Where Did the Idea of Multiple “Higher and Lower Races” Come
From?
Bodie Hodge M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries April 2, 2025
Racism is rampant all over the world. I’ve been to Peru and
saw a form of racism there. I was in Australia and saw types of racism there.
Sweden was no different when I visited that Scandinavian country. I’ve seen it
in the UK, Canada, Mexico, Turks and Caicos, and in my own “backyard” in the
USA. I’ve even had people be racist to me to
my face without cause or warrant.
Bodie, when speaking with amazing peoples in Peru (yes, I'm inhere somewhere!)
One thing that can be said of each of these places and
peoples, is that racism comes in a lot of different forms—some of which
surprised me. Another thing I realized is that many people who truly believed they
were not racist, were often times, very racist
(e.g., people who join in criticism or attacking a particular “race” because they
believe it is “anti-racist”—that is indeed a form of racism because one is
prejudicially judging a “race”).
But here is the thing I learned the most: to be racist, one must first *assume* there
are different “races”.
How Many Races Are There?
“How many ‘races’ are there?” I once asked this question in
a jail where I was ministering. I was going to immediately give the inmates an
answer (i.e., it was a rhetorical question of sorts) but they insisted on
trying to work it out and they were totally engaged in the subject. So, in my
lecture, I stopped and gave them some time to work it out. After about a minute
or so of working together, they came to the conclusion there were about 20-30 “races”.
It was a shock to them when I said, “nope—there is only one race—the
human race”. Now, I knew this would be a
shock to them because they were taught the same religion I was taught in public
schools—a Darwinian evolutionary worldview, which is a form of secular humanism
[think of atheism (i.e., no God), materialism (matter and energy are all that
exist; nothing immaterial, like God, exists), naturalism (nature is all that
exists, no spiritual realm or nothing supernatural), etc.].
According to God, there is one
race, Adam’s race which is also called, in more recent times, the “human
race” or the “race of man”, or more simply “mankind”. We are all descendants of Adam and Eve—the first
man (1 Corinthians 15:45-47) and woman (Genesis 3:20). This means we are all
made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27; 9:6) and have eternal value because
we are made in the likeness of our eternal God. It also means we are all
related and all part of that singular human race. By the way, this is not to be
confused with the older definition of “race” being in the context of tribes,
nations, and cultures which are subgroups emerging after Babel within the one
human race.
In the evolutionary religion, there are multiple “races” of
man. Early evolutionists were arguing over how many “races” of man there were.
Some entertained numbers as high as these inmates, but most settled around 4-5
“races”, sometimes including one of these three:
·
“American Indians race”/Native Americans/Americanae
who were seen as “Red race”
·
“Esquimaux race”/Lapps which included the far
northern peoples (polar group) in Siberia as well as the Eskimos and
Algonquians
·
“Malayan race”/Malaicae which included many
Southeastern Asian and Pacific Islander (i.e., the “Brown race”)
But usually, most evolutionists had accepted that these 4 primary
“races”:
·
Caucasian/Caucasiae (Europeans; “White race”)
·
Mongoloid/Mongolicae (Asians; “Yellow race”)
·
Negroid/Aethiopicae (Ethiopians/Africans;
“Black race”)
·
Australoid (Australian Aborigines)
Up front, I don’t like this terminology but for educational
purposes, this is what evolutionists and their precursors used. Interestingly,
many people classified within these groups didn’t always fit neatly into these
categories but nevertheless, evolutionists used these prototypes for their
generalized racial divisions.
Regarding the Names
The name Caucasian is still used today on many government
forms that ask which “race” you are. It is a name that comes from the Caucasus
mountains between the Black Sea and Caspian Sea. Many migrants into Europe came
via that route as the Japhetic people (descendants of Noah’s son Japheth) from
Babel settled into Europe and north Asia.
The name Mongoloid comes from the same root as Mongols and
Mongolia. Their peoples conquered much of southern and central Asia and East
Asia. At some points their influence extended into the Middle East and
Europe.
