People from various parts of the world have different features that can be used to identify where they originate. The question of whether or not human races truly exist is now a prevalent one in the scientific community. Some scientists believe that race is biologically meaningless while others believe that race can be used to determine medical treatment for a person (Jorde & Wooding, 2004). Although there are genes that determine the different physical characteristics of people their genetic variation is mainly due their geographic location. There is some biological basis for the phenotypic differences in humans, but the way we define and understand these differences are flawed. There is no individual trait or gene that separates members of one race from all the members of another race (Brace & Gill, 2000).
Race is often used as a predictor for a person’s likelihood to get a disease and the effectiveness of medical treatments. The prevalence of certain diseases is different among populations. There are now opportunities for scientists and physicians to tailor medication to specific groups based on specific genetic variants revealed by genetic tests. This new genomic information is being interpreted based on social labels such as ‘race’ and ‘ethnicity.’ Using race as a determinant of a person’s likelihood to get a disease and as a way to create ‘racialized drugs,’ that are designed for people of a certain race, has some benefits but can be potentially harmful. Some groups are more likely to develop certain diseases than others but a person’s risk for common diseases is determined by an unknown pattern of genetic variants, environmental factors, lifestyle characteristics and some random processes (Rotimi, 2004).
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... Ancestry is a better indicator than race of whether a person carries a disease. Most variation is within, not between races. Two random people of the same race are likely to be as genetically different as two from a different race (Rotimi, 2004).
Whether race is real or not depends on how race itself is defined. There are phenotypic differences among different populations but whether those differences are significant enough is debatable. The patterns of features that we notice in different races can be identified as characteristics of the areas from which they come and where their ancestors have been for thousands of years. We call the differences we see in each other ‘race.’ Race exists as more of a social construction than a significant biological entity. Race has a more social role in society and first came about as a sociocultural construction (Smedley, 1997).
Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity, Mark Nathan Cohen, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 1998, pp.B4-B5. The term race refers to a biological subdivision of a species. At one time, scientists held that there were as few as three such subdivisions in the species Homo sapiens: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Mark Anthony Cohen points out that this is an antiquated view, yet it lingers as a common belief in society. Mark Nathan Cohen makes an interesting point in his article “Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity”. While the article does deal wholly in the realm of the opinion, it is supported by numerous scientific facts. In fact, Cohen’s usual method of drawing in a reader is to make a blanket statement and then “beef it up” with several scientific facts.
Race, which is another characteristic of demographic data, is a modern occurrence. It is being questioned and more than likely not a valid determinant. Our textbook in chapter five states, “racial identity or race consciousness is both controversial and pervasive. When early explorers in the 15th and 16th centuries came across people who were different from them a debate began which groups were “human” and which were “animal” (pg. 191).
There is a specific meaning to race and how its role impacts society and shapes the social structures. Race is a concept that “symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies” (Omi & Winant 55). In other words, Omi and Winant get down to the crux of the issue and assert that race is just an illusion. Race is merely seen as an ideological construct that is often unstable and consisting of decentered social meanings. This form of social construction attempts to explain the physical attributes of an individual but it is constantly transformed by political struggles. The rules of classifying race and of identity are embedded into society’s perception. Therefore, race becomes a common function for comprehending, explaining, and acting in the
NitroMed’s study marks a growing movement that has begun to cite genetic makeup, specifically race-related genetic makeup, rather than environmental or other confounding factors as the source of disease. This shift in presumed cause of health-related problems raises many troubling implications. With race-based therapeutics comes the assumption that there are biological differences between races. The dangers of such implications are vast, the most pressing problem being the ambiguity of race, particularly with regard to genetic composition. Considerable studies have demonstrated the lack of genotypic correlations among members of a given race. Similarly, socioeconomic and other confounding variables have a profound impact on health and thus must be considered in the discussion of race-based therapeutics and research. This tension between social and biological conceptions of race is now at the forefront of discussion among scientific scholars seeking explanations for the relationship of disease and ethnicity (Foster 844).
