Race, so seemingly simple but so intricate and personal, too. It appears humans of all time periods and genetic decent have been fighting over race, but is there any reason to? This question is something that has been discussed by Anthropologist for ages, and they have quite a few different answers. Some aspire to the idea that “Racial experience is real, and human biological diversity is real.” (Torres Colón, G. A., 2015). Others, disagree and say no, “race is real, but the authority science has been assigned as it pertains to race has been misappropriated.” (Simon). And all the while, some admit that race it exist, but it has limits and is “only skin deep” (Cassata). There are many more ideas on race as an anthropological subject, but the central argument lies around the question of its construct, Biological, or Social?
Jada Torres and Gabriel Colon from Wayne’s University authored a peer review on Racial experience and Biological diversity, they came to the conclusion that although race is not a biological construct, but rather a social construct, has real social consequences. They went even further to say that the even more pressing issue is that race is “cultural concept that contains implicit and explicit understandings of how collective bodies differ.” I agree with their theory, if you think of race as an experience rather than a box that you are put into at birth many problems relating to racial injustice can be avoided.
The author of the second article, Simon Mashuan, is a reporter for NBC news, it’s important to remember that NBC news is a for profit organization, meaning that every story they put out is attached with a specific set of values, motives, and agenda. This article is not a peer reviewed journal like the first which means its contents cannot be taken as scientifically sound, however Mashuan based his information off an interview with University of North Carolina Anthropologist, John Marks. The main point that Marks is trying to convey is that he views race as a bio-cultural construct, stating that there is much more to race than simply the color of your skin. Marks asked goes on to compare the relationship hominoid in East Africa, may have to a hominoid in West Africa, saying “An East African is more closely related to a West Asian than to a West African; geographic distance is the main determinant of similarity in the human species.” (Marks,2017). Simply because two people may have ancestors from Africa does not mean that they descended from the same line of hominoids. Marks describes anthropologist work as “an unusual burden as the custodians of the scientific narratives of who we are and where we come from” he goes on to describe that those narratives have cultural power and people feel like they own them, this is why he studies race.
The final article is brought to us by an author who specializes in health and wellness from a magazine by the name of Healthline. Cathy Cassata, the author, claims that race truly is only skin deep, making it a social construct. Cassata states that racial categories account for only six percent of human variation and diversity. She goes further to explain that race in humans is not organized into discrete boxes but is instead continuous; Clines are the proof that provide evidence for that claim. A Cline is a gradient line that can best be visualized by picturing the temperature gradient of earth, at the tops and bottoms are the poles which are cold, and towards the middle at the equator the temperatures are much hotter and more tropical. Race can be viewed on clines too. Cassata finishes her point by pointing to the fact that
“Even in our evolutionary past, our earliest modern human ancestors in Europe and parts of Asia were exchanging genes with related human populations that existed at the same time. Mixing of genes and gene flow and spread of genes and population expansion is something that is literally as old as human history itself” (William R. Leonard, PhD Northwestern University)
What Leonard is saying here is that humans have been procreating between populations for as long as history itself, there is no such thing as a pure genetic build. Leonard says race is in fact, only skin deep, making it a social construct.
There are many other arguments as far as how we can categorize race but many anthropologists ascribe to the belief that race is something that is strictly a social construct, bearing social consequence.