cultural trajectories are distinct – and we therefore believe in ‘different’ things, which things are fundamentally antithetic, one to the other.

The latter however, posits that our cultural mosaic is woven from how uniquely we respond to the same stimuli; that the foundation of our response is the same – but our responses vary superficially and subjectively because of the randomness of the natural world, as imposed by the ‘physical’ laws governing it; and the sheer capacity of a conscious will to do things differently.

My stand is that while we objectively believe in the same thing – the same observable and desirable, if not verifiable (for scientific phenomena) reality; we may not and do not have to respond to this reality in the same subjective way.

Indeed – there is no single world culture because this is inconsistent with the principles of diversity and adaptation that underlie all evolutionary and biological processes, and at the social-aesthetic level, it is all undesirable. How boring our world would be if there was a single framework of culture and civilization! 

For any given problem, there must be a variety of approaches for arriving at the solution.

I will use this quite lengthy introduction to make my case for a ‘localized’ exchange I had with a friend, an emerging Ugandan writer named Ojakol Raymond a few weeks ago, concerning the world’s multiple human race groups and how they should ‘ideally’ view and relate with each other, given the evidence on world-interpretation available to us.

What Ojakol argued, and what provoked a response from me, effectively sparking off this ‘debate’, was that epidermal pigmentation or skin-complexion, as possessed by the various ‘race’ groups of modern-man on the planet, represents an essential social-cultural and philosophical, if not biological fork in the road for the world’s many ‘‘peoples’’.

That it is our colour – as black, white, brown or yellow – that defines our world outlook, mindset, values and ultimately, the unique culture of the different race groups.

He went ahead to qualify his assertion with the genetic argument that evolution and environmental distinction has seen fit to make different people of the once single community of humans.

In his own words, the gist of his argument was that – ‘Physicality matters to the extent that it helps us to arrive at the physical truth of things using description. Man, even removed from economic or social consideration will seek truth, and differentiation is one way of arriving at it.’

While I concede a vital point he makes above – that there is not one single way of arriving at the truth, I cannot help but refute the notion that differentiation, for its own sake, enables us reach the truth. If it helps us reach anything – it must be a wrong truth – which of course then, really isn’t a truth.

I am gravely concerned with the purpose to which this differentiation is to be put. 

If like Hitler, for instance, the purpose of your differentiation is to provide a rationale for a pogrom, then differentiation is indeed a terrible means to any end – however noble those seeking the end may claim it is!

I can find no rational basis, scientifically or morally, for us to explore and focus on differentiation as an avenue to explaining, organizing and enriching the human experience on earth.

On the contrary, I argue that we need less differentiation, and a greater emphasis on diversity, which effectively highlights the multiplicity of cultural and intellectual resources the respective communities have developed to pursue the common and universal end of holistic human progress on the planet.

While the human genome, the sum-total of gene-combinations uniquely available to our species, is a reflection of how alike we are genetically as human beings, across race and culture – it also points to the myriad of available permutations that can constitute a unique human individual. Any of the billions of human genes can combine in any one of a million available ways to form a unique human being, an entity un-replicable ever!

It is of course an established archeological and biological fact that the genetic variation in plant and animal species is really a matter of natural selection – and is not only present at the race-group level, but more importantly, at the individual level; where individuals and groups in an otherwise homogeneous society demonstrate behavior and ideas un-akin to the group norm. 

Following the differentiation model articulated above – should we not break these individuals from the bigger race group and assign them a sub-group of their own?

The idea is as consistent with archaeology as it is with anthropology, and we can say that human behavior and so-called outlook are less the result of genetic constitution and more the result of mind and behavioral conditioning. In other words, for sentient primates like us – our genetics can always be subdued by the forces of socialization.

As I pen-off, I’ll perhaps refer back to my opening remarks; and state that our emphasis on differences – superficial and literally skin-deep as they are – is a fashionable and desirable thing in the system of economic capitalism the world lives under today. 

Classification is very functional and utilitarian because it allows groups (races, ethnicities, sexes etc) to enjoy resources, or stake claims to the enjoyment of resources, based on phenotypic attributes that the excluded can often do nothing about.

This effectively allows the tyranny of biology to take root – making us no better advanced than the lower, purely instinctive animals that do not have the recourse of a moral mind to overcome such despotism.

Surumani.