UNESCO statements on race

[3]: 1 It was drafted by Ernest Beaglehole, psychologist and ethnologist; Juan Comas, anthropologist; Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, sociologist; Franklin Frazier, sociologist specialised in race relations studies; Morris Ginsberg, founding chairperson of the British Sociological Association; Humayun Kabir, writer, philosopher, and twice Education Minister of India; Claude Lévi-Strauss, one of the founders of ethnology and leading theorist of structural anthropology; and Ashley Montagu, anthropologist and author of The Elephant Man: A Study in Human Dignity, who was the rapporteur.

The text was then revised by Ashley Montagu following criticisms submitted by Hadley Cantril; Edwin Conklin; Gunnar Dahlberg; Theodosius Dobzhansky, author of Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937); L. C. Dunn; Donald J. Hager, professor of anthropology and sociology at the University of Princeton; Julian Huxley, first director of UNESCO and one of the many key contributors to modern evolutionary synthesis; Otto Klineberg; Wilbert Moore; H. J. Muller; Gunnar Myrdal, author of An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944); Joseph Needham, a biochemist specialist of Chinese science; and geneticist Curt Stern.

[citation needed] It described Brazil as having an "exemplary situation" regarding race relations and that research should be undertaken in order to understand the causes of this "harmony".

"[3]: 1 Furthermore, in doing this UNESCO took up again, after a lapse of fifteen years, a project which the International Institute for Intellectual Co-operation has wished to carry through but which it had to abandon in deference to the appeasement policy of the pre-war period.

It matters little, therefore, whether the diversity of men's gift be the result of biological or cultural factors.The statement argued that there was no evidence for intellectual or personality differences.

That statement had a good effect, but it did not carry the authority of just those groups within whose special province fall the biological problems of race, namely the physical anthropologists and geneticists.

"[2]: 38 "The concept of race is unanimously regarded by anthropologists as a classificatory device providing a zoological frame within which the various groups of mankind may be arranged and by means of which studies of evolutionary processes can be facilitated.

"[2]: 42 In 1952, UNESCO published a follow-up book, The Race Concept: Results of an Inquiry, containing the 1951 statement, followed by comments and criticisms from many of the scientists engaged in the drafting and review of the text.

[4] Four scientists are listed as "frankly opposed" to the statement as a whole: C. D. Darlington, Ronald Fisher, Giuseppe E. Genna of the University of Florence, and Carleton S. Coon.

According to Michael Banton, "The 1950 statement appeared to assume that once the erroneous nature of racist doctrines had been exposed, the structure of racial prejudice and discrimination would collapse.

[1] In 1978, the Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO, a political body consisting of representatives of member states.

It also argued for implementing a number of policies in order to combat racism and inequalities, and stated that "Population groups of foreign origin, particularly migrant workers and their families who contribute to the development of the host country, should benefit from appropriate measures designed to afford them security and respect for their dignity and cultural values and to facilitate their adaptation to the host environment and their professional advancement with a view to their subsequent reintegration in their country of origin and their contribution to its development; steps should be taken to make it possible for their children to be taught their mother tongue.

A final text of was adopted by the meeting of government representatives "by consensus, without opposition or vote" and later by the UNESCO General Conference, Twentieth Session.