Negroid was often denoted as “Ethiopian” in much older
literature. Ethiopians (or Cushites—named for Noah’s grandson Cush)
dominated much of East, Central, and Southern Africa and were seen as a
prototype African. The name Negroid and its variants come from the Latin name
for black and is still reflected in
many Romance languages (Latin based-languages).
|
|
Language
|
Word for
Black
|
|
1
|
Latin
|
Niger or
Nigrum
|
|
2
|
Spanish
|
Negre
|
|
3
|
Galician
|
Negro
|
|
4
|
Italian
|
Nero
|
|
5
|
Romanian
|
Negru
|
|
6
|
Portuguese
|
Negro
|
This term was never originally meant as a derogatory term but a descriptive term. Sadly, in modern use,
it has been used in offensive ways. There are still cases where we see a
reflection of it being used in respectable ways such as the Negro Baseball League, founded by Andrew
“Rube” Foster, and this historical league is still honored today for overcoming
adversity.
Australoid comes from the Latin root word for “southern” (australis) that is still used for the
continent and country of Australia as well as Austronesia (think of the southern Pacific Islanders). The name
still encompasses the original inhabitants of Australia (Australian aborigines)
and many people in the Pacific and the island lands of southern Asia
(Austronesians). This is not to be confused with the root word for Austria in
central Europe which is derived from “Österreich”, an old German word for eastern realm.
Was the Idea of Different “Races” Unique to the Evolutionists?
No, it wasn’t. There were
precursors to the evolutionary understanding of “race”. Prior to Carl Linnaeus
(d. 1778), people were not categorized by the modern evolutionary understanding
of “race”. But people were largely recognized as tribes, tongues, peoples,
cultures, nations, and so forth. And rightly so, the modern evolutionary ideas
of multiple higher and lower “races” had not been popularized yet.
When the term “race” was used it was in the context of a
people who were descended from a particular person. The word “race” was used
differently (i.e., a different definition)—I’ll get to that in a moment. But
instead of one primary race (Adam’s Race) with subsequent breakdowns into a people
groups (English race, French race, German race, etc.) there was a movement that
started classifying people based on how they looked.
Georges Buffon, a French naturalist, around 1750 classed
people into 6 groups—Lapps, Tartars (Mongolians), Europeans, Americans, south
Asians, and Ethiopians (Africans).
With Carl Linnaeus though, definitions began to change to be
more “definitive” as animals and plants were being classified (based on how
they looked). The Latin words species
and genus, now took on new “scientific”
definitions as new definitions were emerging and old definitions were becoming
antiquated. Linnaeus initially labelled 4 varieties
within the human species in his early editions of his famous work, Systema Naturae (1758).
·
Americanus
·
Europeanus
·
Asiaticus
·
Afer or Africanus
There is debate over where these classifications were based
on looks or merely based on their location—living in different continental
schemes. Later Linnaeus added an additional grouping called “Monstrosus”, which
included what is informally dubbed as mythological humans and included giants. It
was kind of a “catch-all” category of other alleged human-like claims.
Since this group was not part of their own continent, then
likely Linnaeus was indeed grouping people due to looks, similar in fashion to
plants and animals in his system. Nevertheless, Linnaeus held that all people
go back to Adam and Eve and that there was one race. But his groupings of man unlocked
a door as his views were held in prominence.
Later, an anthropologist decided to tackle these variations
in man in more detail. It was a German professor named Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach (AD 1752–1840). He was, and still is to this day, very influential
in the fields of anthropology (study of the history of mankind) and anatomy. He
divided humanity into five “races” in 1779.
His breakdown of “races” were:
·
Caucasian (Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and
West Asia)
·
Mongolian (East, Central and Southern Asia)
·
Aethiopian
(Sub-Saharan Africa)
·
American (Americas)
·
Malayan (Southeast Asia and Pacific)
Note that Australia was just being mapped in the 1770s and
it was 1778 that saw the first European colony in Australia. So naturally there
is no inclusion of Australian peoples in his classification since these people
were not on Blumenbach’s radar at this [in fact, “radar” hadn’t been invented yet
either! 😊).
