Race and Human Diversity

Race vs. Ethnicity
• Ethnicity is about shared cultural and
social characteristics.
• Race is about shared physical
characteristics

Origins of Race in the West
• Thinking about race originates largely in
Europe during the 17th and 18th
Century.

Racial “Types”

Racial Classifcation
• Typically, racial classification ignored
cultural differences between groups
who shared physical similarities.

Castas Painting

Castas Painting

Race and Racism
• There was never a time when the idea
of race, as formulated in 17th and 18th
Century, wasn’t racist.
• Races were always arranged in
hierarchies…with Europeans inevitably
at the top.

Modern Humans
• Modern Humans
display
considerable
variation in skin
color, facial
features, hair
form…etc.

Variation
• Some variation is due to natural selection.
We find darker skin closer to the equator,
as it provides additional protection from
direct sun light.
• Other variation may be due to sexual
selection: people having physical traits that
are seen as desirable are more likely to
have offspring.

Skin color geographically

Range of Skin Tones

Race: How different are we
from each other?
• We can clearly see that humans differ in
appearance (phenotype).
• The question that many scientists ask
is: Just how different are we at the
genetic level (genotype)?

Fraternal Twin Daughters

Problems with Race
• Most genetic diversity is between any
two individuals…only about 5% is
between groups.

Problems with Race
• Humans are very genetically
homogeneous. We don’t display a lot of
genetic variation as a species.

Problems with Race
• Furthermore, genetic differences aren’t
concentrated on racial lines. You may
be more similar genetically to someone
of a different racial appearance than to
someone of a similar racial appearance

Problems with Race
A particular trait may be found more
frequently in one group rather than
another, but there is no trait or gene
unique to only one “race.”

Racial Classification
• Racial classification is based on
phenotype but ignores genotype
(genetic differences).
• Furthermore, racial classification differs
from society to society: there is no
universal agreement on what is “white”
or “black”…etc.