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
2025-01-30
8
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] Some Western colonizers thought that they were______.
选项
A、arrogant
B、weak
C、inferior
D、superior
答案
D
解析
细节识别。根据第一段“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”可知,随着西方列强在亚洲和非洲的殖民,他们需要一种方式来描述那些受他们奴役的人民,这些人不仅非我族类,而且是劣等民族。于是,种族的用法改变了。题干部分提到的是colonizers(殖民者),那么在他们看来,自己是优等民族(superior),所以选择D。【知识拓展】同样是细节识别题,本题比上题略微复杂,需要做一定的推理。原文是从殖民者角度看被殖民者的,用的词是inferior;题干是从殖民者角度看待自己的,所以需要反义词superior。
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3935149.html
相关试题推荐
Readers______tohappyendingsmayfindtheunvarnishedviewofmodernmotherho
Thesebatteriesforelectriccars,somescientistsclaim,areboundtobetoohe
Asthedebateofwomen’srightscontinued,thewomen’smovementbegantogaingr
Scientistsbelievethatbeingborninthesummercouldgiveyouasunnydisposit
WhydoreadersofNewScientistcontinuetogetsteamedupaboutrace?After
WhydoreadersofNewScientistcontinuetogetsteamedupaboutrace?After
WhydoreadersofNewScientistcontinuetogetsteamedupaboutrace?After
WhydoreadersofNewScientistcontinuetogetsteamedupaboutrace?After
NomatterhowmanyreadersalreadyrevereAmyTan,theirappreciationforherwi
Scientistsbelievethatthereisnotenoughoxygeninthemoon’satmosphereto__
随机试题
DreamFunctions Dreamingisacommonphenomenon.
U.S.collegestudentsareincreasinglyburdenedwithcreditcarddebt,accor
大多数蛋白质的合成场所是A.小肠 B.胰腺 C.肝脏 D.脾脏 E.肾脏
Charcot三联征是指()A.腹痛、寒战高热、黄疸 B.腹痛、休克、黄
治疗水肿风水泛滥证,应首选的方剂是()A.越婢加术汤 B.麻黄连翘赤小豆
患者,女,9个月。体温37.8℃,出现头痛、呕吐、嗜睡、惊厥等,脑脊液结核菌培养
某分部工程可划分为A、B、C三个施工过程,分四段组织流水作业,各施工过程在各个流
下列关于我国古代科学技术的说法,正确的是()。A.毕昇发明了造纸术 B.《
在事业发展中需要两种角色,一种是“开创者”,开创新业绩,开拓新局面;另一种则是“
关于施工企业质量管理体系文件构成的说法,正确的是()。A.质量计划是纲领性文件
最新回复
(
0
)