Where race comes from

Mendelian genetics can explain varied characteristics between humans such as the hitchhiker’s thumb. It even explains the passing on of the sex chromosomes X and Y, but this concept does not apply for race.

Race does not lie within a chromosome, but rather how people perceive the changes.

“Race is not an arbitrary idea; there are pretty clear differences,” said Eric Cooper, associate professor of psychology.

Race divides people into subspecies based on the evolutionary adaptations human populations faced in their specific environments.

As humans traveled to remote areas of the world and remained separated, they adapted to their environments. The adaptations caused changes such as varied amounts of melanin in the skin to protect humans from UV radiation or from vitamin D deficiency. The result was humans in certain areas had darker skin color and others had lighter skin color.

“Except for race being used in biology to mean subspecies, most biological anthropologists do not see race from a biological viewpoint, but from a cultural and political one,” said Jill Pruetz, associate professor of anthropology.

In modern times, people use race as a sociopolitical tool to define people from different backgrounds. However, it is just a matter of appearance.

Loreto Prieto, professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences cross disciplinary studies, believes that race does not relate to culture and does not affect intelligence.

“Intelligence is not correlated to skin color; it is not based on race, but it is innate and exists in the human family,” Prieto said. “It is something we make up to separate people, and it has very real social and economic gains.”

For example, Prieto said, President Barack Obama is regarded as the first black president of the United States, but he is half white and was brought up by his mother, who is of European-American descent.

“When people are in different environments, they can go through a process of aculturization,” Prieto said. “The people may not lose their own culture, but they learn how to speak and behave as people of other cultures.”

Although Obama is of mixed ancestry, one cannot define his intelligence or culture as relating particularly to being African American or European American, Prieto said.

Over the years, people have speculated the idea of intelligence having a hereditary component based on race.

“Cranial size, IQ scores, and the number of neurons in the brain vary by race, and these results have led some psychologists to speculate that there might be racial difference in intelligence,” Cooper said. “On the other hand, one can’t make the further leap to say that races differ on intelligence because IQ may not measure what all people regard as intelligence. The problem with saying that one race is more intelligent than another is that it requires a shared definition of ‘intelligence,’ which is going to be hard to come by.”

However, Prieto said he believes the idea of intelligence comes from a person’s surroundings.

“Genetics holds set the boundaries, but environment is what brings out the potential abilities and skills,” Prieto said. “Two genius people can have a perfectly average child, and vice versa.”

As the world becomes more connected through technology, people are mixing more, which suggests a changing racial demographic.

“Even over the century, methods forensic anthropologists use to determine race has changed due the physical changes in the demographics,” Pruetz said.

While people perceive race as physical differences, the issue is to educate them about race relating to intelligence.

“Humans have had long traditions of racial fallacies. To address these misleading notions, we need to increase education,” Pruetz said.

Until everyone has equal educational opportunities in the world, we will have racial tensions, Prieto said.

“We need to understand, respect, and appreciate different cultures,” he said.