It was made clear in both the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) and American Anthropological Association (AAA) statements that the concept of race was originally a social construct to support “psychologically distressing” and “socially damaging” discrimination, rather than a way to distinct populations and their ancestry. In the AAA statement it explains that, “…leaders among the European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each “race”, linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought”. In this time, race was determined solely by physical traits such as skin color, and had very little scientific background or biological basis for these determinants.

Now, the construction of race is scientifically refuted, and the idea that the human species is entirely connected by the ability to survive and evolve in any setting or time, apart from the traits they inherit. The AAPA states, “The human features which have universal biological value for the survival of the species are not known to occur more frequently in one population that in any other. Therefore, it is meaningless from the biological point of view to attribute a general inferiority or superiority to this or to that race.” Contemporary scientific beliefs now share the value of equality among humans as there is the same underlying factor that we all have biological diversity.

These two articles were really interesting because I don’t think that I read was what I was expecting to learn. I though anthropologists were going to define race by cultural values and biological differences by influence of geographic region, but both the AAPA and AAA supported the fact that there is little difference between any human in any race, which I think was a really important concept to learn. In the AAA statement, it was said “Evidence from the analysis of genetics, indicates that most physical variation, about 94% lies within the so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within the “racial” groups then between them.” I think this statistic was really powerful in making the point of how similar we are, apart of socially constructed groups that individuals are put in. Diminishing the long overdue use of the term “race” that separates and harm people is a really big step forward for society and should be more spoken about. I think a problem we are facing is the fact that is construct is so heavily supported through economic, political, and social interventions we may never actually deviate from its true meaning, which is non-biological. Overall, I think it’s relieving when science prevails in social issues to create more equality by way of evidence of shared characteristics between every individual. Going forward, I will keep this in mind in my every day life and future science courses.

Sources: AAPA Statement on Biological Aspects of Race & AAA Statement on Race