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Race and Human Diversity
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Race and Human Diversity
Modern Humans
• Modern Humans (Homo sapiens) display considerable variation in skin color, facial features, hair form…etc.
Race and Human Diversity
• Clearly we look different. And these differences are due to random mutations.
• Many of the physical differences are due to natural selection. Different environments favor different traits.
Skin color geographically
Variation
• Some variation is due to natural selection…other variations might be due to sexual selection.
• If you have physical characteristics that are considered beautiful and desirable you have more chance of having offspring.
Race vs. Ethnicity
• Ethnicity is about shared cultural and social characteristics.
• Race is about shared physical characteristics
Origins of Race in the West
• Thinking about race originates largely in Europe during the 17th and 18th Century.
Racial “Types”
Race and Racism
• There was never a time when the idea of race, as formulated in 17th and 18th Century, wasn’t racist.
• Races were always arranged in hierarchies…with Europeans inevitably at the top.
Race and Human Diversity
• One question anthropologists have asked is this: just how different are the groups we call races?
Fraternal Twin Daughters
Problems with Race
• Most genetic diversity is between any two individuals…only about 5% is between groups.
Problems with Race
• No trait or gene distinguishes all the members of one “race” from all the members of another “race.”
So what is race?
• If we can’t find a clear biological definition for race, what is it?
Race is a social construct
• Race is a folk taxonomy, a system of classification based, not on science, but on historical and cultural ideas.