Unclassified Varieties

“Classifications and distinctions based on race or color have no moral or legal validity in our society.”

-Thurgood Marshall

As citizens we are constantly being categorized. How many times have you been asked to indicate which racial/ethnic group you belong to? For what purpose exactly? For me, race categorization is a touchy subject. Why? Because I’m a "hybrid species". It is both stressful and degrading to be repeatedly asked a question for which no suitable option is provided. No single category to identify with. No group to belong to. No box to check. Forms that offer no room for my “variation”. Are you part of one of the “primary” race groups? I’m not. Have you ever been called a “half-breed”? It’s a derogatory term used to describe biracial humans when you want to make them feel like they are only half of a whole. It’s really quite demeaning if one takes the time to think thoughtfully about it. In recent years, I’ve started to see the option to choose “one or more” boxes which is an option that has unfortunately come too late for me to appreciate. To put it plainly, if I am presented with a form that offers no room for variation, I don’t trust the institution or business that “requires” the information, it’s as simple as that. And if you were me, I reckon you would share my attitude on this.

Why does race categorization exist? Because we made it so. Is it harmless? Absolutely not. It’s volatile.

When a great number of the same species are competing for a limited number of resources, competition is fierce, but when billions of the same species are competing for a limited number of resources, strangely, competition becomes “civilized”. Still fierce, but in a much more underhanded sort of way. As soon as our species evolved to the point of being able to create, document and introduce classification systems, they did. Why? To use it to their competitive advantage.

The Great Chain of Being is thought to be one of the earliest classifications systems which was used as a foundational tool to help validate both the existence of "God" and Christian theodicy (Johnston 3). From my perspective, it was a taxonomic system used to warp human reality, designed to "keep everybody in their place" so to speak. This system ranked all living and non-living things in hierarchal order with “God” ranking highest and most “perfect” of all. This system was arbitrary because it was unalterable, everything had a pre-established place, and it was “sinful” to believe otherwise. “There was no room for the emergence of new species” (Johnston 5).

Overtime, classification itself, became a field for Western thinkers to specialize in. Curiously however, it was always the most fixed classification systems that were awarded the highest honour throughout history. The ones that seemed to reaffirm permanency among the species, systems that aligned well enough with The Great Chain of Being and the Christian institutions that relied on the acknowledgement of social hierarchies. Unsurprisingly, it was the “natural philosophers” (who would later be referred to as “scientists” by about the 1800s) who were thought to be “experts” in categorization, some of whom did not (or could not) recognize how loathsome it would be to categorize the human species into “class”, “order” and “variety”, sadly.

Eventually, this categorization of human groups was used an oppressive tool by European colonizers to justify slavery and eugenics in America and by anyone who was benefiting personally from others accepting this hierarchal view of the world. However, as our species evolved alongside many more emerging species, skepticism about The Great Chain of Being increased as did the desire to challenge the biblical account of creation.

By the 1600s, new, observational, and mathematical methods defined by René Descartes would begin taking precedence over former, Aristotelian science as experimental approaches began gaining in popularity. As a result, all theorists who appeared on the scene after Descartes were building their knowledge from a foundation that was based off presupposed assumptions. Assumptions that did not acknowledge universal principles so essential to the human experience.

When the amount of evidence was such that evolution could no longer be denied, unsurprisingly, it was the most mechanistic accounts of nature that would gain the most popularity. Theories which implied no purposeful direction or design in the universe. Theories that would inadvertently bring a strange sense of purposelessness to human life. Theories that would take us further and further away from Aristotle’s Physics and his theory of causality.

Although classification systems have played a key role in unveiling the evolution of species, it is important to understand the history and ramifications of these hierarchal systems. So that when you see a small section on a form that appears to you like a mini classification system or something that reminds you of where you rank in society, you can question that section and the institution requiring that information. Why am I being reminded of where I rank in society? In what order are the races listed and why? While the people who decide what is in included on these forms may claim that these sections are “well intended", any hierarchal system that suggests fixity among species or highly mechanistic accounts of nature reinforce a social construct that can warp our reality. These systems can be very misleading because they can take something whose very nature is change, such as a living organism, and make it appear immutable. Like it’s incapable of evolving. Because when we classify living things, we separate them, we focus our attention on the differences because it is the differences that distinguish one group from another. We segregate. We restrict the growth of things. What’s worse, is if we presume to rank these things in a way that implies a social order, an order that could be manipulated by those who stand to benefit from hierarchal ranking systems and schemes.

There is an interesting instinct in many humans to want to hammer the notion of fixity into others. The idea that we are all somehow stuck in some pre-established place in the cosmos and incapable of significant change during our lives. Perhaps it's the same instinct that compels us to look away from universal principles. Maybe we intuitively know which concepts could be liberating for our competition and maybe it’s the competitive instinct that drives us in these moments. Perhaps it’s the fear of liberating someone dangerous. Someone who might lessen our advantage somehow.

Ironically however, it is only when we are liberated ourselves, that we feel free to liberate others. It is only when we, as multi-celled organisms, reach this stage of our individual evolution that we can feel free to do this. Because it is at this point that we begin to perceive ourselves as complex organisms, ever-changing, constantly evolving. It is only when we have reached our fullest potential, that we can begin liberating others, and society as one whole.

Sincerely,

Heather

Works Cited

Johnston, Ian. History of Science: Origins of Evolutionary Theory. 2000, pp. 1-27.