Race

by John R. Baker

Book Overview

During the past fifty years the emphasis has been of the likeness, common features and equality of races. Yet interracial tensions and hostilities persist today as never before. Race by Dr. John R.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192129546
• ISBN13: 9780192129543
• Release Date: January 1974
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 625 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.

Customer Reviews

I Got Through It!

Baker's Race is not exactly meant for the amateur student of the "ethnic problem" , as he puts it. It has a lot of intimidating zoological terms in the book, which are often not explained. He also has a tendency to use French, German, Greek, and Latin words and quotes without explaining what he means. It is assumed you would know already. The book seems to be written for graduate students in biology and zoology and other academics. That being said there are some interesting sections in the book that aren't too pedantic and I only gave up and skimmed through about thirty pages when Baker's scientific zeal to analyze his subject down to the minutest details got the better of me. I preferred Rushton's Race, Evolution and Behavior over this one because of its conciseness and readability. Both are committed to objectivity. One of the best sections covers pre-colonial Africa in which Baker chooses seven authors who were early explorers of Africa based on their ability to describe the societies accurately and objectively. He comes to the conclusion that S.W. Baker was the best writer of the seven because of his writing's humor and pathos and his avoidance of tedious subjects such as tribal taxes. John Baker covers the cannibalism and the arbitrary and numerous executions that occurred in many of the tribes during the nineteenth century. There wasn't much law or value placed on life; one motion from the king could end the life of one of his subjects. There is a recounting of executions occurring after the death of one king's mother. Slavery was commonplace in pre-colonial Africa in which other captured tribes would become slaves of the other one dominating over them. Slaves were traded among tribes also. Before getting into the meat of his arguments, Baker likes to define important terms. Quoting a statement from the UN saying that we are all equal because we are all of the same species, Baker goes on to try to define what is meant by the word "species". Looking at other animals in nature, such as birds, he finds that birds with very small differences usually don't mate with each other and therefore can't be of the same species ,even though they are very similar. However, he states that animals in confinement and are domesticated become less choosy about their mates and many hybrids begin to occur. He then says that humans in civilization are the most domesticated of animals and therefore have the greatest tendency to become hybridized, much more than you would see among wild animals in nature. He comes to ambivalent conclusions as to whether we are all of the same species, mainly because it cannot be proven that hybridized types can remain fertile over many generations. The europids are examined fairly well. To the taxonomist, skin color is not an important factor in classifying race, so some taxon like the Aethiopids who look Negrid to the untrained eye are classified as predominately Europid by looking at the skull and other features of the

The ultimate insight into crucial aspects of race

It was a very wise choice to provide a thorough,yet comprehensive book that promotes such lucid exposure of racial differencies,in such manner that not only it won't left anybody to doubt the existence of that reality,but also to provide certain historical digression that includes historical development of concept that explains why study of race remains something like the last taboo among sociologist and biologist,given that exclusion of racial factor in such diverse studies-anthropological,ethnological,historical and one of clinical medicine-in the name of aprioristic egalitarian idealism and "political corectness" can lead to generation of false conclusions,as author exemplifies trough essays on ethnicity and pseudoethnicity in the case of Celts and question of origin of modern Jews.Also,a very well documentated discourse is given on such issues as intelectual diferences among various ethnic,racial and socioeconomic groups with regard to cognitive and powers of deduction.Wide range of immplication deriving from constitutional differences among selected races are given,for example in sport achievments.These and many other fundaments of racial anthropology are exposed in an extremely free of any prejudice manner,and although conclusions may left an impression of right-wing milleau,this is certainly not a specimen of pejorative racist literature.Although this book has been published first time in 1974,it will remain worth reading for a long time.It's fundamental in the process of understanding the meaning of race.

Controversial or common sense approach to Race?

News and entertainment entities have almost always promoted the idea that to believe in any racial differences other than skin color means that you are uneducated and ignorant. A torrent of scholarly books on the explosive subject of race have disproved that dogma. In Part 1, Baker examines the historical thought on race, from the earliest attempts to define who we are, to the recent Hitler era. In Part 3, Baker approaches the issue from a biologic or taxonomic point of view. In order to diffuse the explosiveness of the issue, Dr. Baker examines the different races of various vertebrae animals and then moves on to more complex organisms -- humans. The differences in racial characteristics increases in proportion to how closely the subject is examined, and Dr. Baker examines racial features right down to the most detailed physical attributes. In Part 4, Dr. Baker examines the most critical attribute -- that of intelligence and race. It is here that Dr. Baker treads onto late twentieth century taboos. Dr. Baker's conclusion surprised me when I first read the book, though he tempers his understanding of racial inequality with the statement that "no one can claim superiority simply because he or she belongs to a particular ethnic taxon."

Erudite, fascinating, arguable

Baker is an extraordinarily learned biologist, who approached the topic of race among humans with the same thoroughness that he brought to studying race among non-humans animals. Much of his data comes from before political correctness completely enshrouded anthropology in the late 1960's, so the vocabulary often seems dated. Nonetheless, many of his views on the ancestry of different populations, based on morphology, linguistics, archaeology and the like, have been confirmed by recent genetic testing (see Cavalli-Sforza's "History and Geography of Human Genes" -- and, please, do read C-S' book, don't just satisfy yourself with C-S's deceitful cover stories about how poltically correct his finding are.)Baker's focus in the concluding chapters is on different races' capabilities to found a civilization. He gives a 23 point test of whether a culture can be reasonably considered a civilization, and examines various races' accomplishments in this regard. This book is worth reading in tandem with Jared Diamond's Pulitzer prize-winning "Guns, Germs, and Steel," in which Diamond argues that every racial group in the world did as well as any other group could have with the resources of that region. Baker anticipated a number of Diamond's arguments and refutes them (e.g., could sub-Saharan Africans have put elephants to work like Asians and Carthaginains did?), but the truth probably lies somewhere between the two authors' views.Baker's exploration of the capability of different groups to start true civiliations is certainly interesting, yet, I wonder how relevant this question is to the modern world. The Japanese, for example, have shown relatively little talent at originating a civilization, but vast skill at borrowing others' novel ideas and adapting and, often, improving them. Similarly, the question of whether Africans could have invented a civilization on their own is interesting, but it's not as germane as Baker seems to assume to the more pressing question of how African-Americans can best fit into the existing American civilization. Further, some groups that did little to build their own civilizations, and still seem to have a certain amount of trouble fitting into others' civilizations -- e.g., sub-Saharan Africans and the Irish -- have contributed an extraordinary amount to the culture of modern life.Steve Sailer