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I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research.

Stephen Jay Gould#10

ScienceBiologyRace

About this quote

What does it mean?
Gould argues that racial classification is outdated, comparing humans to highly variable snails that shouldn't be divided into subspecies.
In plain terms
Humans are too varied to classify by race, just like variable snails shouldn't be split into subspecies.
What can you take from it?
Treat human racial categories as scientifically obsolete.

Where it applies

  • academic debates
  • policy making
  • education

Putting it to work

  • update textbooks
  • challenge racial categories

Questions to consider

  • How should we talk about race without biology?
  • Does culture create race?

Another view

Some may argue social reality of race persists regardless of biology.

More from Stephen Jay Gould

  1. [A]s a graduate student at Columbia University, I remember the a priori derision of my distinguished stratigraphy professor toward a visiting Australian drifte…

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  2. I do not claim that intelligence, however defined, has no genetic basis-I regard it as trivially true, uninteresting, and unimportant that it does. The express…

    Permalink to quote #11
  3. Each of the major sciences has contributed an essential ingredient in our long retreat from an initial belief in our own cosmic importance. Astronomy defined o…

    Permalink to quote #8

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