Race is something so ingrained in our everyday lives that it’s hard to imagine how little it actually means to a person’s behavior and personality. Both of the statements showed how race was used essentially as a construct to prevent certain people, usually colored people, to certain rights when there is no scientific evidence that race should be used to separate groups of people. I think if everyone came to understand this, it would help the world become much less divisive and cruel.

One particular statement that I found very interesting was, in the AAPA statement, that “Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past.” This was fascinating to me because being pure of race used to be a very important and honorable thing that people of power valued highly. Finding out that there really is no such thing as “being pure” made me laugh a little bit thinking about how dumb humans used to be. But it also made me subdued because all of those people that were treated harshly because they weren’t pure enough should have never had to experience that treatment. This issue is still relevant today, as people are still being judged and treated wrongly based on their race.

Another very compelling statement was in the seventh numbered point of the AAPA statement in which the topic of mating between different races is discussed. The AAPA states that “The global process of urbanization, coupled with intercontinental migrations, has the potential to reduce the differences among all human populations.” This declaration caught me off guard as it is such a simple yet assertive prediction that is never really talked about. The idea that urbanization could cause people of many different races to interact and eventually mate with each other which would slowly assimilate cultures and other differences between groups of people is something that actually makes a lot of sense. Although it doesn’t seem like this is happening, I definitely think that the beginning stages are occurring now and that eventually it will happen. I don’t think humans will ever completely reduce their differences, but I do think that differentiation could become harder and harder to determine, making people generally more understanding.

If I had to explain the non-existence of biological race to another person I would start off by asking the person when they think the concept of race was first introduced. Assuming they don’t really know when, I would then tell them it was in the 18th century and was mainly done to separate colored people in a negative way. I would then discuss the scientific analysis of race, showing how 94% of physical variation of people occurs within the same racial group, meaning race does not mean basically anything when describing someone physically. If this fact and other facts don’t convince them, then I would direct them to the understandingrace.org website and have them read each lesson then take the quiz at the end. I think that website does a very good job at using straightforward language as well as visual aids to show how biological race does not exist.