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In the history of racial studies, few questions have spurred more debate than one of the most basic: “how many races are there?” The answer, of course, is nine, as I prove conclusively in my book. But for centuries, scholars have debated the question. Before explaining the reasoning behind my own conclusions, let us first consider some of these competing theories.

Take Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, the celebrated French naturalist. After extensive travel and observation, Buffon came to the conclusion that the human race is divided into six varieties—viz., Polack, Tartar, Austral-Asiatic, European, Negro, and American.

But all this proves is that Buffon—wait for it—is a buffoon. Modern science has proven that observation alone cannot justify this kind of conclusion. Buffon is attempting to prove a deductive point using inductive reasoning, and the evidence simply doesn’t support it. I mean, my God, he completely ignores the red-skinned races (Indians and Injuns). I like to think that modern racial theory has advanced beyond this kind of ad hoc Linnaean parceling.

Another self-styled ethnographer was the great Germanic philosopher, Immanuel Kant. He further simplified the racial picture by postulating only four races: White, Black, Copper, and Olive.

Let me first say that I am not at all unsympathetic to this sort of thinking. There is obviously a great deal of insight behind dividing the races by color. Of course, I would add “Yellow” and “Red” to Kant’s picture, for a total of six races. And I would replace “White” with “Normal,” but that doesn’t take anything away from his theory.

Unfortunately, we lose too much when we oversimplify the world’s racial makeup. Kant’s schema might be useful for teaching to schoolchildren, or the poor, but in the interests of science, we demand a more elucidative theory of ethnicity. How, after all, would his four-race hypothesis account for Merpeople, or Jews? Both whites and Merpeople are flesh-colored, and Jews and Arabs both share an olive complexion, but no truly useful racial theory would fail to delineate between them.

Similarly, Jacquinot’s tripartite, Caucasian-Mongol-Negro, view is illuminative but incomplete. No, the only definitive picture of the races is my own, nine-race schema: blacks, whites, Jews, Arabs, Hispanics, Merpeople, Gypsies, Asians, and Indians/Injuns. It is the mark of a good theory, like this one, that it works phenotypically, genotypically, and geographically. Obviously, each of those nine races is aesthetically distinct from the others, and the only two cases where there is a geographic disconnect (Hispanics in both Spain and the Americas, Indians and Injuns) have a very clear tectonic explanation. If there were any fewer races, we would be missing out on important distinctions, but if there were more we would be over-complicating the situation and losing sight of the bigger picture.

Of course, there are always sub-races and minor ethnicities, but these can almost always be grouped within the larger nine races (Chinese, Japanese, Dirty Knees), or dismissed as outliers or archaisms (Fraggles, Doozers).

I hope that this has cleared up this controversy once and for all. You can look for a more nuanced defense in my book, A Practical Guide to Racism, or in my article, “The Nine Races,” in July’s Journal of Aesthetic Ethnography and Phrenology. Now go out there and use what you’ve learned!