Race is a very difficult term to explain. It has many definitions, and its portrayed in different ways within different cultures. Within the walls in America race is valued at a great level.  Even though sociologist have explained race as a social construct some still find ways to vary the definition and idea.  The AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) revealed that “all humans living today belong to a signal species, Homo sapiens, and share a common descent.” This particular section in the AAPA reading stood out to me. In the early 1800’s many believed that most races specifically whites and blacks weren’t one in the same, that biologically whites or blacks couldn’t have evolved from one single species.  I’ve read and studied many scholarly articles, where authors are trying to convince people that different races were evolved from different animals. I’m not one that’s easily convinced, so I ignored that entire article.  Within the AAA article I felt that they explained greatly why race is such a huge deal in society. This goes back to the article I was talking about prior. People used race to show superiority over other races i.e. slavery. This is very significant on why one can’t begin to understand the thought of the non-existence of biological race.The AAPA provides some evidence for their particular stance, but not as much as the AAA (The American Anthropology Association.)   

 The AAPA explains how and why the concept of race was developed versus the AAA who focus a lot of historical facts on why society have come to create and accept these categories of race. AAA begins speaking about how the concept of race was introduced in the early 18^thcentury to refer to specific populations brought in colonial America. Names were then given to these population of people hence Indians and blacks (or in the 19^thand 20^thcentury “the negro.”)  A hierarchy was then establish positioning the colonizers/Europeans or white people at the very top. This allowed the inhumane mistreatment of slaves, and race justified this treatment for many years even in present day. The in equality was said to be God given, socially this made since to many. Blacks and Indians were put to the bottom of the Toto pole, and the darker skin was then thought to be inferior versus the lighter skin complexion of whites was looked at as superior.   

 I can’t seem to remember the scholarly article I refereed to earlier in my post, I read it in Soc 215, a sociology course I took here at MSU. The article compared blacks to chimps and whites to an actual human being. This comparison was to convince one that whites, and blacks are vastly different in antimony. Within the AAA article they reference this comparison, to highlight the ideology of “race,” and how this has spread across the world into other areas. Obviously, this isn’t true but it’s a myth that is alleged by many. To begin to explain to one why race is biologically non- existence I must start with a fact and a reference from the AAPA article that without a doubt all living people are “homo sapiens.” Even though we are genetically diverse, we are one in the same. Skull size, skin tone, and body size are solely based off environment and sometimes hereditary.  The concept of race isn’t prevalent because there are many other ways to classify living things. Even though it is complex it has been done.