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| Scientifically Speaking "Races Of People" Don't Exist |
| Anthropologists everywhere agree: Human variation doesn't group people into races; humans vary across a spectrum. Thus, when people refer to "races" of people they are only referring to a social idea. There is no biologically distinct group of "White People". If "white people" exist, they exist in much the same way that political parties or religions exist. These groupings are based on social criteria, not biological criteria. Races exist only in our minds. |
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I agree, but unfortunately racism does. |
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The Webster Dictionary and other sources for definitions is what determines the definition of what
races of people are. Most arguments people have are because they are really disagreeing on the
definition of words.....like the word "racism" itself means different things to different people.
Everyone who acknowledges any characteristic about people is a racist to some people. |
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Dogs come in all kinds of colors and with all kinds of different traits. So how many races of dog
are there? |
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This is absolutely correct. Concepts of race and ethnicity are all social constructs and are not
based on inherent biological traits. In the 1920s, the eugenics movement--which was present in both
Europe and North America--argued that all human behaviour and physical characteristics boiled down
to race. This, of course, was later recognized as a totally inaccurate, pseudo-scientific
explanation, based very heavily on racism, bigotry and, especially, on anti-semitism. Eugenics was
popular in Nazi Germany during the 1930s, but also in the United States, where systematic
discrimination against African-Americans and Jews still existed. Arguing that race is anything other
than a social construct ensures the existence of totally unnecessary divisions among people.
Biologically speaking, there is no such thing as a white or black race. The best evidence that these
categories are merely artificial constructs is the differing definition of both white and black. For
example, the One-Drop Rule was used to determine who was black and who was white. Essentially, the
argument was that any American who had a single drop of African ancestry was classified as black,
even if their 'race' would not have been physically apparent. |
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I disagree. While all genetic traits may exist in all populations and sub-populations to some
degree, certain attributes are more prominent in some than in others. The Risch study on genetic
make-up for example found that genetic traits do not vary evenly across large populations. There are
clusters of people with distinct genetic characteristics, and these clusters correspond to
traditional perceptions of race.
Even thinking about it in the abstract, it is clear that, until fairly recently, people from one
part of the planet did not interact much with people from elsewhere. Genetic development has been
highly localised for millenia. It would be amazing if the people in those areas had not developed
distinctive attributes. |
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 For and Against Recent Activity
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03 Apr 2008 06:45
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