Check Your Race in the Box Below

Abstract

The global media regularly categorize people as members of distinct races. Many state and federal government forms ask you to identify your "race." Among the popular options are "Caucasian," "Hispanic," "Black," "Asian," "Pacific Islander," and "American Indian." But I do not check any of those and instead write on the blank provided "Human." Why? Because all humans are one race: Homo sapiens . There is absolutely no genetic or evolutionary justification for "racial" categories of humans. The concept of race was conceived hundreds of years ago by whites to justify the belief that "the white race" was superior to others. For example, in South Africa, the apartheid movement begun in 1948 by the British and Dutch was practiced primarily to separate whites from other ethnic groups and to create a hierarchy of human superiority. This legal form of racial segregation created the categories "white," "colored" (i.e., any mix between whites and blacks), and "black," meaning native African. The presumption was that whites were superior to colored and colored superior to blacks. This ridiculous division had no genetic basis and, fortunately, ended in 1993 as a result of the brave efforts of Nelson Mandela and others. Here is the biological problem with race. The genetic variation within each of the various ethnic groups of Homo sapiens is greater than that between the various ethnic groups. We are one race, just as dogs ( Canis familiaris ), house cats ( Felis domesticus ), and horses ( Equus caballus ) are. Obviously there are many different breeds of all of these animals and they often have striking differences. (Compare a Saint Bernard with a Chihuahua for an analogy of different human ethnic groups.) Furthermore, the origin of breeds or ethnic groups is more …