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Essay On Race Is Not A Legitimate Way Of Understanding Human Biological Diversity

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The first reason why race is not a legitimate way of understanding human biological diversity is that the idea of race is not dynamic. It assumes that trait are the same across a group of people and that they do not variate between different groups of the same race. Furthermore, it clashes with the ideas of the evolutionary theory. In rebut of this statement some people will argue that race is not unchanging and is used in a different way than it was when it was first come up with. That is simply not true. Race today is still as “typological” as it ever was. The second reason is that because variation in humans is something that is constantly happening and exists differently in different places, it is not easy to distinguish the separation …show more content…

Race classification use traits to assign to individuals to a certain race. The traits used in classifying race will not always be specific to one race. For example the sickle cell trait is common to equatorial Africans and Greeks and Turks. The fourth reason is that individuals in the same group will differ more from each other than they as a group differ from other group. Lewontin gathered data on blood group polymorphism in different groups and races and he found that blood group variation was greater within a group than it was in the set of groups. The fifth reason is why race is not appropriate to use when looking at human diversity is that there is no consistency when using race as a classification. That is because race is an idea that varies in the way that people use it classify individuals. Consequently, it is impossible to consistently group people into a “race”. The proxies that people will tend to use when using race to classify are phenotypical and on the grand scheme of things are trivial. The more important proxies when it comes to race change and differ by location and over

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Race is a socially constructed divider based on physical differences such as skin tones, but are not limited to facial features, body features, accents, etc. There are not separate genes, traits, or characteristics that define any single group from another group. Police once walked up to Korematsu to ask if he had seen a “short Asian man”, adding stereotypes to the classification, when the police were looking for Korematsu. Korematsu had surgery performed so his eyelids would have less folds to look more, white (I would say American, but Korematsu is American and that changed nothing). Hence, this touchy subject of race is what makes it so much harder to discuss.

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1629 Words | 7 Pages

7) and laments the idea that science should be hindered by political correctness. Instead, he argues, because of the painful events of yesteryear and the common fear of what road racial genetics leads down, we have all but blinded ourselves to race entirely. In an effort to correct past wrongs, we have inadvertently overlooked an important factor in better understanding our own beginnings and how cultures and people around the world have evolved to modern times. Wade presents his argument with a myriad of facts and citations from prominent figures, lending credence to his point of view. He further points out that this field of study is often marginalized and ignored precisely because of the political connotations of the subject matter.

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In other words, race is understood differently around the world. According to the text book, in West Africa, people are categorized into racial groups based on the status of having noble ancestry and not physical features. Also, according to the article, “Defining Race”, race is categorized base on individuals’ social class status and wealth. Furthermore, the invention of race reflects social, economic, and political aspects in society. For example, White American who has white and black ancestry will be considered as black because black slaves are free source of labor, and white population want to increase the number of labor.

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Race only requires some good guys with big guns looking for a reason” (Coates, p. 6). Race is just a social construct and “is an idea, not a

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1456 Words | 6 Pages

Scientific reasons for race and how it doesn’t correlate to race is shown in Document 5 that different human species should be divided into four groups based on their alleged characteristics and mark themselves with certain things like paints or garments. The document is trying to explain race and categorization of races through the people’s supposed characteristics and only using four groups, proving the correlation between race and scientific reasoning doesn’t work. Also, in Document 10, it’s explained that the four race categories are all “degenerate” forms to “God’s original creation,” and were classified biologically into different groups who were non-Caucasian. This document also explains that race and scientific reasoning does not correlate because it talks about how other races are “downgraded” versions of white and just split them into groups just by looks using colors, creating these unrealistic races with colors, without taking into account any physical scientific reasoning, proving there’s no correlation between race and scientific reasoning, that it was just led on by social and economic reasons. Lastly, in Document 11’s section, it explains that race doesn’t explain human variation and that us humans have a

