(no subject)
A coworker prompted me to include this, because she found my acknowledgment of our difference in skin color to be "offensive," and followed up her statements with questioning whether or not I am a racist. Not only did this brief, unnecessary confrontation--on my part--make me very upset, it simply made me angry and feel I had to keep who I am to myself.
This is from my cultural anthropology textbook. Anything in bold was added emphasis, on my part.
Popular racial classifications are primarily cultural constructions, not biological realities. For example, the five categories--black, white, American Indian-Alaskan Native, Asian-Pacific Islander, and Hispanic--used by the U.S. Census in 1980 and 1990 are culturally produced legal fictions that have no scientific validity. Culturally defined racial categories mix legal citizenship and ethnicity with naive assumption about skin color and blood, but they ignore the genetic facts of life. For example, the U.S. government follows a blood quantum rule and recognizes "American Indians" as legal tribal members only if they can demonstrate ancestry of at least one-fourth "full blood." But "full blood" is itself a legal fiction based on previous tribal enrollments. Thus, "American Indian" is legally declared to be a biological category. Similarly, an American with a single black grandparent is likely to be classified "black." The underlying myth of such racial categories is the genetically "pure" races exist. Nazi attempts to "purify" an Aryan super-race during World War II were equally misguided and caused enormous human suffering.
Human racial classifications are scientifically inappropriate for several reasons. Humans constitute a global, polymorphic, continuously interbreeding population. For the past 30,000 years, no peoples, other than a handful of tiny populations on remote islands, have been isolated long enough to produce more than a relatively small genetic distance from any other human populations. Therefore, any scientific classification of people into genetic populations must necessarily be an arbitrary exercise based on variations in gene frequencies....A careful observer could distinguish thousands of "races" based on particular traits....
Geneticists and anthropologists sort human genetic variation into two broad types: classical adaptive traits and neutral polymorphisms. Classical traits are highly visible features, such as skin, hair and eye color; body build; and the shape of the face. These traits are the basis of popular racial stereotypes, but they are not discrete variables. They are produced in complex ways by the interaction of multiple genes, and they vary continuously among individuals and populations, as shades of skin color along a gradient from light to dark. For example, populations can be described using fine distinctions in average skin reflectivity along a scale of 1 to 100. Classical traits are actively selected for by climate, and they often correlate with latitude. For example, darker--rather than lighter--skin, eyes, and hair provide better protection from intensive solar radiation. Natural selection, the differential survival of various phenotypes under differing environmental conditions, means that populations that are not closely related may come to resemble one another in classical traits if they move into similar environments....
Popular racial classifications fail because they falsely assume purity and stability of genetic inheritance. Not only is racial purity improbable, it would be extremely maladaptive. All the processes of biological evolution--including mutation, genetic drift, migration, and natural selection--are constantly changing the genetic composition of every population. The genetic characteristics of populations are not discrete bundles of features; they overlap in complex ways, and the frequencies of particular genes vary gradually along geographical gradients, or clines. By AD 1500, many local populations had the necessary stability for natural selection to produce superficial adaptations in skin and body form to regional climates. However, since 1500, the dramatic increases in migration and travel and the demographic disturbances initiated by the emerging global commercial culture have introduced tremendous genetic diversity into formerly indigenous populations. Any European or American is likely to have ancestors drawn from many formerly indigenous gene pools. For example, someone born in 1975 theoretically would have 510 ancestors, assuming 25-year generations and counting back eight generations to great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents born in 1775. Counting back nineteen generations to AD 1500 would include more than a million ancestors! Only extremely naive racists could pretend that each and every one of their ancestors came from the same discrete gene pool.
This is from my cultural anthropology textbook. Anything in bold was added emphasis, on my part.
Popular racial classifications are primarily cultural constructions, not biological realities. For example, the five categories--black, white, American Indian-Alaskan Native, Asian-Pacific Islander, and Hispanic--used by the U.S. Census in 1980 and 1990 are culturally produced legal fictions that have no scientific validity. Culturally defined racial categories mix legal citizenship and ethnicity with naive assumption about skin color and blood, but they ignore the genetic facts of life. For example, the U.S. government follows a blood quantum rule and recognizes "American Indians" as legal tribal members only if they can demonstrate ancestry of at least one-fourth "full blood." But "full blood" is itself a legal fiction based on previous tribal enrollments. Thus, "American Indian" is legally declared to be a biological category. Similarly, an American with a single black grandparent is likely to be classified "black." The underlying myth of such racial categories is the genetically "pure" races exist. Nazi attempts to "purify" an Aryan super-race during World War II were equally misguided and caused enormous human suffering.
Human racial classifications are scientifically inappropriate for several reasons. Humans constitute a global, polymorphic, continuously interbreeding population. For the past 30,000 years, no peoples, other than a handful of tiny populations on remote islands, have been isolated long enough to produce more than a relatively small genetic distance from any other human populations. Therefore, any scientific classification of people into genetic populations must necessarily be an arbitrary exercise based on variations in gene frequencies....A careful observer could distinguish thousands of "races" based on particular traits....
Geneticists and anthropologists sort human genetic variation into two broad types: classical adaptive traits and neutral polymorphisms. Classical traits are highly visible features, such as skin, hair and eye color; body build; and the shape of the face. These traits are the basis of popular racial stereotypes, but they are not discrete variables. They are produced in complex ways by the interaction of multiple genes, and they vary continuously among individuals and populations, as shades of skin color along a gradient from light to dark. For example, populations can be described using fine distinctions in average skin reflectivity along a scale of 1 to 100. Classical traits are actively selected for by climate, and they often correlate with latitude. For example, darker--rather than lighter--skin, eyes, and hair provide better protection from intensive solar radiation. Natural selection, the differential survival of various phenotypes under differing environmental conditions, means that populations that are not closely related may come to resemble one another in classical traits if they move into similar environments....
Popular racial classifications fail because they falsely assume purity and stability of genetic inheritance. Not only is racial purity improbable, it would be extremely maladaptive. All the processes of biological evolution--including mutation, genetic drift, migration, and natural selection--are constantly changing the genetic composition of every population. The genetic characteristics of populations are not discrete bundles of features; they overlap in complex ways, and the frequencies of particular genes vary gradually along geographical gradients, or clines. By AD 1500, many local populations had the necessary stability for natural selection to produce superficial adaptations in skin and body form to regional climates. However, since 1500, the dramatic increases in migration and travel and the demographic disturbances initiated by the emerging global commercial culture have introduced tremendous genetic diversity into formerly indigenous populations. Any European or American is likely to have ancestors drawn from many formerly indigenous gene pools. For example, someone born in 1975 theoretically would have 510 ancestors, assuming 25-year generations and counting back eight generations to great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents born in 1775. Counting back nineteen generations to AD 1500 would include more than a million ancestors! Only extremely naive racists could pretend that each and every one of their ancestors came from the same discrete gene pool.