Race: Social Concept, Biological IdeaJoin now to read essay Race: Social Concept, Biological IdeaRace: Social Concept, Biological IdeaGloria RamonRace, in the common understanding, draws upon differences not only of skin color and physical attributes but also of language, nationality, and religion. Race categories are often used as ethnic intensifiers, with the aim of justifying the exploitation of one group by another. Race is an idea that has become so fixed in American society that there is no room for open-mindedness when challenging the idea of racial categories. Over the years there has been a drastic change with the way the term “race” is used by scientists. Essentially, there is a major difference between the biological and sociological views of race.
In 1758 a Swedish botanist named Carolus Linnaeus established the classification system still in use for various forms of life. He listed four categories that he labeled as “varieties” of the human species. To each he attributed inherited biological as well as learned cultural characteristics. He described Homo European as light-skinned, blond, and governed by laws; Homo American was copper-colored and was regulated by customs; Homo Asiatic was sooty and dark-eyed and governed by opinions; Homo African was black and indolent and governed by impulse. We can in retrospect recognize the ethnocentric assumptions involved in these descriptions, which imply a descending order of prestige. Most striking is the labeling of the four varieties as governed by laws, customs, opinions, and impulse, with Europeans on the top and Africans at the bottom. In fact, different populations within all four varieties would have had all four forms of behavior. (8).
In later years, many European scientists defined race by separating Homo Sapiens into three to six different groups. * Australoid: those from Australia, Melanesian islands * Caucasoid: Europe, North Africa, South west Asia * Mongoloid: East Asia, Siberia, the Americas * Negroid: Central and Southern Africa * Native Americans * Polynesians The scientific justification for these six groups was that members of these groups shared similar physical characteristics and originated in a particular region of the world. During the nineteenth century theories of race were advanced both by the scientific community and in the popular daily and periodical press. One idea that was taken into belief was racial standing based on skull size and features. The human skull was used as a way to justify the idea of races. The structure of the skull, especially the jaw formation and facial angles, revealed the position of various races on the evolutionary scale, and a debate raged on whether there had been one creation for all mankind or several. (1).
Biological anthropologists have intensively studied and described the biological variations that exist in the human species. Anthropologists agree that there are three major types of explanations for the variations within and between animal species. Natural selection, proposed by Charles Darwin, is the first explanation. It refers to how, in a particular habitat, variations in hereditary traits enable some members of a population to survive and have more offspring that inherit the favorable traits of the parents. (6).
A second explanation is called gene flow. The flow of genes occurs because people from one population mate with those in another. In the colonial history of the United States persons who had emigrated from Europe mated with enslaved Africans. After the Civil War people from these two populations were able to marry in some states, and informal mating continued in all states. Geneticists in the 1950s compared hemoglobin traits in African Americans, Europeans, and West Africans and concluded that as much as 30 percent of the measured traits in African Americans came from European mating. Today in the United States those people who identify themselves as black or African American range in skin color and other traits from light-skinned to dark-skinned. Various patterns of gene flow are to be found between peoples all around the world, adding to the complexities of race in world. . (5).
Homocelytic Displacement: The “Negro” and “African” Divide
The term “nigger” has a long history in history. In fact, the term also evolved in a minority of societies in the early twentieth century. But it is not surprising there have been numerous misnomers and even misconstruals of the term. To understand what has actually happened there must first understand what is the nature of human race in different cultures, and how much difference a minority group has made. The key point that needs to be emphasized is that race, particularly the African diaspora, is a human race. Human beings are not created equal. Race is something that can be constructed as some form of natural selection, the process by which genetic data are drawn from a population. It is not a trait, like hair or skin color, a feature, like ancestry, a combination or a physical trait, a “nigger.” It is something unique, something that must be taken into consideration when, if it is given up, will make a human a better human in some way. And what may be more surprising than this is what race has done to the “African” in the last two centuries. This race had to give up on the white supremacist ideals that were gaining influence in black manhood, but then it eventually gave up on that and began to embrace the “non-White” and to embrace the African. In the same way that the African tribe has to give itself up by its very ways (like the fact that most tribes have already taken the “no and no” stance) the African has to give itself up and have to give up on race. And then its leaders and all the members of its family have also taken that way. They have left the tribe in the hopes that it will be able to give up on that culture and what they feel it has lost, which is just the beginning of what is to come. Race has also made some things more challenging to people over the years, because it has taught them not to be racist and to treat people with contempt, while others have taught them some understanding of humanity itself. And that is not good for the rest of us. That is a good thing but it will be difficult for the rest of us to have that understanding. (6).
Historical Narratives
African American Genomic Testing
In the 1930s, the United States was the world leader in using the genome sequencing technique to test individuals for race in a population. From 1940 until 1973, scientists were using genotyping to study races, and then to compare the genome of an individual to another individual in the United States. Genetic testing was used by the United States Food and Drug Administration to test for inherited races. The genetic testing provided a snapshot of the gene pool of the individual, and the study revealed that the individuals that had inherited those races actually had better genetic performance than their peers. The testing was based on the data from more than 3,000 individuals. Over 100 individuals were examined before and after the testing: African Americans with African ancestry, non-Hispanic blacks without and black Hispanics residing at or near a family member’s home, and so on.
The research found significant changes in gene flow between populations that were at different ethnic groups. Black Americans showed up more likely to inherit from African Americans compared to whites. Conversely, non-Hispanic whites only performed about the same number of genetic tests at three or more states in the United States.
In other words, there are
The third process “genetic drift” a phenomenon that occurs from one generation to another or when people move from one geographic area to another. By chance the next generation, or those who move, may differ from the parental population in some genetic characteristics.