Blumenbach’s view also put the Caucasian, of which
Blumenbach classified himself, as the standard for humanity where the other
variations of man were seen as divergent lines, but not without their merits of
course. Even though he held that all mankind should be under one species (with
multiple “races”), his work sadly set the stage to open the door further for
classifying people into evolutionary relationships
later. Blumenbach’s view of racial division was not widespread and it took time
for his ideas to spread. But spread they did.
How Did the Word “Race” Change Meanings?
Returning to the changing definition of race, prior to Blumenbach,
the word “race” basically meant a family of descendants. It could be specific
or broad. In the sense that all of mankind is the one “race of Adam” is the
broadest instance. But more specifically, the Israelites could also be denoted
in a more pointed way as descendants of the race
of Abraham or the race of Israel/Jacob. They are a tribe, nation,
or people.
Webster’s dictionary of 1828 defined “race” as:
“The lineage of a family, or
continued series of descendants from a parent who is called the stock. A race is
the series of descendants indefinitely. Thus all mankind are called the race of
Adam; the Israelites are of the race of Abraham and Jacob.
Thus we speak of a race of kings, the race of
Clovis or Charlemagne; a race of nobles, etc.”
So, the term “race” had little to do with anything that
could be construed as higher and lower evolutionary “races”. This also shows
that Blumenbach’s view still hadn’t become a mainstream idea. Nevertheless, his
view was floating around in academia waiting to explode in the civil scene. The
common understanding of race was still in place with the general population in
the early to mid-1800s.
The point is that historically, “races” meant something
different from today. In short form, there was the Irish race (the race of Magog), the German race (the race of
Ashkenaz), the English race (also the race of Ashkenaz), the Egyptian race (the
race of Mizraim), the Greek race (the race of Javan), the Chinese race (the
race of the Sinites), Ethiopian race (the race of Cush), the Israeli race
(race of Jacob), and so on. These were just divisional groupings of people who collectively
make up the one “human race”—all equal pieces of the same pie.
When Johann Friedrich Blumenbach came around and redefined “race”
based on his view of classifying humanity, utilizing features as opposed to
their family descent, it really sparked a fire and changed the definition of
race based on physical features (i.e., how you look—skin tone, hair type, eye
shape, etc.). This is called racial
anthropology.
There were others who commented on the racial anthropology movement such as John Hunter, Charles White, Joseph
Deniker, and Benjamin Rush and in some cases added fuel to the fire. But due to
the lack of genetic understanding (which hadn’t been developed yet)
hosts of conjectures flooded the written literature to understand skin tone and
features of various peoples—incorrectly, I might add. And although it took
time, Blumenbach’s multiple race view
really took a foothold in the academic world that lead to Charles Darwin.
Racial Anthropology is the foundation
for Scientific Racism/Biological Racism
Johann Blumenbach’s classification of man into “races” based
on appearance led to biological racism
also called scientific racism. Charles
Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace were competing to publish on an evolutionary
worldview. Darwin was really a step ahead of Wallace—which is why most people
know Darwin’s name and not Wallace’s name.
But it was these classifications by Blumenbach that Darwin [and
other early evolutionists like Wallace, Thomas Huxley, and Ernst Haeckel] then
used to line up, with selected apes, as a types of cousins on an evolutionary
tree (see image for instance). It was here that the evolutionary concept of
“higher and lower races” emerged in our society.
Image 1
Wallace, a British naturalist, said:
“The mental requirements of the
lowest savages, such as the Australians or the Andaman Islanders, are very
little above those of many animals…”
Haeckel, a German zoologist and eugenicist, said:
“At the lowest stage of human
mental development are the Australians, some tribes of the Polynesians, and the
Bushmen, Hottentots, and some of the Negro tribes.”
Haeckel also wrote:
“If one must draw a sharp boundary
between them, it has to be drawn between the most highly developed and
civilized man on the one hand, and the rudest savages on the other, and the
latter have to be classed with the animals.”
Darwin, a theologian (yes, he was a theologian), argued:
“At some future period, not very
distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost
certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes. .
. will no doubt be exterminated. The
break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will
intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the
Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro
or Australian [aborigine] and the gorilla.”
