Unfortunately, “race” has become a social divider amongst the human race, a concept that has brought along with it many misconceptions and myths relating to a hierarchy. According to the AAA, “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 genes¹.” This means that there is more variation within these racial groups than between them.” But despite that, our concept of “race” has divided us even further and unnecessarily – stemming from the past, when this concept set up a “justifiable” reason to categorize and treat those who are perceived to be lower in the “hierarchy” as not human…because it would be savage to treat another human being that way wouldn’t it? But despite a lot of these ideologies and methods becoming outdated there are still racial tensions and inequality of treatment. Even with the “94%” of genetic similarity mentioned above, race is still heavily dependent on when used to identify and categorize people.

The AAPA statement on biological race² explains how and what categories arose based on physical appearance (and the misconceptions behind the concept). Some misconceptions mentioned were race relating to intelligence as well as race relating to particular behaviors. The AAA statement on race¹ explains these categories set up by “race” a lot through historical details such as slavery.

A particular statement, made by the AAPA, that stood out to me was…

“There is no necessary concordance between biological characteristics and culturally defined groups. On every continent, there are diverse populations that differ in language, economy, and culture. There is no national, religious, linguistic or cultural group or economic class that constitutes a race. However, human beings who speak the same language and share the same culture frequently select each other as mates, with the result that there is often some degree of correspondence between the distribution of physical traits on the one hand and that of linguistic and cultural traits on the other. But there is no causal linkage between these physical and behavioral traits, and therefore it is not justifiable to attribute cultural characteristics to genetic inheritances².”

This emphasized the effect that this concept of race still has on people today – the assumption of culture and a particular race going hand in hand. Cultural practices and ideologies are learned and practiced; just because an individual is born to that particular “race” that has been assumed to be relating to that culture, does not automatically mean that they are part of or practice in that culture. This stood out to me because I feel that this category is overlooked a lot. Being a half, black half Vietnamese individual I have faced with this a lot of these assumptions growing up. Having a culture linked with an assumed “race” has unfortunately cause many to question and even doubt my “role” in being part of the culture – despite growing up in it – based on what I looked like. And this statement emphasizes that the “casual linkage” between genetics and cultural characteristics to be an insignificant one.

Work cited:

1: https://www.americananthro.org/ConnectWithAAA/Content.aspx?ItemNumber=2583

2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mdfR1wVmXmCgXI8FwQPMnYm81uWwJ8Ct/view