Book contents
- Understanding Human Diversity
- Series page
- Understanding Human Diversity
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 DNA Is Not Our Deep Inner Core
- 2 Our Fate Is Not in Our Genes
- 3 We Are Not 98% Chimpanzee
- 4 Human Variation Is Not Race
- 5 Political and Economic Inequality Is Not the Result of Genetics
- 6 Human Kinship Transcends Genetics
- 7 Men and Women Are Both from Earth
- 8 You Are Not 2% Interestingly Exotic
- 9 We Can’t Breed a Better Kind of Person
- 10 Conclusions
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References and Further Reading
- Figure and Quotation Credits
- Index
4 - Human Variation Is Not Race
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 31 August 2024
- Understanding Human Diversity
- Series page
- Understanding Human Diversity
- Copyright page
- Reviews
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- 1 DNA Is Not Our Deep Inner Core
- 2 Our Fate Is Not in Our Genes
- 3 We Are Not 98% Chimpanzee
- 4 Human Variation Is Not Race
- 5 Political and Economic Inequality Is Not the Result of Genetics
- 6 Human Kinship Transcends Genetics
- 7 Men and Women Are Both from Earth
- 8 You Are Not 2% Interestingly Exotic
- 9 We Can’t Breed a Better Kind of Person
- 10 Conclusions
- Summary of Common Misunderstandings
- References and Further Reading
- Figure and Quotation Credits
- Index
Summary
The first of several fallacies about race is that it has a precise scientific meaning. Biologists sometimes use the term “race” synonymously with “subspecies” – the lowest taxonomic category, which is created by dividing a species into formal subunits. An example close to home would be the four genetically differentiated populations of Pan troglodytes, the chimpanzee. Other biologists reject the subspecies as a taxonomic category altogether.
But whether or not you believe in formally recognized taxonomic human subspecies, as biologists did up into the 1960s, race has always been about the idea that there are a few basic kinds of people. Race is a device for meaningfully sorting people, and we can summarize the idea of race with four properties. First, that there are only a few of them. If there are 700 races of people, then it’s not very useful as a classificatory device.
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- Information
- Understanding Human Diversity , pp. 45 - 60Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024