The evolutionary dynamics of two similar species is well understood: if two similar species are in the same area, they either must specialize to different ecological niches or one of them will eventually disappear. The case with subspecies is not much different: if there are two subspecies in the same area, they mix to some extent, but usually remain as two different populations. These populations either must specialize to different ecological niches or only one of the populations will survive. The difference with the species and subspecies is that the subspecies mix and some of the genetic material of the disappearing subspecies will remain in the gene pool of survivors.
These evolutional concepts apply also to humans, or at least they did in the early phases of our species. Were the Neanderthal man and the modern human different species, or maybe they were different subspecies of the same species? A large portion of Neanderthal genes survived in modern humans, but Neanderthals and humans were physically and genetically much more different than the main races of modern humans. It does not much matter whether they were different species or subspecies. It is customary to say that they were closely related species, which still could interbreed under favorable conditions.
Are there human races? That is, can the ethnically different populations of modern humans be divided into groups that are called races, where a race means a subspecies? Clearly the different ethnic groups are not different species. A subspecies, customarily called races in domesticated animals, is a convenient term used to refer to a genetically distinct population inside a species. All populations, which have been separated for a long enough time or which have different migration histories, differ genetically to some extent, some more, some less. One could call any such genetic population a subspecies, that is, a race, or one group many such genetically distinct populations to bigger groups and call such larger unit a subspecies, that is, a race. A subspecies, a race, is just a concept that can be formed if it is useful for some purpose.
In the USA in many statistics the population is divided into groups called White, Black or African American, Asians, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Native. The last group belongs to Polynesians. These groups include many of the main racial categories that have been used for a very long time since they are useful concepts. The concept of a subspecies, the racial category in US statistics, is a social construct for discussing group differences in education, income, housing etc. and it is not a genetic division in the sense that all members in a racial category are genetically similar. Indeed, the largest genetic differences are inside the black racial category, but it is a socially useful concept since American blacks are identified and identify themselves as blacks because of a joint history of chattel slavery.
So, there are human races and the concept of a race does not imply racism.
Or does it? Wasn’t racism a question of racial struggle and how to solve this problem?
Just to paraphrase what was said in the beginning: if evolution in humans is similar as in other species, there is a subspecies struggle between human races just as there is a species struggle in evolution. What does this mean?
Social network applications, such as the dating tool Tinder, have verified what has been known for a long time: there is a preference for races. Women of all races prefer to date men of their race and otherwise they prefer white men. Asian men are least liked for dating, except for by Asian women. Men of any race like beautiful women and they do not have as strong preference to their own race as women do. Most wanted dating partners were Asian women, but Hispanic and white women are not much behind. All men have a preference against black women. This is also true of black men, though black women prefer black men. Black men dislike white women most.
There are stereotypes of a beautiful woman and a handsome man many features are common in all cultures and ethnic groups. Asian men may be less likes because they often are rather short and women prefer men who are a bit taller.
This is nothing new. Even though the USA was a mixing pot of white people coming from different European nations, there never was much mixing between different racial categories. Inside each main racial category (white, black, Asian, Hispanic) there originally were subdivisions depending on religion and ethnicity. These subdivisions have mostly disappeared since people identify themselves are American. Inside the white racial subcategory there are only few groups, who identify themselves as a separate people.
Mixing between main racial categories in the USA leads to a gene flow from a category to another, but the categories are not merging into a single genetic human type, which has multiracial origins. The same is true to some ethnic groups. While the mixing rate among white subgroups is currently high in the USA, ethnic white minorities are not merging with the white majority. This is exactly the same situation that was described in the beginning as the setting of the subspecies struggle: there is mixing but the populations do not merge, as a consequence they either must specialize or only one remains.
According to the evolution theory, survival of a population depends on its reproductive success. The population, which has a larger number of surviving offspring grows faster and finally replaces the other populations. This subspecies struggle is a part of evolution and cannot be changed but animals are not conscious of the struggle. They do not make any plans to win the subspecies struggle.
Like with animals, also with humans there can be subspecies (races or ethnic groups), which do not understand that there is a subspecies struggle. If several subspecies, which all are unconscious of the struggle, meet in the same area, typically the largest will remain. The majority will absorb the minorities in the way that very few members of the minorities join the majority and assimilate. Their genes will remain in the majority gene pool, and some cultural customs may also remain. The original minority subspecies dies out. The outcome is the death of the minority subspecies and their culture by assimilation, and only few are willing or able to assimilate. Genetic traces if the minorities are likely to slowly disappear.
In this way the genetic traces, notably Y-DNA haplogroup N, of Ugrian Magyars has almost disappeared from Hungarian genes and the Mongolian invaders of Genghis Khan were absorbed to Chinese, and these were conquerors, the genes of conquered minority people disappeared even easier. The majority has an advantage.
