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Researchers have investigated the relationship between race and genetics as part of efforts to understand how biology may or may not contribute to human racial categorization. Today, the consensus among scientists is that race is a social construct, and that using it as a proxy for genetic differences among populations is misleading. [1] [2]
Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses.
Race is thus partly a surrogate for environmental factors such as differences in socioeconomic status that are known to affect health. It is also an imperfect surrogate for ancestral geographic regions and differences in gene frequencies between different ancestral populations and thus differences in genes that can affect health.
The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. [1] At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories.
The racial categories represent a social-political construct for the race or races that respondents consider themselves to be and, "generally reflect a social definition of race recognized in this country". The OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the census to be not "scientific or anthropological", and takes into account "social ...
The debate is over DNA differences, or lack thereof, between different races. The research in the original article they are referring to uses different methods of DNA testing between distinct ethnic groups and compares them to other groups. Small differences were found, but those were not based on race.
Some based their hypothetical divisions of race on the most obvious physical differences, like skin color, while others used geographic location, shape, stature, food habits, and other distinguishing characteristics to delineate between races. However, cultural notions of racial and gender superiority tainted early scientific discovery. In the ...
However, the race concept is comparatively recent. "Race" arose toward the beginning of the Early Modern period in the West, primarily as a way to justify slavery on a massive, proto-industrial scale, taking off in earnest in the mid-15th century, and getting much worse during the "Age of Discovery", i.e. of colonialism and far-ranging conquest ...