In Germany, a zoologist and want to delete the term “race” from the vocabulary. A guiding principle in their joint statement: racism is not racial Vice versa.
Ironically, Jena, Germany. The city was in the zoologist Ernst Haeckel, the German figurehead of the theory of evolution rise – and at the same time, with his breed of customer, a pioneer of the NS-ideology. Now, over a hundred years later, is just to be here drawn a line under the “races”concept.
I have done four scientists together, and position. The core message of their so-called Jena statement: breeds there are. At least not in humans. 500 researchers have been at the is currently in Jena, Germany, ongoing annual meeting of the German Zoological society behind the paper.
What came first?
In the statement, it says: “This construction has served and serves to justify the open and latent racism with the alleged natural conditions and to create a moral justification.”
For the initiators of the Declaration, the matter is clear: First there was the racism, so the idea of the different value of different groups of people, then the world of science moved. “The concept of race is the result of racism and not its precondition.”
Zoologist Haeckel (1910): pioneer of the Nazi-ideology
The linking of, for example, skin color features, or even genetically fixed personality traits, is now clearly reflected. There is also no scientifically proven link between intelligence and geographical origin. Ernst Haeckel, of the famous predecessors of the scientists saw it differently.
At the end of the 19th century. Century, he divided humanity into 12 types, and 36 breeds. The ranking of each of the groups, he at the same time. At the very bottom of the “Papuan, Hottentot, Kaffir and Negro”, which are the mammals “closer” than the “highly civilized Europeans”were.
Today, a single glance into the human DNA is sufficient for the biologists and it is clear: “There is – to say it explicitly – not only is no single Gene which ‘justified racial’ differences, but not even a single base pair.” The latter are the smallest building blocks of the genome.
No biological basis more
Uwe Hoßfeld, as well as once Ernst Haeckel, Professor at the Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena. He called his predecessor a “naturalistic racists”, but also a “child of its time”. Hoßfeld is a biology historian and is one of the authors of the Jena statement. “Today we assume that the classification by race is not a biological basis.”
Scientists Hoßfeld: “No biological basis”
In other words: race is just a construct. And this could be the evolution of research actually satisfied. But: “Just because the term ‘race’ falls through, we wanted to look once again critically at the lines of tradition of our science,” says Hoßfeld.
According to the researchers, the non-use of the “races”concept should belong nowadays to the scientific integrity. But how it looks with the German basic law? It States in article 3: no one should be disadvantaged because of “his race (…) or to be preferred.”
Researchers Hoßfeld is that the term is deleted from the basic law. However, this is not so easy. In science, you could Express yourself with alternative subject, such as ethnicity, Population, or biological reproductive community remedies, so Hoßfeld. But to find a suitable wording for the text of the law, is difficult.
Dogs and cats continue to exist as races
If however it comes to Pets, is attached to the term “race” continues. The reason: In comparison to the people pet, be breeds is the result of breeding and not the result of a natural, biological process. “In the case of domestic animals, the geographical breakdown is missing”, says Uwe Hoßfeld. “There is no Urdackel from Gibraltar, which is eventually migrated to the North.” And only in the case of domestic animals, the genetic Similarity within a race is actually greater than between breeds.