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285 Words | 2 Pages

It could also be argued that some aspects of the biological view of race are, to some extent, positive today because, over the years, the way scientists saw race has been altered as a result of what the previous biologic view provoked (Darwinian evolution), which was hatred and discrimination towards those groups of individuals that were different to them. This meant that many experts in the field made statements regarding the wrongness within the Darwin evolution. One of these experts was R.L Hotz, who admitted that there was only a single type of race, which was the human race and that it couldn’t be opposed biologically (Hotz, 1997). This, in other words, means that the way race was seen and the way it is now seen by some biologists has

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Admirable. Admirable means deserving respect and approval. In the story ¨The Marble Champ¨ by Gary Soto the main character Lupe Medrano is definitely admirable. The story is about Lupe a girl that's not good at sports trying to win a marbles tournament. To begin with, the reasons she is admirable are because she is intelligent, a good sport, and above all else determined.

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Race and ethnicity are two terms which are used interchangeably in every day conversation, however, there is a distinction between the two. Race is a categorization of people who have been singled out as inferior or superior, often on the basis of phenotype – observable physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape, or other selective attributes. Race is a social construct and has been known to change with historical and political events. Contrarily, ethnicity does not necessarily provide visual clues, instead, ethnicity is categorized on the basis of a shared common culture and includes elements such as language, norms, customs, religion, music, art, literature. Ethnic Groups are developed by their unique history

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It is not like that. The biology is rejected the term “race” as the division of people or ethnic groups. This division is favoured only in the case of cultural, social, political or historical context (term ‘race’ as a division of people have been invented under cultural and social

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Among anthropologists it has become increasingly clear that the concept of race having a biological basis is fundamentally flawed. There a number of flaws with this concept of race. One issue is that features attributed to race, such as skin color, very across the globe in a clinal fashion rather than in uniform groups. Another issue is that there is more in-group variation within races than there is variation between races. Finally, human variation is non-concordant.

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Race exists as long as we believe it exists, but really, it's just a classification system developed by people. It has no meaning or value apart from what we determine it to have. According to researchers there is no genetics for division of human ethnicity, in the sense that different groups inherit distinctive physical traits for example hair, eye, and skin color, race is a reality. Race can be used in prejudice discriminative way to create a barrier, built within people’s minds in society. Which leads one race being superior to another and of there being pure races, race is a myth.

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933 Words | 4 Pages

Racial identity plays a role in the physical and psychological features of humans. Physically, humans in different parts of the globe endure different conditions and environments. Humans adapt to their environments and obtain different physical traits, henceforth, these physical traits have become adjacent to race. Psychologically, ancestral prejudices and influences throughout history have lingered through the generations and have impacted modern racial identities and tensions. Ethnic conflicts of the past such as the Social Darwinist theory of a "superior race" are morally refuted in current times, but that assumption had a brunt impact in which the world is still repairing today.

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1428 Words | 6 Pages

Social construction, folk and scientific definitions of race provide very good ideas as to why societies view race in the manner that they do. Despite, all of them being good ways of looking at race, social construction is the best method to describe race. The reason is that if you examine the scientific and folk notions of race they don’t describe race as accurately as social construction. The scientific notions of race describe the biological differences between different races which are valid points, however they don’t demonstrate the fact that all humans are at most times biologically equivalent to one another no matter what your race is. Scientific definitions at times can be useful but with the topic of race it seems really redundant if everyone has lungs, eyes, hands, etc that function in the same way as every human.

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1190 Words | 5 Pages

The majority of the general public has preconceived ideas as to what a person’s race is based solely on appearance. In general, it can be difficult to identify a person’s race just by looking at their skin color. In each race, there are many variations of skin color and to make it more complex and difficult, not to mention people who are of mixed race. Historically, race has been divided into four categories: black/African American, white, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American/Alaskan Native.

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Race, nationality and ethnicity Race and ethnicity are seen as form of an individual’s cultural identity. Researchers have linked the concept of “race” to the discourses of social Darwinism that in essence is a categorization of “types” of people, grouping them by biological and physical characteristics, most common one being skin pigmentation. Grouping people based on their physical traits has lead in time to the phenomenon of “racialization” (or race formation), as people began to see race as more of a social construct and not a result or a category of biology.

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