Race and Gender as seen from the Bible and from Genetics

CBE Workshop Presenter: Dave Unander, Ph.D.

Should the term “race” be used to differentiate one human being from another? No, we all belong to one race – the human race. The idea that there are three or four races of humanity is a relatively new one in history, and not an established fact.

Did you know that the concept of “race” as it is commonly used in our time did not exist before 1400? The need to justify slavery to a “Christian” culture first opened the door to the idea that Africans were a different type of people intended by nature to serve others. The combination of the concept of an inferior black race destined for slavery and an orientation of the early United States government around the protection of property rights led to the provision in the Constitution that slave owners would be granted three votes for every five slaves. This Constitutional provision was the basis for the 1857 Dred Scott decision that a black man was three-fifths human.

Carolus Linneaus, the Swedish botanist who invented scientific taxonomy in the 1700’s, defined all [Homo sapien] human beings as belonging to one of the following 5 races: Wild man, American, European, Asiatic and African. David Hume, the famous Scottish philosopher and a contemporary of Linneaus, wrote “I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all other species of man…to be naturally inferior to the Whites. There was never a civilized nation of any other complexion than White.”

All the physical descriptions of people from the 66 books of the Bible can fit on one sheet of paper (front and back). While we carry an estimated 80,000 genes for many different kinds of traits, five genes have been identified in the production of melanin, the chemical that produces skin color differences from black to white. This is a relationship of 1:16,000. That’s how different we human beings are – or aren’t – when it comes to skin complexion.

See Shattering the Myth of Race, Genetic Realities and Biblical Truths by the presenter for more information.

– Carolyn