As far as we know today, race is a human-constructed concept. Although it is a fact that human skin color means nothing on the ancestral level, the misconception that people with different skin colors are biologically different still exists. From a young age, children’s parents instill their beliefs on race to their children, whether it is scientifically correct or not, and that is what causes social issues due to race.

After reading the statements on race from the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, I felt that one point stuck out to me and was more interesting than the others. Number 7 explains that the human species has moved all around the world – a lot. Whether groups expanded, contracted, or migrated, these movements and changes allowed the human species to adapt to many different climates, conditions, and the environment overall. These movements allowed for more human progress in terms of the advancement of culture. In the reading, human progress is defined in terms of culture advancements rather than anything to do with genetics or genetic improvement. The reading continues to explain in point 7 that during these human movements and changes, new groups would come in contact and some mating would likely occur each time. This mating between two (potentially) completely different populations obviously produced healthy offspring, which means that the populations were of the same species, no matter the physical (skin and hair colors, height, weight, size .. etc.) differences between the populations. Mating between two different populations only has social and cultural obstacles, not biological. The outcome of random mating events between physically different groups occurring over thousands of years will eventually lead to a single, large (worldwide) population with few differences. I found this specific point very interesting because it describes what could potentially happen in our future. The idea of the world’s population looking relatively similar is extremely fascinating to me. The way I interpret this is that instead of populations being assigned or grouped by country or continent, for example, the United States population having an average height, skin and hair color, size, etc., the world as a whole will have those averages. I believe by the time this projected population will exist, race will simply be an idea from the past and another social issue will exist.  

Explaining the non-existence of biological race to somebody who has never considered the topic would be extremely difficult, but I will try my best. Most importantly, race, the color of one’s skin, is simply due to the amount of pigment in the skin. The amount of pigment is inherited as a combination of the mother and father. The consistent combinations have produced a spectrum of human skin colors. Because some people have lighter or darker skin that others do not mean that they are a different type of human. Another way to think about race is in terms of hair color. Hair color is something you are born with, it can change over time, and there is a spectrum of colors. People have different hair colors not because they are of a different species, but because of variation. It is bizarre to think that all people with black hair are of a different species although their parents may not even have black hair. The concept of race is the same. Just because people have different skin tones and colors means nothing on the ancestral level.