Race: Is It Biology or Social Behavior?

Race is defined as a category or group of people widely perceived as sharing socially significant physical characteristics or hereditary traits that set them apart. It is commonly accepted myth that the human species is composed of physically different groups and that these differences are assumed to be genetic. Race is supposed to be based on biological factors. However, the myth is debunked; it is scientifically proven that race is a social construction; although it is based on physical characteristics that presume biological base, most important biological differences between people are invisible and do not play any role in the definition of racial categories. There

Race is a hot topic in our world. We all think we know what race is. After all, we are constantly being bombarded with it whether it be from media, politics, or sports. The truth is that race does not revolve around the idea of biological traits or characteristics. It is a modern concept that we as a society have created to divide people into categories. I will argue that race is socially constructed from a biological, political history, and sociological standpoint, and how it may impact other areas of our society.

There has been a long struggle for the equality of races built from blatant racism and the belief that one race is superior over the other. In some events there has been concern over constitutional rights being ignored creating inequality favoring whites over blacks. The Supreme Court Case of Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 and Brown v. Board of Education in 1954 both dealt with black American citizens who felt discriminated against based on their race. Plessy v. Ferguson had determined that “separate but equal” was fair, but Brown v. Board challenged the previous ruling on racial equality and decided separate could never be equal.

Plessy V. John H. Ferguson dealing with the separation of black and white residents. In 1980 the state of Louisiana passed a law called “ The Separate Car Act” which mandated separate public accommodations for black and whites on railroads. On July 7, 1982 a man named Homer Plessy purchased a railroad ticket and boarded the “whites-only” section of the railroad. Plessy was immediately told to flee the “whites-only” area and enter “black-only” area. Plessy refused and was arrested for violating the Separate Car Act. Interesting enough, Homer Plessy was 7/8th European descent and 1/8th African descent but was considered black. Plessy was then placed into trial in which his lawyers argued the state denied him his rights under the fourteenth amendment which provided equal treatment under the law. Plessy lost every court in Louisiana before appealing to the Supreme Court. In a 7-1 decision, the court decided as long as facilities are equal, their separation satisfied the fourteenth amendment “Separate But Equal”. This was a huge milestone for black citizens in the United States although they later realized it didn’t seem as nice as it did on paper. This was was later overturned by Oliver Brown, et al. v. Board of Education of Topeka, et al in the year 1965 and was mandated unconstitutional for the reason that black facilities weren’t equal compared to white

Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896 was an U.S. Supreme Court case supported segregation under the “separate but equal” policy. It came from an 1892 incident in which an African-American train passenger, Homer Plessy, refused to sit in a Jim Crow car. At the time this was a Louisiana law he was breaking. Dismissing Plessy’s argument that his constitutional rights were violated, the Court came to the conclusion that a state law that “implies merely a legal distinction” between whites and blacks did not clash with the 13th and14th

Race. No, not that kind of race in which you compete with others. The word used in this context is referring to each major divisions of humankind. However, these divisions are much more complicated than understood. Ironically, “throughout the 20th century, race had no standard definition in medical, epidemiological, or health services research” (Rondini et al. 2007: pg. 1423). Does this mean that the concept of race came with the development of science and is intrinsically connected to it? Or is race entirely a social construction? These are the kind of questions to be asked when studying medicine. On one side, the argument is that racial categories should be eliminated from health care and research. This claim is supported by the following

What exactly is race and how do we define it? The concept of race is one of the things that is most intellectual and emotional. Not only does it have such a big meaning socially but also scientifically. There are anthropologists who believe one over the other.

o Everyone Knows It's a Social Construct": Contemporary Science and the Nature of Race Ann Morning o Biological Reality or Social Construct? Robin 0. Andreasent - Arguments against Race as a

I used to think that race was a social construct more of a biological reality until I read all these articles. They changed my perspective and I have come to realize different things. My opinion is now divided into two; I am in that middle point where I can see both ways of the argument as valid and reasonable and agree with both. First, I will explain why I think it is a biological reality, then, I will explain why it can also be a social construct, and lastly how have these debates shaped the views about the nature of ethnicity and consequently defined ethnic identity. We have to avoid viewing either explanation with a negative meaning. The negative history that comes attached to the word “race” is what I think makes us be defensive whenever we hear it and close ourselves up to any reasonable answer we might have to the question, is it a biological reality or a social construct?

The English term ‘race’ is believed to originate from the Spanish word raza, which means ‘breed’ or ‘stock’ (Race). People use race to define other groups, this separation of groups is based largely on physical features. Features like skin color and hair don’t affect the fundamental biology of human variation (Hotz). Race is truly only skin deep, there are no true biological separations between two ‘racial’ groups. Scientifically speaking, there is more variation between single local groups than there is between two large, global groups; the human variation is constantly altering (Lewontin). The majority of today’s anthropologists agree that race is a form of social categorization, not the separation of groups based on biological

Many may argue that race is a social construct and others that it is biologically real. Pigliucci and Kaplan argue in their article, on the concept of biological race and its applicability to human, race is seen as being a form of defining ethnicity or culture has been defined societally and not scientifically or philosophically “the best way of making sense of systematic variation within the human species is likely to rely on the ecotypic conception of biological races” (Pigliucci and Kaplan 2003). A group of organisms residing in a specific environment, genetically adapted to certain environments and distinguished from one another based on “many or a very few genetic differences.” Gene flow between them is common. Thus, a single population

Race in our text is a group of people who share a set of characteristics. These characteristics are not always physical. However, we believe were taught that race can easily be identified by the color of the person skin. The text explains this as a social construction of race. The book explains, the social construction of race is a set of stories we tell ourselves to organize reality and make sense of the world. As humans we have to put things into perspective. Hence we have light to establish daytime and darkness to establish nighttime. Cold to establish winter heat to establish summer.

Humans have "marked biological uniformity in comparison to what is evident in other species" that united us under a single species (Lecture). However, there has always been a push to separate further into races or subspecies. Race categorizes peoples into groupings based on similar uniting physical biological characteristics such as hair, skin, or eye color. These characteristics are then used to differentiate that particular group from others for the purpose of identifying enemies and allies (). Unfortunately these characteristics are not concordant and thus form no consensus on racial classifications. This has happened in the past with other species, but none of which have had such uproar (). This is because humans use race to justify behaviors

On the other hand, race is a classification system of people based on their physical traits, skin color and inherited characteristics (Difference Between, 2011). The conflict between race and culture has created racism and discrimination. As mentioned earlier, despite the obvious ethical dilemmas of inequality, oppression and injustice surrounding racism, the way it evolved has made some individual ignore its presence. The racial privilege and white bias continues to play an integral part in avoiding racial talk. Hence, racism is not only considered to be historical or structural but also a belief of group of individuals against a racial other (Bonilla & Forman, 2000).

If you would have asked me, "Do you believe race is biological or that is was socially constructed?", I would have responded with the same examples you may commonly receive from scientist or anthropologist; that race is in fact biological and deeply rooted and shared from generation to generation by DNA. However, through analyzing Pearson 's, Chapter 11 Race & Ethnicity we discover various examples in which history has built the shelves in which everyone is neatly categorized for its convenience even if not entirely in truth.