Anthropological Lysenkoism: Anthropologists Can Identify Skeletons by Race--But They Shouldn't

Political correctness is Lysenkoism.

And this is pure political correctness.

Among the many bad arguments in there, one basically goes like this:

Forensic anthropologist's shouldn't identify skeletons by race, because they sometimes get it wrong. Instead, they should identify them as belonging to more specific (totally not racial!) sub-racial populations.

Which, of course, will dramatically increase the likelihood of erroneous identification...

You don't have to know anything about anthropology to know that it's harder to identify some x as a member of a sub-group than to identify it as a member of a super-group...

The discussion of race in academia is at least half political. There's a moral premise in play: the view that races are natural kinds is racist.

And, of course: racism is the Worst Thing There Is...

It's not like lying or cheating. It's not like cruelty or infidelity. It's not something that's a matter of degree, something that lots of people have done sometimes without being thoroughly bad. It's nearly an all-or-nothing matter of being good or evil.

In fact, of course, to be a little racist is like being a little dishonest--it's a little bad.

(Protip: don't do it.)

And, of course, these views are of the left--and the left rules academia.

So: there is nothing more important than "proving" that races are not biological kinds.

So: academic leftists will say just about anything to "prove" that races aren't natural kinds.

It's like an article of religious faith.

The "social construction" view of race is--like most "social construction" views of anything--bullshit. It's barely coherent. It's just nonsense.

The eliminativist view--that races aren't real at all--is, at least, possibly true.

Though probably not.

In all probability, so far as I can tell, races are relatively unimportant natural kinds.