Race and Human Biology
I had a sociology professor a few years ago who repeatedly made the point that "race is a social construct"; she would, virtually every day, restate the phrase, "There is no biological backing to the notion of race." However, she would never satisfactorily expand upon exactly what this idea meant. From the way she presented the concept of race, she made it seem as if a woman of African descent and a man of European descent were just as likely to have children who appeared Asian as they were to have children more visibly related to their biologic backgrounds. Clearly, there is a relationship between what could be termed "race" and human biology; specifically what my professor never made apparent was that precisely where people draw the lines between races is what is arbitrary. Yet, the evident result of this, to my professor, was that "race is a scientifically groundless conception." Although the first two statements made by her could undoubtedly be understood as accurate-from a certain point of view-her last point is simply too broadly declared to be true. Just because the definition of a race must, necessarily, be subjective, does not suggest that race itself is an invalid or useless concept. Essentially, my professor seemed un
Zack seems to scoff at the notion that race can be understood as something like breeds within other animals-but this is precisely what it is. Race is a pattern within a population that is less significant than speciation. So, even when biologists seek to define what a "human" is, they come across the same problems that haunt the notion of race. To define a human, the biologic definition of a species must be used: "a set of individuals who are potentially or actually interbreeding to produce fertile offspring." (Cowen, 43). Yet, this definition leaves the door open for many gray areas in nature: instances where it is impossible to determine whether animals are members of the same species or not. Lions and tigers, for example; when they do interbreed they produce fertile offspring, but it is unclear whether they would interbreed in nature freely. They no-longer coexist in the same habitats-because of human actions-so they are not clearly different species. Similarly, you could, based upon the biologic definition of species, claim that an individual born with a genetic defect who is unable to have children is not a homo sapien-another gray area. Based upon this, it would seem that people like Zack are forced to argue that the notion of species has no basis in scientific fact. Still, they have merely pointed out the arbitrary characteristic of all definitions; desk, apple, race, breed, and species are all concepts used by human beings, however vaguely they may be defined. Additionally, problems exist even when attempting to identify where one object ends and another begins. This is true of all physical objects: parts of objects are at a single point and time parts of other objects that we generally regard to be separate from them. Essentially, where we draw the line between an apple and the air, for example, is completely arbitrary and fails to coincide with any physical truth. Still, even from this perspective, it would be ridiculous to say that scientifically there is no such thing as an apple, or that there is no scientific backing for apples. We all seem to possess an implicit grasp of what an apple is and that it is somehow different from the air around it. Similarly, we all seem to have an implicit understanding of what a race is, and that differences between human beings can be categorized upon such terms. So, randomness alone cannot be utilized as a reason to condemn the existence of anything, including race. In any biologic population there will be variability that occurs on a bell curve against the number of occurrences in that population; this means that al
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Approximate Word count = 1745
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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