Amazing Race

The United States never fails to constantly amaze me. Here we are in 2008, and Barack Obama is making history by being the first "black" presidential candidate. The part that amazes me is that it is even an "historical moment" in the 21st century! This supposedly modern nation is still hung up on matters of race. Even more amazingly, they don't even know how to define race. Some people who are called black in the US are lighter than some people defined as white. This is very confusing to non-Americans!

The US Census in 2000 listed the following as races: White, Black or African-American, American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoans, Other Pacific Islander and Other race. They seem to confuse ethnicity, nationality and race as meaning the same thing.

Some people argue that although race can be applied to other species, it is virtually meaningless in humans. If you look at widely divergent parts of the globe you will see differences. However, if you were to travel on foot you would see a clinal gradation as you walked. You would see no definite boundaries or differences in neighbouring areas. The definitions of race are somewhat arbitrary and based on custom and as such are a social construct.

If anything, the US Census may wish to enquire more about ethnicity and nationality of origin rather than the meaningless concept of race. Caucasian types live in Asia, yet they are not called Asian; they live in Africa, but are not called African. Various traits such as colour of skin varies by environment. With modern mobility the distinguishing characteristics of what we call "race" are blurring even more. Who knows, maybe in the future some environmental pressure will give rise to new groupings.

Our closest living biological relative is the Chimpanzee. Genetically, we share at least 99% of our genome with Chimps. They have now been reclassified as part of the sub-family Homininae to which humans belong.

The Hominids:

To me at least it seems trivial to classify people by skin colour, hair type, eye shape and facial appearance. We're not that far away as a species from our closest relatives - that 1% difference in genome separates us from Chimps! Apparently, there is more genetic diversity in the rain-forest chimpanzees than in the whole human-race!