Race: the Scary and the Scared

There are two kinds of people in the world who think about race. The first kind are the ones I call, the Scary. They are the neo-Nazis, KKK, Black Panthers, etc. who espouse racial hatred and prejudice. At the opposite corner, there are the Scared ones, who -in opposition to the former- are too scared to even bring up the topic of race, unless they couple it with endless platitudes about the brotherhood of mankind and the "Human Race".

I won't say that the two are equally bad. Of course, the Scared ones are not as bad, or as dangerous as the Scary ones. But they both trivialize the subject of biological differences between human populations, by making these out to be either too important (Scary), or completely unimportant (Scared).

It's about time there was a Third Way, for the scientific study of racial diversity. But of course, "racial science" has not been popular for half a century now, and it shows no signs of coming into vogue any time soon.

In the end, it all boils up to accepting that racial differences have nothing to do with the socio-cultural and constitutional notions of equality. Only when we accept this basic truth, will we be able to study racial variation without worrying about what such research might lead to.