Race is an Illusion

Race is an Illusion

Pointe Viven - Jesse Bluma. All rights reserved.
http://pointeviven.blogspot.com/

Table of Contents

Page 3.....Question 1:2

Page 5.....Question 2:2

Page 7.....Background

Page 8.....Alan Goodman

Page 9.....Biology

Page 12.....History

Page 13.....Mythology

Page 15.....Video

Page 17.....Sources

Page 19.....Resources

Question 1:2

West Africa’s gold and salt mines became a great source
of wealth. West African traders carried cloth, copper,
silver, and other items. West Africans also bought and
sold slaves. These slaves were a subspecies and
different race.

What’s the misconception?


Answer 1:2

Slaves were not a subspecies or different “race”.
Humans have not been isolated enough to separate into
subspecies or “races”.


Question 2:2

The Period of Disunion in China was followed by
reunification by the Song, Tang, Song dynasties.
Despite efforts of Christians, Europe was a dangerous
place after the fall of Rome. The Chinese and
Europeans were different races with different skin
color, hair, and musical talents.

What’s the misconception?


Answer 2:2

The genes for skin color have nothing to do with the
genes for hair or music talent. Skin color is
determined by sun exposure, not “race”. Humans are
genetically 99.9% identical.


Background

We all know that people look different. Anyone can tell
a Czech from a Chinese. Are these differences racial?
What does race mean? There's less - and more - to race
than meets the eye.

Race is a modern idea. Ancient societies, like the
Greeks, did not divide people according to physical
distinctions, instead according to religion, status,
class, even language. The English language didn’t even
have the word “race” until it turns up in 1508 in a
poem by William Dunbar referring to a line of kings.


Alan Goodman,
Biological Anthropologist

“To understand why the idea of race is a biological
myth requires a major shift, an absolute shift, a shift
in perspective. It's like seeing, you know, what it
must have been like to understand that the world isn't
flat. And perhaps I can invite you to a mountain top
and you can look out the window and at the horizon and
see, ‘oh what I thought was flat I can see a curve in
now,’ that the world is much more complicated. In fact,
that race is not based on biology, race is rather an
idea.”


Biology 1:3

Race has no genetic basis. Not one characteristic,
trait or even one gene distinguishes all the members of
one so-called race from all the members of another so-
called race.

Human subspecies don’t exist. Unlike many animals,
modern humans simply haven’t been around long enough or
isolated enough to evolve into separate subspecies or
races. Despite surface appearances, we are one of the
most similar of all species.


Biology 2:3

Skin color really is only skin deep. Most traits are
inherited independently from one another. The genes
influencing skin color have nothing to do with the
genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type,
musical talent, athletic ability or forms of
intelligence. Knowing someone’s skin color doesn’t
necessarily tell you anything else about him or her.

Most variation is within, not between, "races." Of the
small amount of total human variation, 85% exists
within any local population, be they Italians, Kurds,
Koreans or Cherokees. About 94% can be found within any
continent. That means two random Koreans may be as
genetically different as a Korean and an Italian.


Biology 3:3

We all have the same 35,000 or so genes, over time
mutations cause variations in our DNA. Today, some
genes, like those for skin color, come in different
forms. In a few genes that control the colors of
melanin in our skin, different alleles, different
mutations occurred that were positively selected so
that many of us with very light skin lost the capacity
to make dark melanin. Dark melanin blocks out some
ultraviolet light and is found where sunlight is
intense. Lighter melanin is found where sunlight is
less intense. Sunlight is essential to have adequate
vitamin D. In northern latitudes with very little light
during the winter, one needed every bit of light that
one could capture in order to be able to have adequate,
active vitamin D. If we were to walk from the tropics
to Norway, what we would see is a continuous change in
skin tone.

History

Slavery predates race. Throughout much of human
history, societies have enslaved others, often as a
result of conquest or war, even debt, not because of
physical characteristics or a belief in natural
inferiority. Due to a unique set of historical
circumstances, ours was the first slave system where
all the slaves shared similar physical characteristics.

Slavery existed long before “race”, such as the Romans,
Vikings, Chinese, Japanese, West Africans, Greeks,
Arabs, Maya, Aztecs, Egyptians, Mesopotamians,
Kushites, Indians (in India), and Sumerians.


Mythology 1:2

Where did the myth begin? By the 1920s, a single drop
of blood reflecting African ancestry was enough to
identify any individual as Black. Twenty-eight states
passed laws forbidding intermarriage to safeguard white
racial purity. Racial purification was one aim of the
Eugenics movement. The science of eugenics rested on
simple Mendelian genetics. One gene each from father
and mother, it was believed, gave rise to any trait,
physical, behavioral, even moral. Eugenicists used the
science of the day to advance a social agenda widely
accepted - to breed the best and the brightest, always
white, and breed out society's worst and weakest of all
colors. Eugenicists proposed a series of restrictive
measures unthinkable today. Yet they were adopted
within and outside of America.


Mythology 2:2

Taken to their extreme, they fueled one of the
century's greatest horrors. The Nazi propaganda
machine pointed out that their eugenic policies were
entirely consistent and in fact derived from, ideas of
American race scientists.


Race - the Power of an Illusion
Video (4:59)

Click link to play <iframe width="500" height="375"
src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/V9YMCKp5myI"
frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

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Sources

newsreel.org

pbs.org


Images

<p>Image: <a href="http://www.freedigitalphotos.net"
target="_blank">FreeDigitalPhotos.net</a></p>

pbs.org






Resources

ABCDE Rule http://pointeviven.blogspot.com/2012/05/
whats-abcde-rule-aim-at-melanoma-walk.html

Above Genetics http://pointeviven.blogspot.com/2011/08/
above-genetics.html


Race is an Illusion

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