If race was “real”, then racial classifications would be constant all around the world, but someone considered black in the United States might be considered white in Brazil. In addition, racial categorizations in census forms vary widely between countries and across time in the same country. It is important to note that, in 2003, as part of the Human Genome Project, researchers concluded that “3 billion base pairs of genetic letters in humans were 99.9 percent identical in every person”. Which leads me to say that race is a social construct. It is important to explore this further to better understand the capacity race has to affect other parts of life.
Why is it impossible to use biological characteristics to sort people into consistent races? Review some of the concepts such as “non-concordance” and “within-group vs. between group variation.”
Race has no biological meaning. There is only one human race; there are no subspecies, no single defining characteristic, traits, or even gene, separates one “race” from another. Instead of being a biological concept, race is a social construct, and a relatively modern one at that. It was created to give light-skinned Europeans an advantage by making the white race superior and all others inferior. Throughout its history, the concept of race has served this purpose well.
Through research of DNA samples, scientists have been able to declare that race is not biologically constructed due to the similarities between human genes. Nevertheless, in reality, people still emphasized on biological aspects such as skin color, or hair texture to categorize others into different races. This in turn, denied the true identity of race, which it is culturally constructed. Ethnicity, by definition is also culturally constructed, therefore it greatly resemble race. There is no real clear line to distinct the two.
In the past, races were identified by the imposition of discrete boundaries upon continuous and often discordant biological variation. The concept of race is therefore a historical construct and not one that provides either valid classification or an explanatory process. Popular everyday awareness of race is transmitted from generation to generation through cultural learning. Attributing race to an individual or a population amounts to applying a social and cultural label that lacks scientific consensus and supporting data. While anthropologists continue to study how and why humans vary biologically, it is apparent that human populations differ from one another much less than do populations in other species because we use our cultural, rather than our physical differences to aid us in adapting to various environments.
This variation has no substantial ties to skin color, but does show genetic variation from different geographical locations in the world. These variations are not categorized in groups of what people call race, but rather ethnicity. Ethnicity, defined by Stephen Cornell, is a sense of common ancestry based on cultural attachments, past linguistic heritage, religious affiliations, claimed kinship, or some physical traits. Race, as most people catoragize it, encompuses many ethnicitys. Ethnicities are local populations, this makes sense that they would tend to have less genetic variation compared to each other then the rest of the world as they would share genetic adaptations resulting from the environment they live in. This can include skin color, but can also
This can potentially be a problem as all humans are different, and therefore each case is different. Race can sometimes be a misleading factor that leads to a false, premature diagnosis but this is so rare. When diagnosing a disease, medical professionals send results into a lab to be tested. Stating that knowing the race of a patient often causes misdiagnoses is absurd.
United States is a home to people from all over world with different skin tones, languages, cultures, and features. The only way one can tell the difference between individuals are by their appearances. Since America is a diverse country, interracial marriage is a common thing. With interracial marriage being a common thing, babies with two more different genes is not surprising.
To begin with, “race is a social, political, and economic construct. It is not biological. There is no existence of race in the Western world outside of the practices of colonialism, conquest, and the transatlantic slave trade” (Lecture 1). While the origins of race are centered around distinctions of humans based on presumed physical, ancestral or cultural differences, race is merely a floating signifier and therefore only has meaning, but that we give it (Lecture 1 and 2). This floating signifier has taken on different meanings in the U.S. and Latin America. For example, in the U.S., the one-drop rule is enough to deem someone black. On the other hand, Latin America considers pigmentocracy and uses Mulatto categories based on appearance and color
Race is a term that references on differences such as, facial characteristics, skin color, and other related characteristics. Race is not in reference to genetic make up. A feature of race as a social construct is that it down plays the extent to which sectors of population may form a discrete ethnic group. Based on specific characteristics race makes up a person and differs within groups. In other words race is a large group of people distinguished from others on the basic of a common heritage or physical trait.
Marks, John. "RacismEugenics, and the Burdens of History." personal.uncc,edu. Ix International Congress of Human Genetics, 20 Aug 1996. Web. 31 Jan 2014.