Why Is It Important to Teach about Race, Caste and Gender? an Anthropologist's Viewpoint

INTRODUCTION Race, caste, and gender are concepts that everyone in general is aware of. Being an anthropologist, teaching biological anthropology, human origins, human genetics, developmental biology and biochemistry, why do I also think that students should be made aware of race, caste, gender and other controversial topics? For ages, these topics have been dealt with in great length in the literature, in panel discussions and in many other forums. So, one would think that by now all of us would be on the same page about these topics. That has not happened yet; even today we use the word race, instead of the long-recommended word "ethnicity." Gender and caste issues continue to be major problems in societies. Because these concepts are often not well understood by all students, I try, in my courses, to offer some basic biological information that will offer the basis for a richer understanding. in this paper, I will review some of that information. In the recent past, I had to encounter a situation where my gender and ethnicity came under discussion by a student who wanted to work with me as a Technical Assistant for one of my courses. I saw that on the very first day, even before knowing me and understanding the work involved in the course, the student reprimanded me many times. Being a teacher, I thought everyone can be changed, but the semester became harder as the weeks passed by. Talking to other colleagues and administrators, I was told that it was a gender issue and nothing to do with me personally. At that moment I felt like what Mahatma Gandhi must have felt in South Africa. This was the first time I was seen as a person of different ethnicity and of a female gender. This was the reason I wanted to present this paper at the 2011 Annual Teaching for Transformation Conference organized by CIT (the Center for the Improvement of Teaching--now, the Center for Innovative Teaching) at UMass Boston. I knew that I must teach about these topics in all my classes as no student should go without knowing all about the biology of these issues. I highlight biology in particular, as that would make it clear in scientific terms as to what scientific understandings underlie these concepts. All should be able to understand that no ethnicity is inferior or superior, and no one should have gender bias, and today we need to address this latter issue even more urgently than before because gender today can be much more than just being a girl or a boy. I. RACIAL ISSUES The word "race" has been controversial for a long time. In 1950, UNESCO recommended its replacement by the word "ethnicity," yet today in the United States still the word race is in common usage. On July 20th, 1950, a statement on race was drafted by the United Nation's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization at Unesco House, Paris, by the following experts: Professor Ernest Beaglehole, New Zealand; Professor Juan Comas, Mexico; Professor L.A. Costa Pinto, Brazil; Professor Franklin Frazier, United States; Professor Morris Ginsberg, United Kingdom; Dr. Humayun Kabir, India; Professor Claude Levi-Strauss, France; and, Professor Ashley Montagu, United States (UNESCO report 1950). There were 15 statements issued in all. A few sentences from these different statements stand out in their clarity: * "That all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens." * "From the biological standpoint, the species Homo sapiens is made up of a number of populations, each one of which differs from the other in the frequency of one or more genes." * "A race, from biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens. These populations are capable of inter-breeding with one another but, by virtue of the isolating barriers which in the past kept them more or less separated, exhibit certain physical differences as a result of their somewhat different biological histories. …