1. The effects of World War II (1939-1945) on theories of race
For anthropology, the significance
of the war was the realization by anthropologists that the concept of
race, which figured so prominently in so much human misery and was the
reason for so many deaths, had to be carefully examined and reformulated.
From this reexamination came many of our modern concepts of the biological meaning
of human races. One such concept was that while human differences exist,
they are far smaller than was previously thought and have nothing to
do with the superiority or inferiority of human groups.
Anthropologists have not
been very successful in communicating these modern concepts of race
to the general public, which continues to view human differences in
a very traditional manner.
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