| Races And Genetics Essay, Research Paper
According to Blauner the similarities in white and black perceptions are.. Whites focus historically on negative black behaviors; 86% disagreed with the Rodney King trial verdict, see race as an expression of racial conduct; don t see it as a as some larger pattern of racism (institutionalized or not); see racism in the past (not the present!); that racism doesn t exist anymore, see progress in the scale of integration; the size of the black middle class is emphasized by whites; demonstrate the progress of blacks as a reason for why racism doesn t exist anymore; whites see race as a periplural reality, believe that everybody should assimilate into one society, whites prefer the old fashion definition of race, and see race as fiction.
Black tend to view the verdict of the Rodney Kind trail and not the trial itself; believe in a system of institutionalized racism in effect today (double standards); disillusioned with the concept of integration; concerned with those blacks left behind; see a negative assessment of progress or change; see race as central importance, are constantly reminded of their racial appearance by non-blacks; favor keeping races different and ethically separate ideas; feel powerless; black tend to like the view of the modern inflated definition of race; that whites are part of a social structure that is inherently racist; see race as a social reality; and see how they were brought to this country involuntarily yet others who have come voluntarily to this country fair better economically better in the long run.
My perceptions of race in America is that currently, it is used as a powerful folk taxonomy of races ; that our categories take on a reality beyond that which is warranted, and we use them as cues to tell us how to think about other groups of people and how to treat them. Historically, we can all too easily confuse culture and biology, and this effect can even be seen in scientific investigation, such as those that look for some biological racial differences in t he cultural measure of intelligence called IQ.
What is race? To me race has a duality of meanings. It has a biological meaning, and a cultural reality. Biologically, it means the same thing as subspecies, and cultural categories to classify and account for human diversity. The conditions required for subspecification are as follows: 1.) Some degree of acceptable population isolation with a limited gene flow 2.) Environments different enough to promote adaptive selection in different directions 3.) Genetic variation among the populations, and 4.) Enough time! No human population has been isolated long enough; cultural endogamy changes due to political, ethnic, and religious ideology domination; Gene flow is the norm for humans; Culture is our adaptive mechanism for survival and is the major reason for adaptation as humans for the last 100,000 years; and the bottom line is that we aren t that genetically diverse as a species. About 75 of all human genes are monomorphic (having only one allele); that is, all humans are identical for three-quarters of the human genome
(The total genetic endowment for our species as human beings) This is a higher percentage than lets say a chimpanzee. The genetic variation that does exist — the remaining 25 percent of our genes multiple alleles is actually fairly evenly distributed. If some great cataclysm left only Africans alive, that remnant of the human species would still retain 93 percent of the total genetic variation of the former population of the species, although certain traits, like skin color, would have different average expressions throughout the entire human population as a whole. The human species fails in theory to meet the criteria for division into subspecies or biologically different races of man. No real boundaries exist between any of the trait expressions and skin color does not change abruptly as a world map may imply to someone. Color changes gradually in populations closer or father away from the equator of the Earth. It does not come in neat little packages with clear geographic limits. Neither does blood type. At the biological level, then, human variation exists, but human races do not.
The idea of race can be cultural, and is , used to make prejudgments about people and to determine a person s place in society, often without regard to that person s individuality or their personal characteristics.
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