Darwin openly said to exterminate those between his
understanding of the Caucasian to the baboon (see image 2). This is because of
his evolutionary belief that there were “higher and lower races”. His goal was
to exterminate the higher apes and lower humans to get a bigger break between
the Caucasian, whom he put on top of the civilized scale, and those to whom he
thought could compete with Caucasians.
Image 2
Although Darwin listed three of his evolutionary “races” in
this quote from his book the Descent of Man—“Caucasian”, “Negro”, and “Australians
aborigines”, he really meant to exterminate all the other alleged “races” (by
his evolutionary standard) between the Caucasian and the baboon (see Images 3
and 4).
Image 3
Image 4
Thus, in Darwin’s ideology and religion, there should be a
huge break between his evolutionary categorization of Caucasian, that he hopes
would evolve further without competition, and the baboon (see Image 5).
Image 5
National Socialist Adolf Hitler—an ardently consistent
evolutionist—argued
that the Aryan (blond hair, blue-eyed people) within the Caucasians were the most evolved and on the way to
becoming the next best thing for humanity.
Therefore in his view, other people classed as Caucasians could also be exterminated, including Jews,
Poles, Slavs, and others who didn’t fit in that perceived Aryan category.
The National Socialist extermination camps (Death camps, which were attached to
certain Concentration and Work Camps)
were his means to fulfill Darwin’slegacy of exterminating during World War II. Though this was not the first
time concentration camps took the lives of people of other “so-called “races”
in the name of evolution. Darwin’s legacy started much sooner in the late 1800s
when Darwinism became the norm—from Cuba, to the Boar War, to German controlled
South-West Africa (now called Namibia) and others.
Backing up historically for a moment, the US Civil War
delayed some of these evolutionary racial ideas in the States because everyone
was in the midst of a national conflict (1961-1965). But the seeds of Darwin
were already planted. Along with long ages and evolution which were already in
the mainstream, the post-Civil War era, biological
racism, took root. Then many universities fell from a Christian standard
and social issues surrounding the new concept of “race” exploded. People began
looking at other people groups in an evolutionarily racist way and even
influenced such things as the Jim Crow laws. Dr. Charles Ware pointed out:
“It is very interesting to note
that during this same season of history, Darwinian theories were beginning to
make their way to American shores. Without the legal ability to enforce
slavery, many people turned to the theories of Darwin to justify racism in its
many forms. They began to use evolution as justification of their views that
African Americans were an inferior “race” and a “sub-species” that was not
really fully human and not deserving of fair and equal treatment. “Jim Crow
laws,” for example, were often fueled by evolutionary ideas.”
Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), a Marxist Harvard professor
and evolutionist, stated:
“Biological arguments for racism
may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude
following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.”
Although much more can be said, the greater point is that
evolutionary ideas of “race” post-Darwin (1859) have had a terrible impact on
society in many parts of the Western World (and beyond) including the USA. Much
of that fruit is being played out on the streets, schools, and in the media and
many have no idea where to turn for answers.
The Solution
The solution is simple—get back to God’s Word and the
authority of the 66 books of the Bible. If I can be so bold, people need to
stop buying into the false evolutionary religion that has been imposed on them
and start looking at people the way God intended—as relatives.
The Word of God in Genesis solves this issue of multiple
“races”. It’s time to educate people about the fact that there is one race—the
human race or Adam’s race. And animals are not our relatives as all—instead all
peoples all over the world are (see Image 6)! Having variations in people
groups is actually a beautiful thing.
Image 6
I would even suggest dropping the term “races” altogether
when people are discussing people groups or tribes and nations. There are
plenty of other words to use to describe our
relatives in various parts of the world. “Races” is tainted with sinful
evolutionary ideals, so I suggest caution when even considering using the word
(even when attempting to use the classical definition of “race”). This is why in
this article, I kept putting the word “race” in quotes!
It’s time to look at other people the way God intended—as
our relatives deserving of being loved and created as an equal. It’s also time for
the world to repent of their sin—including the sin of racism that plagues this
world. Bear in mind humbly, that this might include you.
Furthermore, we need to understand the Gospel where Jesus
Christ died for sinners all over the world no matter what they look like, so
they can be reconciled unto God and receive the gift of eternal life with God
and all His goodness in heaven.
