Interactive Questions on Racism

Skin comes in an infinite array of colors. It is just our human tendency to simplify and organize that groups skin tones into white, black, brown and so on.

However, there is nothing about skin tone that makes people similar or different, besides the skin tone itself.

That is why race is not a person’s skin color.

Ethnic group membership is something that is taught to people.

Marriage within ethnic groups does create certain genetic commonalities.

However, these genetic similarities are far outweighed by random genetic differences among all people.

This is why ethnic groups are not races.

You are right that race is imposed on us by other people’s views. There is nothing about human bodies that divides us into any specific race.

Every human being can mate with any other human being.

Therefore, we are all one species. If we are all one species, then we are all one race. The human race.

In fact, no one really knows what race is. If it is some kind of systematic division of humanity into physiological groups, then there are thousands of different possibilities based on genetic analysis.

If it is some kind of systematic division of humanity into socio-cultural groups, then there are thousands of different ambiguities depending on how one defines the socio-cultural group.

Race is best defined as an arbitrary categorization of people according to some set of characteristics, usually related to geographic place of historic ancestry.