of Skin Color,* Jablonski investigates ‘the social history of skin color from prehistory to the present’ and finds that, biologically, ‘race’ simply does not exist. In a separate article she states, ‘Despite ever more genetic evidence confirming the nonexistence of races, beliefs in the inherent superiority and inferiority of people remain part of the modern world,’† and she goes on to explain that the most influential ideas on the formation of historic racism came from just one man:
The philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) was the first person to classify people into fixed races according to skin color. To him and his followers, skin color was equated with character. People of darker-colored races were inferior and destined to serve those of lighter-colored races. Kant’s ideas about color, race, and character achieved wide and lasting acceptance because his writings were widely circulated, his reputation good, and his audience naïve. The ‘color meme’ was born. The linking of blackness with otherness and inferiority was one of the most powerful and destructive intellectual constructs of all time. Views on the inherent superiority and inferiority of races were readily embraced by the intelligentsia of Western Europe and eventually by the general populace because they supported existing stereotypes.*
It’s hard to overstate the damage this kind of thinking has done over the centuries.
Geneticist Spencer Wells, founder of The Genographic Project and author of The Journey of Man,† goes even deeper, using the science of DNA to tell a similar story to Jablonski – that ‘we are all one people’.‡ By analysing DNA from people in all corners of the world, Wells and his team discovered that all humans alive today are descended from a single man (Y-chromosomal Adam), who lived in Africa around 60,000–90,000 years ago, and from a single woman (mitochondrial Eve), who lived in Africa approximately 150,000 years ago.§ (It’s a quirk of our genetic evolution that our two most common recent ancestors did not have to live at the same time.)
Due to this common ancestry, the human genetic code, or genome, is 99.9 per cent identical, which suggests that the 0.1 per cent remainder that is responsible for our individual physical differences – skin colour, eye colour, hair colour and texture, etc – has primarily been caused by environmental factors. Like Jablonski, Wells believes our early ancestors embarked on their first epic journey out of Africa in search of food, which led them to gradually scatter across the Earth. Wells explains that the physical appearance of these early travellers changed depending on which part of the world they migrated to. Those who ended up in Europe – in the northern hemisphere – received less sunlight, so their bodies did not need to produce as much melanin (a natural-forming skin pigment that protects from the sun’s ultraviolet rays), and so they developed lighter skin and straighter hair to match their new cold conditions. The same is true for other communities around the world whose appearance adapted to match their new environment. And so our physical differences – once just mutations of survival – became embedded in our DNA, to be passed down through the generations for millennia.
Wells’s deep understanding of human DNA has also influenced his views on humanity and the false social construct of race. In an interview with the UK’s Independent newspaper, he commented: ‘It’s worth getting the message out, that we are related to one another, that we are much more closely related genetically than people may suspect from glancing around and looking at these surface features that distinguish us … Race, in terms of deep-seated biological differences, doesn’t exist scientifically.’
Many of us have instinctively felt and argued for a long time that the concept of ‘race’ is a misleading human construct used to divide us, but it’s reassuring to now have the science to back this up. If more of us understood the epic voyage that our early ancestors embarked upon, which led to the rich diversity we see around us today, perhaps we wouldn’t be so fixated on race. Indeed, we really are all one, and that oneness began in Africa.
The daily reality
Sadly, this understanding hasn’t yet reached everyone. Even when young black men play by the ‘rules’ today, some find that many of the people they come across are still unable to see their academic and career achievements, but have less difficulty seeing their skin colour. Regardless of their personal journey, young black men learn to take the stop-and-searches in their stride (after all, it’s nothing new), as long as it results in their walking away without being too delayed (or physically wounded, as we’ve seen in the US with the rise of police brutality). At work, he is frustrated with his lack of progress in relation to his contribution, although he is careful in office environments to mask his feelings for fear of being viewed as ‘angry’, ‘threatening’, or potentially violent. And he may have qualifications but is unable to get a foothold in the sector he has trained for, or has been given an opportunity and is expected to feel grateful while he remains at entry level and is surpassed by other colleagues, some of whom may be less qualified.
This is the reality for young black men, although it’s fair to say that being prepared for the possibility of rejection on account of your colour from an early age does foster determination and can lead to success, as it forces one to develop astounding levels of resilience. Like diamonds, this pressurized environment can produce spectacular gems, such as Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, Sir David Adjaye, Ozwald Boateng OBE and many of the great men of colour who have helped shape our world for the better. However, it can also cause deep-rooted feelings of inferiority and inadequacy. The sense of never fully being accepted doesn’t go away, especially as it is reinforced daily, which continuously erodes a sense of belonging and self-worth.
For some black men, this can result in the rejection of education and the world of work, and the pursuit of validation from a subculture where material possessions are valued above those things deemed further out of reach, such as employment and schooling. This route can indeed bring more immediate rewards than academia and employment, where rejection will already have been experienced, but it stands in the way of true social mobility.
Young males in poorer black communities can also fall prey to the trappings of a prescribed form of masculinity that thrives in these subcultures: one in which using violence to defend your reputation is seen as acceptable and sometimes necessary. Men in these environments – gangs, particularly – are often considered weak by their peers if they fail to defend their honour or respond to a slight, the consequences of which can be disastrous. Ironically, the ability to reason oneself out of conflict or to avoid it altogether would be applauded outside of the subculture, but is often seen within the community as cowardice. And the rewards within the subculture – respect, and attractiveness to women – are hard to refuse, especially if escaping the subculture is not seen as a possibility, which makes it pretty difficult to bring about a change in behaviour.
The revolving door
For many black men, this route leads to only one destination: in America especially there is a revolving door from the classroom to the prison cell. Mass incarceration has reached epic proportions, with one in three black men imprisoned at some point during their lives.* This has big implications for their futures; the ramifications of a criminal record can be catastrophic for employment prospects and, once the step along the criminal justice path has been taken, it’s near impossible to turn back.
When it comes to the American criminal justice system, the odds are stacked against you if you are black. A 2016 report by The National Registry of Exonerations found that 47% of all wrongful convictions involved black defendants. The figures for serious crimes such as murder show that black defendants account for 40% of those convicted, but 50% of those wrongfully convicted (in comparison to whites, who account for 36 percent of those wrongfully convicted for murder). It’s a similar picture with sexual assault: 59% of all exonerees were black defendants, compared with 34% for white defendants†.
As well as falling victim to police brutality disproportionately, US blacks are also more likely to be victims of police misconduct, such as ‘hiding evidence, tampering with witnesses or perjury’. This may also have contributed to the aforementioned racial disparity; the report concluded that black defendants accounted for 76% of wrongful murder convictions where police misconduct was involved, in comparison to 63% of