© UNESCO
Cover of "Race and History" and "Race and Culture" in Norwegian.

At its twentieth session in 1978, UNESCO's General Conference adopted, on November 27th, a resolution concerning the implementation of the Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice.

The very first document at the origin of this Declaration is the Statement by experts on race problems (July 20th 1950). Claude Lévi-Strauss was one of them.

Excerpts.

1. Scientists have reached general agreements in recognizing that mankind is one: that all men belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. […]

4. In short, the term “race” designates a group or population characterized by some concentrations, relative as to frequency and distribution, of hereditary particles (genes) or physical characters, which appear, fluctuate, and often disappear in the course of time by reason of geographic and or cultural isolation. […]

5. These are the scientific facts. Unfortunately, however, when most people use the term “race” they do not do so in the sense above defined. To most people, a race is any group of people whom they choose to describe as a race. […]

6. […] Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term “race” is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term “race” altogether and speak of “ethnic groups”.

7. Now what has the scientist to say about the groups of mankind which may be recognized at the present time? […] Most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows: the Mongoloid Division; the Negroid Division; the Caucasoid Division. […]

9. Whatever classification the anthropologist makes of man, he never includes mental characteristics as part of those classifications. […] the tests have shown essential similarity in mental characters among all human groups.

11. So far as temperament is concerned, there is no definite evidence that there exist inborn differences between human groups. […]

13. With respect to race-mixture, the evidence points unequivocally to the fact that this has been going on from the earliest times. […] Statements that human hybrids frequently show undesirable traits, both physically and mentally, physical disharmonies and mental degeneracies, are not supported by the facts. […]

14. […] For all practical social purposes ”race” is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth ”race” has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years it has taken a heavy toll in human lives and caused untold suffering. […]

15. We now have to consider the bearing of these statements on the problem of human equality. It must be asserted with the utmost emphasis that equality as an ethical principle in no way depends upon the assertion that human beings are in fact equal in endowment. […] Nevertheless, the characteristics in which human groups differ from one another are often exaggerated and used as a basis for questioning the validity of equality in the ethical sense. […] every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main, because he is involved in mankind.


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