Abstract

When in 1950 UNESCO proposed a strategy against racism that is still widely appealed to, it relied heavily on a distinction between biology and social anthropology that was rooted in a certain way of distinguishing nature and culture. Following a genealogy of that distinction, this chapter argues that the core of the UNESCO argument against racism was that race was exclusively a biological concept and that once use of the word came into conformity with the best biology, racism, in the sense of discriminating against someone on account of their biological race, would be eradicated. Racism was thereby narrowly defined as parasitical on a false biology: it was no more than an epistemological error that could be corrected by education. Meanwhile, discriminating against people on account of their culture was left intact. Claude Lévi-Strauss, who had participated in formulating the 1950 UNESCO Statement on Race and who had at that time written in its support, subsequently saw some of its shortcomings.