When will people realize that there is no such thing as race?

Question

Can someone please be a good antthropologist and tell me that there is no such thing as race? It has been proven that the color of your skin is but a small gentic factor in the total make-up of your entire being! It is one of the last things to develop in your DNA makeup before you become a human being...I just don't get it. I think there is no such thing as race.

Answer 1

There is no scientific thing as race, but there is a significant social concept of race therefore race does exist.  

Answer 2

no there is no such thing as race, what is perceived to be race is most often cultural difference. that and a human need to place things into boxes and categories.

Answer 3

I wish everyone was like you. There would be much less fighting, war, and death if everyone would realize there is no such thing as race.

Answer 4

I love you.  

Answer 5

I agree.

Ignorance is the opposite of knowledge. Slowly the world will see, but it will take time and education.  

Answer 6

You may be right. read about the out of Africa human evolution theory...it says that all humans originated from ones living in Africa...also we all have a common maternal ancenstor called mitochondrial eve!

Answer 7

The truth is that people will always find a reason to hate one another, it's just that simple sadly.  Skin color being easily recongnizable labels us immediately with sterotypes.  Race...you are correct.  We are all humans.  Then again, if we were all the same color, we'd kill each other over who was taller...if we were all the same heigth...it would be eye color...you get my drift?

I work with several other people of different skin colors.  I no longer notice them as such, I see the person behind the skin.  Once you do so, you see that "race" blinds us to who people really are, fellow human beings.  The trick after you see past color is seeing what you have in common, not what makes them different from you.

Answer 8

Judging from the abuse of the term just in this section it should be abandoned since it seems almost impossible for most humans to use it in a neutral manner to describe clusters or groups of shared physical and cultural traits or ethnicity?

So I reluctantly agree!

Answer 9

What, are you kidding? I can't believe it has come to this... political correctness stomps or at least tries to hide SCIENCE.

Of COURSE there is race!! Your race shows how quickly you develop, what kind of bone structure you have, what kind of disease you are more vulnerable to or less vulnerable to. Race is a lot more than just your skin color, sorry!! Stop trying to disregard something science has proven over and over again.

Answer 10

Race is such a bummer!  There is not one single thing which makes one race all that different from another - but there's big differences which are all psychological - all coming from past wrongs.  I don't know how we get together on this thing.  

Certainly Obama running for president is the very best thing that could happen in this country where race is concerned.  Time for Americans to grow up - wake up.  

Answer 11

You are completely right.

From a scientific point of view doesn't exist any race difference between humans, and we humans belong  the a single race.

There is different ethnicity, there are different cultures, different (and minimal) genetic variations, some environmental variations: all those factors (luckily) differentiate humans increasing variety and specie's adaptability.

All the rest is sub cultural b.s. , including the "caucasian" definition, written thousand times here and invented in late 18 th century by a German minor philosopher Meiners, a racist and a strong supporter of slavery, and by a naturalist, Blumenbach, who  decided to define in this way Germans because "the Southern slope of Mont Caucasus produces the most beautiful race of men" but later in life dismissed his own race classification

Edited for  I Forgot I  : your syllogism is a fake syllogism and doesn't work from the point of view of logic.  Even if you give a general and complete evidence  of social perception of race, is not proof that RACES exist. It is  just an evidence that PERCEPTION exist (everyone knows: that is why there are racists. So who is pushing on racial discrimination, and what are the interests behind it?)

I mean: in China many people I met in rural  believe that all "foreigners" speak English. Everyone wants to "train" English with you. It doesn't means that Italians or Greeks or German speak English, isn't it

Answer 12

Race, like beauty, is in the mind of the beholder.  This goes deeper than skin color and perhaps is not a logical thought, but a taught emotional response to a physical perception.

"When will people realize that there is no such thing as race?"  Perhaps never.  The realization of which you speak is a thought process.  The perception of race is typically an emotional one.  Some people believe that race is a reality and act accordingly.  This can not be changed by education.  It requires a change in belief-system, which is very hard to do.

Where the concept of race does its worst is in generalizing that people who look a particular way are all the same to some degree.  This ignores the fact that each and every human is unique.  Even twins and triplets are different from each other (though their DNA might be identical).

Currently only in the field of medicine does the concept of race have any true value.  Some diseases and health conditions have been associated with genetic pools and these have been associated with race.  If other means of recognizing these pools or groups could be devised and taught, there would be no value to the concept of race at all.