I think anthropology is so interesting for this very reason, Norman Sauer spoke of the Michigan State Police asking him for assistant in identifying a body. We see it all the time on crime tv shows like criminal minds, people who are able to come in and identify the age and race of decomposed bodies as well as how long they’ve been deceased. This is exactly what Norman Sauer did for the Michigan State police, Norman was able to identify that the body was a Black female and her relative age & height. Anthropologists are able to decipher distinct characteristics of decomposed remains, and have the ability to link those characteristics to tell their race and / or origin of nationality. The non-existence of race section of Norman Sauer’s paper was surprising to me, the opposing race “argued that the discordance of traits made defining races on the basis of more than one or two characters impossible. Since no human biologist would support such limited criteria for defining a race, the race concept was deemed untenable for human populations” (Sauer 1992 p.1). Yet during this time, there showed to be numerous scientists including one geneticist, who spoke in favor of race. This geneticist has a well known quote, “If races did not exist they would have to be invented. Since they do exist they need not be invented, they need to be understood” (Mead 1968 p.78). I find it interesting because we know that race is identifiable by bone structure, we can identify decomposed bodies by an inputting their measurements into an algorithm. Forensic anthropologists can absolutely use these methods to correctly identify a body to an assigned race.
“Race” was used in the United States of America as a social mechanism and it strengthened colonial America by grouping phenotypic traits together. The American Anthropological Association spoke of “race” in the United States, stating that the concept of “race” was linked to these natural categories that established a hierarchy. Making race by these socially exclusive categories and creating this hierarchy allowed English/European to establish the higher suit and African Americans to undergo slavery. The AAA shows the historical research that shows race meant more than physical differences, in History race played a role in so many historical events. Race only played a role because of the natural dominance occurring once the hierarchy was established.
The non-existence of biological race I think can be described by looking at the American Anthropological Association’s explanation. AAA states “human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes” (AAA Statement on Race). This means that they found more variation in the genetic pool within these ‘races’, than they found within the separate races. The non-existence of race is looking at a biological variations that we have not yet found set outlines to determine biological differences. All variation that is found puts these ‘race’ categories simply under the human species.
Sauer, N. J. (1992). Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: If races dont exist, why are
forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them? Social Science & Medicine, 34(2),
107-111. doi:10.1016/0277-9536(92)90086-6
Mead M., Dobzhansky T., Toback E. and Light R. E. (Editors) Science and Ihe Conrepr of Race, p.
78. Columbia University Press, New York, 1968.
AAA Statement on Race. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583