A minority subspecies can survive if it is confined to an area where contacts between the subspecies are minimized, or if it finds a different ecological niche. Medieval Europe can be given as an example: the division of work was based on the guild system and subpopulations which were not accepted into guilds had their own privileges and restrictions. As an example, in France there was a hated pariah class called Gagots. They worked as carpenters and lived in special gagoteries. Another group was Jews, who worked in money lending, tax farming, alcohol selling etc. and lived in ghettos, Jewish streets or quarters, or shtetls. This solution to the subspecies struggle came to the end when Enlightenment and Freemasons changed to world to what was supposed to be meritocracy. The removal of niche works and separation of living areas set all subspecies to a direct competition with each other.
This competition is not as fair as it may seem. Minority subspecies will typically lose to the majority and disappear as an entity because the majority has more talented people for everything. The hated and persecuted Gagots assimilated to the main population and did not regret losing the pariah status. Frankists, who were expelled from Judaism in the 18th century and obtained a privileged position, assimilated in a few generations to Christian Poles. Jews, who despite sporadic persecutions, were usually in good positions as king’s bankers, did not want to lose their identity as a nation without a land: they resisted assimilation.
Let us assume that there is a minority subspecies ending up to a subspecies struggle with the majority subspecies and that there is no niche or separated location where it can exist. So the subspecies is forced to compete with the majority and that usually ends to assimilation. Let us assume the subspecies is conscious of the subspecies struggle and refuses to assimilate, which can only happen with humans. What can the minority subspecies do?
It must change the odds to be unfavorable to the majority subspecies. The most important thing is to act as a group. That means helping the in-group and hindering the out-group. A tightly knit, mutually helping ethnic or racial group has an advantage over a scattered and divided population. Cultural behavior patterns that increase group unity and encourage mutual help are needed. The take-over method is infiltration. That is the method that has been used by secret societies, forbidden political parties and intelligence agencies. It is as old as culture and there is no better method. It is certain that this method would be used.
Infiltration in a society, which seemingly is a meritocracy, requires building up a network so that unproportionally many in-group members reach important positions, which naturally often requires help from other in-group members, but it appears that all positions are filled on merit grounds. The most straightforward way to do this is to set up, or take over, private universities and elevate diplomas from these particular universities as necessary merits for reaching important positions. This method costs some money, since it is necessary to give generous donations to these universities to guarantee that they have such a high level that diplomas from these institutions can be accepted as high merits. Naturally, the universities should give scholarships to poor but highly talented students, as it raises the level. Preferable these talented students should not belong to the majority subspecies but to some unimportant third one.
Assuming that the private universities working in this manner are in place, the rest is easy: all key positions can be taken by the in-group and if it does not take all key positions, it is only in order to stay hidden. There is still the task of arranging fame to the in-group members. For many fields fame can be directed simply by controlling the media, for some other it requires networks and donations. Everything costs money and every lost penny must be obtained as a benefit from this system. In total the society running this system will be very inefficient, but the truth can be hidden into large loans.
Let us consider the second part, hindering the out-group. It is helpful to divide the out-group population into mutually hostile factions. In practice this means supporting other minorities against the majority. The self-image of the out-group can be weakened by suitably prepared propaganda. It is useful to attack the pillars of the society, that is, home, religion, nation etc. In the end evolution is about the number of offspring. Though this may be a too long term strategy, it can be formulated as a policy. The minority subspecies culture can encourage large families, while for the out-group it can encourage family planning, make aborts easier and promote women to pursuit work careers.
What would happen if the majority subspecies becomes conscious of the subspecies struggle and that a minority subspecies it consciously trying to win it? The majority will become conscious of it sooner or later. It is easy to imagine that the reaction may not be so positive to the minority subspecies. This strategy is risky and should be combined by a plan of moving the minority subspecies to another area. If it is not possible to have separate economic niches reserved for different subpopulations and if the majority subspecies responds to the take-over strategy of the minority subspecies, the latter can survive only if the subspecies occupy different areas.
Have we found a real problem? Firstly, is it realistic to think that some minority subspecies would refuse to assimilate? Gagots of France had nothing against it. Why should not every subspecies think the same way?
All, or even most, will not want to assimilate. Women are race conscious and want to date men from the same race. Most women also want to have children. This is quite the same as with all species. Animals or plants for that matter from any species want to stay alive and to continue their kind. Those who did not want died out long time ago. It is not realistic to think that every modern ethnic group would just be happy to die out and pass some genes to the majority population through deserters. So many ethnic groups have tries to separate by independence war that it is really idealistic to think that everybody wants assimilation.
