Race and Physical Characteristics
Human skin color vary for different populations. The leading explanation is that skin colour adapts to sunlight intensities which produce vitamin D deficiency or ultraviolet light damage to folic acid. Other hypotheses include protection from ambient temperature, infections, skin cancer or frostbite, an alteration in food, and sexual selection. The gene that causes light skin color in Europeans is different from the gene that causes light skin in East Asians. Europeans have a different version of the SLC24A5 than East Asians possibly indicating that they evolved light skin independently.
The most widely used human racial categories are based on various combinations of visible traits such as skin color, eye shape and hair texture. However, some argue that many of these traits are non-concordant in that they are not necessarily expressed together. For example, skin color and hair texture vary independently. Some examples of non-concordance include:
- Skin color varies all over the world in different populations.
- Epicanthal fold are typically associated with East Asian populations but are found in populations all over the world, including many Native Americans, the Khoisan, the Sami, and even amongst some isolated groups such as the Andamanese.
- Lighter hair colors are typically associated with Europeans, especially Northern Europeans, but blond hair is found amongst a limited, small number of the dark skinned populations of the south pacific, particularly the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
Others argue that this is just an example of Lewontin's Fallacy. On the contrary, if several traits are looked at the same time, then today forensic anthropologists can classify a person's race with an accuracy close to 100% based on only skeletal remains.
A 2010 examination of 18 widely used English anatomy textbooks found that every one relied on the race concept. The study gives examples of how the textbooks claim that anatomical features vary between races.
Read more about this topic: Race And Genetics
Famous quotes containing the words race and, race and/or physical:
“What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings—they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong.”
—Norman Douglas (1868–1952)
“This race is never grateful: from the first,
One fills their cup at supper with pure wine,
Which back they give at cross-time on a sponge,
In bitter vinegar.”
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861)
“I became the Incredible Shrinking Mother the year they started junior high. If our relationship today depended on physical clout, I would have about the same influence with them that the republic of Liechtenstein has on world politics.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)