首页
登录
职称英语
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get steamed up about race? After
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get steamed up about race? After
游客
2023-12-31
62
管理
问题
Why do readers of New Scientist continue to get
steamed up
about race? After all, it can be used as an innocuous technical term by anthropologists. But all too often discussions of "race" lead to "racism", and tempers begin to fray. Before the 18th century, race merely described a group of common cultural origin, not one defined by immutable characteristics. Unfortunately, this usage changed as the Western powers colonized Asia and Africa and needed a way to characterize the peoples they subjected as not only different, but inferior.
A long list of scientists helped to "classify" the races. Among them were some of the famous names of the 18th and 19th centuries: Linnaeus, Cuvier, Haeckel, Huxley and Buffon. Although their classifications rarely agreed, many accepted that the races were fundamentally different and could be arranged with Caucasians at the top.
Only after the Darwinian evolution and the emergence of genetics did the notion of a league table start to crumble. By the 1940s, UNESCO could emphatically state: "Racism falsely claims that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics that are immutable and innate."
That groups cannot be arranged hierarchically does not mean that anthropologists cannot set up classifications which divide people into different groups, or that such classifications will not be useful, as several of our latter writers point out. For example, they can provide vital tools (along with language distribution) to reconstruct the prehistoric movements of peoples. Where genetic data are available, these reconstructions can be greatly refined.
In other contexts, such classifications are misleading. Many of the differences they record (including facial features, skin and hair color) are most probably superficial adaptations to local climate. Although useful as indicators of the origin of different groups, they imply nothing fundamental about differences between them.
Attempts to assess more important differences between groups (of any number of cognitive abilities, for example) always come to the same very well-known conclusion — that the differences between individuals within one racial group are much larger than the differences between the average members of two such groups.
What this means is that it is impossible to say anything about a particular individual’s ability because of his or her race (however, defined) because the spread of variation within a race is larger than the average difference between races. Racism can thus receive no support from science, even though a classification of races can be scientifically useful.
Lay people sometimes put more faith in the concept of race than scientists do, perhaps because they believe they can quite easily identify a person’s race or even nationality. But it’s not that easy: our correspondent from Le Vesinet, for example, identified some of the people in our recent feature ("Genes in Black and White") as Australian, Sicilian, Sumatran and Brazilian. In fact, they came from Sweden, Greece, the Central African Republic and Russia. [br] Compared with differences between individuals within a group, the differences between groups are______.
选项
A、much greater
B、smaller
C、more important
D、not clearly defined
答案
B
解析
细节识别。根据第六段“the differences between individuals within one racial group are much larger than the differences between the average members of two such groups”可知,一个种族内部个体之间的差异远大于两个种族之间一般成员间的差异。题干换了一种说法,因此选项B符合原意。【知识拓展】换语重述是细节识别常用的命题思路,如正话反说、反话正说、比较倒置等。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3320594.html
相关试题推荐
Environmentalscientistsareconcernedthatifindustrialpollutionwastoconti
Thesebatteriesforelectriccars,somescientistsclaim,areboundtobetoohe
Asthedebateofwomen’srightscontinued,thewomen’smovementbegantogaingr
Readers______tohappyendingsmayfindtheunvarnishedviewofmodernmotherho
Readersarerequiredtoabidebytherulesofthelibraryandmindtheirmanners
Scientistshavediscoveredaclose______betweensmokingandseveralseriousdise
Ifyoucontinuetoindulgeincomputergameslikethis,yourfuturewillbeats
Wehavearesponsibilitytoensureournation’scontinuedprosperityandthemo
Readers______tohappyendingsmayfindtheunvarnishedviewofmodernmotherho
Thesebatteriesforelectriccars,somescientistsclaim,areboundtobetoohe
随机试题
EvelynCokespent20yearsasahomecareaidehelpingtheelderlyandthes
HungerandfoodinsecurityhavebeencalledAmerica’s"hiddencrisis."Att
[originaltext]W:Hello.HolidayHotel.MayIhelpyou?M:Yes,I’dliketorese
[originaltext]Iamfiredupfortheyearthatstretchesoutbeforeus.That
Theoceanisheatingup.That’stheconclusionofanewstudythatfindstha
中国古代城市规划思想最早形成的时代是:()A.夏代 B.商代 C.战国时
“人的生命是有限的,但为人民服务是无限的。我要把有限的生命投入到无限的为人民服务
电流互感器竣工验收时,引线应无散股、扭曲、断股现象。引线对地和相间符合电气安全距
霍奇金淋巴瘤中典型RS细胞最常见于 A.结节性淋巴细胞为主型B.结节硬化型
女孩,6岁。诊断为单纯型肾病综合征,病程中患儿出现腰痛、尿呈洗肉水样。此时最可能
最新回复
(
0
)