Text 5. Basic notions race

In genetic terms, a race is a large population of individuals who have a significant number of genes in common and can be distinguished from other races of the species by certain of these genes. The frequent migrations, invasions, and colonizations of our ancestors from earliest times led to interbreeding among populations, which has made racial boundaries ever changing. The human species, almost six billion of us, encompasses a wide range of varieties as measured by the easily perceived traits of body size and shape, hair type, and skin colour, which anthropologists of past centuries used as criteria to classify population groups into different categories called races. The result was an expansion of basic racial stocks or “primary races” (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid) to include Polynesians, Native Americans, and indigenous Australians as separate races or even secondary races. One of the most overused concepts in our society, race has been applied to everything from political units (the British “race”) to linguistic groups (Aryan “race” or Semitic “race”). Such designations may be justified when the intent is simply to imply a sharing of cultural, linguistic, or political attributes, although today most often the term ethnic is used to denote some commonality in religion, culture, or language.

“A large population of individuals who have a significant fraction of their genes in common and can be distinguished by their common gene pool”.

Now the products of gene action are recorded. Identification of simply inherited traits such as blood types, haemoglobins, serum proteins, and enzymes has expanded greatly over the past decades until these traits have been recorded for millions of people around the world. The results show the existence of species diversity unimagined by anthropologists of the last century. What is most important is the fact that much of this variation cuts across the old classic racial boundaries, discrediting reliance on “race types”. We so commonly and carelessly label individuals and groups that we have come to assume that the ethnic or racial designations we use are meaningful in a biological sense, that is, the label identifies a distinct genetic type. This is not correct since ethnic groups and races are often determined by a mix of behavioural, linguistic, and biological traits. The people from Latin American countries and several regions of the United States are typically grouped as Hispanics, for example. Though the implication is that the members have a common genetic heritage, in reality they share a language. Their genetic origins can be traced to European, Native American, and African ancestry to widely varying degrees. Populations of Puerto Rico differ more significantly in their ancestral composition than do those in Guatemala, Mexico, or the American Southwest. The largest Latin American population, that of Brazil, does not fall within the Hispanic category because of its Portuguese origin, with strong admixtures of Native American and African populations over the centuries.

Identification of race or ethnic group was supposed to determine the degree of an individual’s health risk by the frequency of certain diseases among some population groups, which were more or less susceptible to certain major health problems because of their shared genome. Some native Americans have a high rate of diabetes; African Americans appear to suffer more from high blood pressure than other groups do. A type of stomach cancer is more frequent among Asians, bowel cancers among Europeans, and so on. Any study of these and many other diseases allegedly influenced by certain genes must carefully identify the genetic background of the patients under investigation because taking their racial or ethnic classification at face value is not useful and may even be misleading. The state of confusion over genetic background is highlighted by the example of the records of infant health and race or ethnic group. In the united states, the race of an infant of “mixed” parentage is generally recorded according to the following guidelines: 1) if one parent is white, the infant is assigned to the other parent’s race and 2) when neither parent is white the infant is designated the father’s race. One exception is when the mother is Hawaiian, then the infant is classified Hawaiian. Another exception is when paternity is unknown, in which case the infant is assigned the mother’s race. This policy follows a long tradition of treating children of ethnically mixed marriages as if they possess mostly those traits of the minority parent. There are no fixed number of races nor are there any higher or lower, advanced or primitive subdivisions of humankind. Though various classifications of human diversity continue to be used by scientists, many recognize the limitations of distinguishing groups by the surface characteristics that were used in the past. Genes and their products are better applied to population studies, however, when parts of the genetic composition of any population are recorded we find that humans are more alike than they are different. We have been too long misled by the use of superficial, easily perceived traits.