If you ask someone to define 'race', the chances are they'll somehow relate the term to where someone is born, but it is also likely they'll focus on skin colour. (The documentary Is It Better to Be Mixed Race? reveals that Brazilian people have 130 terms for the variations of skin colour found in their country.) But what is the real meaning of 'race'?
Download a PDF about the History of Race.
Race: the dictionary definition
A large group of people with common ancestry and inherited physical characteristics; a genus, species, breed, or variety of animal or plant. Oxford English Dictionary.
Race: in the beginning
The term race was borrowed from plant and animal classification structure (taxonomy) and transferred to humans by Europeans as they first travelled the world and saw that the world was inhabited by different peoples. Implicit in their classification and taxonomy was the notion of superiority and inferiority. Europeans placed themselves at the top of the taxonomic tree, with other races placed in varying orders beneath them. Some of the labels used to classify races included Mongloids from Asia, Negroids from Africa, Australoids from Australia and Caucasoids from Europe.
These top-down classifications of race crystallised as white supremacy and ultimately culminated in the horrors of the Nazi death camps, where 11 million people were exterminated based on race, creed, or whatever trait was deemed 'undesirable'.
After World War Two the world became aware of the horrors perpetrated to innocent people in the name of 'science' and the newly formed United Nations issued a Statement on Race in which it was made clear that 'the likenesses among men are far greater than their differences.' The document continued: 'For all practical social purposes 'race' is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth 'race' has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years it has taken a heavy toll in human lives and caused untold suffering.'
The word race became uncomfortable to many scientists and still is today. In the 21st century, even putting the word race before the word 'science' appears sinister. So what about modern day scientists? What do they study?
The study of human diversity
Despite difficulties with the word race, scientists are still interested in the study of human variation and they study subjects like human diversity, population diversity and population genetics.
Scientists today tend to study 'populations' not 'races'. The term race is so culturally loaded that some scientists often avoid the word altogether, although others find it to be a very convenient and useful term.
Increasingly, however, the study of human diversity is much more than the story of five or so races: it is the story of hundreds if not thousands of populations, many of which overlap with each other.
Population differences are small but undeniable
Scientists will always emphasise that there are more differences between individuals than between groups. As much as 93% of genetic variation is between individuals and 7% is between populations. Above all, scientists emphasise that population differences have nothing to do with inferiority or superiority.
Physical difference: adaptation to different ancestral environments
Superficial physical differences such as curly hair, dark skin, pale skin, red hair, epicanthic eye fold, large noses, small stature, big muscular frames and so on are the inherited traits that endlessly fascinate people and form the basis of what are often called racial difference. In scientific terms these physical traits are called 'phenotypic'- which means they resulted from the interplay of genes with environment.
Many of these physical traits evolved in populations as a response to the adaptive needs of their ancestors. As humans moved into new varied environments they adapted. In colder areas, eyes narrowed to reduce exposure, while in hotter areas skin darkened to protect from ultraviolet radiation. Inside the body we evolved to fight new pathogens and parasites. Different modern day populations, the descendants of these early groups, still exhibit these traits.
Evidence of these differences is encoded in our DNA. Genes that encode for these traits are easy to fingerprint and see. Forensic scientists can access it when they have little else to go on. But unless your ancestors have stayed in one place and have remained indigenous for tens of thousands of years, the chances are your outer appearance belies your geographical ancestry. Movement and mixing over the last centuries has meant that the old map of humanity's more discrete groups has become blurred.
So, if judging a book by its cover often proves incorrect, how do scientists find out where you truly come from?
Where do I come from?
Population geneticists have discovered a way of telling where you come from that has nothing to do with the way you look. They study regions of DNA that are neutral, that don't code for anything, yet tell the geographic story of human migrations, of human populations.
Population geneticists study 'markers'- tiny genetic batons passed from parent to child down through the generations that are present in all of us. These hidden markers act a bit like genetic surnames to tell us where we come from. However, unlike surnames, the genetic markers tend not to change over time, so can be used to trace ancestry back thousands of years, and while we only have one surname, we carry vast numbers of markers that all help tell a story.
By looking at the spread of these markers scientists have been able to draw a detailed map of human migrations through time, out of Africa to every corner of the globe. And there are often surprises when an individual has their ancestry markers analysed, the results often belying their outward physical appearance. One person may look like they're from the one race but the DNA analysis can reveal much more, a plethora of populations in the past, stretching back tens of millennia.
Download a PDF about the History of Race.
Find out more about the Race and Science Season.
