Why do people still use the term 'race' in regards to humans?

Question

'Race' is a concept that was developed in the 17th century and thoroughly discredited in the last. It has been shown that there is a greater genetic diversity in a single troupe of chimpanzees than in almost the entire human species as a whole. Race in humans simply does not exist . It is a purely social construct. Are most people just uniformed?

Answer 1

I guess it's a similar situation with religion. We are brought up with these ideas and so do our children. It could also possibly be just a simple classification method, because humans don't actually have "Sub-species" as some other animals have, race is the next best thing, like dogs have breeds etc. Just a possibility. Although if you want to get all conspiracy like, it's a way that Bush trains the world to identify eachother with stereotypes and create rivalries....Maybe...

Answer 2

A ideological statement worth of an ideologue, such as Richard Lewontin!

Race is merely the older categorization of " species ", or, " population. " While it is true that there is greater intra-population variance among humans, it is also true that there is inter-population variance. ( some quantize it at ~16% )

You chimpanzee analogy breaks down when one consuders that humans are a " bottleneck " species and have no where near the genetic diversity of chimps.

You confuse equality of identity with the the moral precept that we treat with individuals and do nor judge someone against the distrubution of his group, which he has no control over.

Why do so many of you have this confusion?

Answer 3

It is a meaningless term used to separate people. It is an excuse for not achieving. An excuse for failure.

If a young pretty girl walks down a street and sees a group of young teen males just hanging out, looking rough and mean. She crosses the street for avoid them.  Did she use good judgment or is she a racist.

Note I did not state the color of the young men.

If she's white and the young men are black, she is considered a racist. If she is black and the young men are white, they are considered the racist if they accost her. Which is correct?

Or is she just smart for not putting herself into a situation where she is out numbered.

Race is meaningless unless used a human race.

Answer 4

Is the Aborigines referred to as a specie or a race?

Correctly, it should be Aboriginal People, or Tribes.

Genetics has proven that Humans are comprised of different races. What's wrong with that? Human Race is a catch-all phrase for different Human races.

Answer 5

Yes people are misinformed.

The idea of different human 'races' took hold in teh 19th century with the rise of Darwinism. Darwin believed and taught that the white 'races' were not evolved and more advanced than the black 'races'.

Hitler also used this false idea as justification for murdering 'inferior', 'less evolved' people.

The myth lives on. people still believe in evolutionary fairy tales, and some people still think of different people groups being different races.

There is only one human race. Differences such as skin colour account for a minute amount of genetic difference.

The DNA of any two people in the world would typically differ by just 0.2%. Of this, only 6% can be linked to racial categories; the rest is ‘within race’ variation.

There is really only one race—the human race. The Bible teaches us that God has ‘made of one blood all nations of men’ (Acts 17:26).

Scripture distinguishes people by tribal or national groupings, not by skin colour or physical features. Clearly, though, there are groups of people who have certain features (e.g., skin colour) in common, which distinguish them from other groups. We prefer to call these ‘people groups’ rather than ‘races’, to avoid the evolutionary connotations associated with the word ‘race’.

http://www.creationontheweb.com/images/p...

Answer 6

I only mention my race when asked, which is usually on some kind of government form. I love to tell people about my heritage though.

Peace,

Drew

Answer 7

There are plenty of well known geneticists who disagree with the 'there is no race' stance. Neil Risch, springs instantly to mind. Someone did an opinion poll of qualified geneticists and biologists, and it came out in about 67% in favour of race as a concept.

http://66.102.9.104/search?q=cache:CU1-Q...

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-b...

"Responses to surveys of faculty at Ph.D.-granting departments indicate that 67% of biologists accept the concept of biological races in the species Homo sapiens, while only 50% of physical anthropologists do so."

Plenty of doctors acknowledge it, as do pharmaceutical and medical studies. You might also want to look up 'Lewontin's fallacy'. It debunks the 'there is more variation within a race than between them' quote you see about.Also, Lewontin was only referring to blood types when he said that, it's a quote from a speech.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewontin's_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Risch

http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/02/neil-...

http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/...

Interracial DNA makes up about 4% of our human-only DNA.That 'we are 99.9% the same' is actually more acurrately 'we are 99.3% the same', but bear in mind we share 60% of our DNA with a banana. You should also bear in mind it only takes a total DNA difference of 0.4% to create a new species (observed in Cichlid fishes).

The variation in chimps mostly refers to junk DNA (genotype variation), humans vary a lot more in phenotype than chimps (observable physical differences, internal and external).

There's a tendency to play down racial differnces, but they really do exist. Pygmies hit the menopause in their twenties, and are geriatric at fifty. Africans have a gestation period a week shorter than Europeans and East Asians. One in twenty Nigerian births are twins, only one in one hundred and fifty for the Chinese. Nearly all Northern Europeans are lactose tolerant, nearly all East Asians aren't. We aren't homogenous, there are real biological differences between races.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/magazi...

Answer 8

it's just another way of categorizing everyone.I agree with you.....purely social.