Human Diversity

and the Concept

of Race

Human Diversity

The concept of race

Race is generally
used to refer to a
population that is
distinguished from
all other groups by
virtue of displaying
a cluster of innate
biological traits.

Basis of racial classification

Skin colour (black, white, red, yellow)
Hair type (curly, kinky, straight, black,
blond)
Nose size (matangos, sarat etc.)
Height (matangkad, bansot)
Skull size (as proxi-evidence of
intelligence)

Carolus Linnaeus (1735)

Four races
Africanus nigrus (black)
Americanus rubescens
(red)
Asiaticus fuscensens
(brown)
Europeaeus albescens
(white)

Johann Blumenbach
(1752-1840)
Founder of modern
biological anthropology,
collected and studied
human skulls from many
populations around the
world for racial
classification.

The birth of
anthropometry
(systematic measuring/
mismeasuring of
human bodies)

Album of Philippine Types

by Daniel Folkmar

classified Filipinos into 12 basic types and 43

provincial types. The photographs showed a
front and side view of each Filipino, with captions
like Visaya of Bohol, Tagalog of Tayabas,
each described by 8 measures (height, weight,
span or arms, shoulder width, chest, height of
nose, breadth of nose, breadth of head, length of
head), two indices (cephalic index, nasal index)
and racial characteristics such as skin color: the
Cagayan were reddish brown, the Pangasinan
yellowish, the Tagalog, yellowish-brown, the
Igorotte vermillion and the Manobo burnt umber,
approaching burnt siena (qouted from Tans
Palma Centennial Lecture).

Social Darwinism
Races cannot only be
identified but can
also be classified by
order of superiority.
The whites
(Caucasians) being
the more superior and
darker populations
belonging to inferior
types.
Herbert Spencer (1820-1902)

African Slavery in America

Eugenics
A movement aimed at improving the gene
pool by encouraging the reproduction of
individuals with favored features and
discouraging the reproduction of individuals
with features deemed undesirable.
Examples:
Extermination of Jews by the Nazis in Germany.
1970s 60,000 people were sterilized in Sweden, and
11,000 in Finland, as part of government policies to weed
out properties like poor eyesight and gypsy features.

Race and Terrorism

Genetic Racism
THE HUMAN GENOME PROJECT: mapping
of the human genome
Aims to determine genes that are
responsible to certain kind of behaviour
(criminality, homosexuality) and diseases
(cancer, diabetes, eye diseases etc.)
ETHICAL ISSUE: DNA screening potential
source of a new form of discrimination.

Why race is biologically

untenable?
Research on racial differences have led scientist to
three major conclusion:
1. There are many more differences among
people than skin colour, hair texture and other
facial features.
2. The overwhelming evolutionary success of
human species is largely due to its great genetic
variability.
3. Despite our wealth of variation and despite
constant our everyday reference to race, no
one has ever discovered a reliable way of
distinguishing one race from another.

Human Adaptability
Human diversity as a result of
differential long-term adaptation to
environmental stresses, such as
diseases, diet, and climate.
Natural Selection
(if a new trait is beneficial, it will bring
reproductive success to its bearer)

Skin colour

All the so-called races can increase their melanin concentration by

exposure to the sun

Thompsons Rule
Association between nose form and
temperature.
People native to colder and drier climates
tend to have longer, more beaked-shaped
noses than those living in hot and humid
regions.
The nose job is to warm and humidify air
before it reaches the sensitive lung tissues. The
colder or drier the air, the more surface area is
needed inside the nose to get it to the right
temperature or humidity.

Bergemanns Rule
Association between body size and
temperature
Average body size tend to increase in
cold areas and to decrease in hot
ones because big bodies hold heat
better than small ones.

Allens Rule
Association between body shape and
temperature.
The relative size of protruding body
parts ears, fingers, toes, limbs, and so
on, increases with temperature.
Increasing body surface relative to
mass allows for more efficient heat
dissipation.

Sexual Selection
As opposed to natural selection
where the natural environment itself
chooses who will thrive or decline, in
sexual selection, it is the individual
the prospective mate who will choose.
Culture bound: the idea of what is
sexy, marriageable person varies
across cultures.

Human plasticity
The ability of humans to alter
themselves their behaviour or even
their biology in response to changes
in their environment.
Example: height (is affected by
nutrition); lactose intolerance (increase
exposure to milk increase your
tolerance to lactose); large barrelshaped chest for high altitude.

Social Race
Race as a social construct; our current
racial classification has no biological
basis.
Each culture/society has their own ways
of classifying people. Part of our nature to
bring order to an otherwise disorderly
assemblage of things and people
around us??? Mechanism to guard our
body boundaries, afraid of biological
contamination???

AAA Statement on Race

Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g.
DNA) indicates that most physical variation,
about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups.
Conventional geographic racial groupings
differ from one another only in about 6% of
their genes. This means that there is greater
variation within racial groups than between
them . . . Physical variations in any given trait
tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly
over geographic areas.

CLINE
Biological differences really do
occur. However, these
differences are gradual rather
than abrupt. Such gradual
shifts are called clines.

When I born, I black

When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black
And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you gray
And you calling me colored ??

A Poem by an African Kid

Source: http://www.thelocal.se/discuss/index.php?showtopic=20252