This is because assimilation is not an equal-level merger of many populations. Closely related populations can merge in this way, as happened with white people in the USA and as can happen with white people in the EU, but it is because they are genetically practically one population. There has not been any merger of main racial groups in the USA and it is unlikely to happen in the EU. Assimilation means the death of the minority cultures and populations. It is the same as Russification of minorities in the 19th century or assimilation of the Sami in Sweden in the 20th century.
Separation to niche jobs and different living areas was a possible solution, but it is basically a caste system. Even though India had, and maybe still has, a caste system and Platon proposed a kind of a caste system, this solution is not any more acceptable in a modern world.
There will be minority subspecies, which refuse to assimilate and cannot find niches. They have only two alternatives: doing a subspecies struggle by twisting the odds, or finding a place where they can be physically separated from a majority subspecies, that is, being the majority subspecies in the separate area.
This part of the problem seems rational, what about the other part of the problem: how will the majority react? One way that may seem to work for some time is that the minority subspecies is conscious of the struggle and does its best, while the majority is kept unaware. The problem is that is works only for some time. The majority subspecies will finally notice that there is ongoing subspecies struggle. What could be the reaction from the majority subspecies?
There are not that many alternatives. The God of the Old Testament commanded Joshua to commit genocide when the Israelites took over the Promised Land. This story is unhistorical, but it shows that the priests were thinking of this problem. A more historical example is from Europe. There apparently was an invasion of Indo-Europeans some 5000 years ago. They replaced most of the male lineages, but kept the female ones. Probably they killed only males but not females. Nevertheless, this solution must be discarded.
If the minority subspecies has already taken over important positions when the majority decides to react, what can the majority do? One alternative is to impose a quota system: each ethnic group gets a quota, which is proportional to its size. This resembles the solution that Czar’s Russia tried to impose to fix the twisted ethnic composition of its universities. The solution did not work too well and it was blamed as discrimination against the overrepresented minority, which claimed that all was according to the respective merits.
So, that does not work so well. What about firing all belonging to the minority subspecies? This was tried be Germany. It is condemned as the worst type of discrimination. It worked better than the quota method, since it removed the fifth column, which the other one left in place. Still, this method is not acceptable.
What is needed is a plan which changes the system to a real meritocracy. I think it is a possible idea and could be studied, but I will not do it here.
The Exodus story of the Bible illuminates another aspect of this problem: what if a minority subspecies grows faster than the majority subspecies, like the population of Israelites grew too large in Egypt. Accepting that the Exodus story is not historical and its historical root is a very different story of Hyksos, we see that the priests had thought about all sides of this problem. Josef had achieved a take-over of Egypt but then there was the inevitable relapse. The result of the population growth in the Biblical story is suppression of the minority and eventual exodus.
A real-life example is from Yugoslavia. The result of the growth of the Muslim population in former Yugoslavia was different than in the Bible story. For a long time Tito kept the tension in check, but finally it developed into a war. The result was not exodus of Muslims: Bosnia and Herzegovina have now a Muslim majority. The solution was splitting the area. Islam was introduced to these areas in the 15th and 16th century, so relatively late, but Muslims were mainly converted locals, so the land was finally not taken by foreigners.
Something that may happen in the USA in some decades is that the Hispanic population grows so large that the whites are no longer a majority. This would be a real-life case of the type in the Bible. A large group of immigrants would be taken to a country and if would grow faster than the local population, which would become a minority. What would be the reaction? One would expect that it would lead to an anti-immigration movement, and this is what seems to happen, but what happens later? Will the country split or will there be an exodus?
So, there is a problem. In the 19th century it was known as the Jewish problem both by Jews and non-Jews. Now nobody talks of a Jewish problem but there may appear an immigrant problem, and there are problems that are not talked of.
We ended up exactly where the so called social darwinists of the 19th century ended up. Those who claim that there are no human races and that the racists of the 19th century were totally wrong do not understand that they addressed a real problem.
They are correct in saying that in a sense there are no human races. A race is a social construct. Races can be divided differently. We may define a mixed race person to any race, group genetically different people to the same race, do all king of these things, but the social concept of a race is a real concept.
The subspecies struggle is also real. It is a mechanism of evolution deriving from the wish to stay alive that most alive things necessarily must have or else they die. This struggle will appear if two or more subspecies occupy the same area and cannot specialize to different ecological niches. Such a situation leads to competition.
If there must be competition, a minority subspecies must become conscious of the subspecies struggle and it must try to win it, or it will disappear by assimilating. There are such minority subspecies, which will refuse to assimilate. There are even very old ones. Notice that there cannot be any very old minority subspecies, which does not try to win the struggle of the subspecies, because such would have disappeared long ago.
The problem follows and the only solution that has been found was physical separation. It was once done with enormous costs. Therefore it is not wise to undo it. But I still think that there may be a better solution. One just should study this problem deeply.