So what is race? While separating people into different categories might seem easy to the layperson, most of whom grew up using things like skin color, slanted eyes, or other visual characteristics to classify people, defining race in a scientific sense is much harder.

The definition of race

Biologists define race as a population that differs from others in the frequency of certain hereditary traits. Sociologists define race as “a social construction” in which “categories of people [are] set apart from others because of socially defined physical characteristics.” (Thompson & Hickey, 2008,pp. 258-59) The first definition can’t be applied to humans, since on a biological level we are all of the same race. This leaves only cultural memes to define race, which are highly suspect.

Caucasian, Asian, African American, Latina – the categories cultures use to define race have “turned out to be neither definitive nor particularly helpful,” write Haviland, Prins, Walrath & McBride. “The visible traits were generally found to occur not in abrupt shifts from population to population but in a continuum that changed gradually over a north-south gradient, whereas another might show a similar change from east to west. Human skin color, for instance, becomes progressively darker as one moves from northern Europe to central Africa, whereas blood type B becomes progressively more common as one moves from western to eastern Europe.

“Finally, there are many variations within each group, and those within groups were often greater than those between groups. In Africa, the light-brown skin color of someone from the Kalahari Desert might more closely resemble that of a person from Southeast Asia than the darkly pigmented person from southern Sudan who was supposed to be of the same race.” They sum it up by saying, “In short, what we are dealing with here are not biological categories at all, but rather cultural constructs.” (Haviland et al., 2005, pp. 323, 327)

Even the U.S. government, which nonetheless uses racial categories in its own efforts at social control, admits it’s all a ruse. As William Thompson and Joseph Hickey note, “From the beginning of the census, government officials have made it clear that neither ‘science’ nor ‘bureaucratic rationality’ has offered much guidance in racial classification” (2008, p. 261) In other words, racial categories are something we invented that are neither accurate nor useful.

How cultures define race

Compounding this problem is the fact that our ideas about race and the classifications we use change over time, and different cultures also define race in different ways. For example, in Brazil, even biological siblings may be said to be of a different race based on the lightness or darkness of their skin color, and a person may change races several times in their life as their physical appearances or socioeconomic circumstances change. (Thompson & Hickey, 2008, p. 258) Elsewhere in the world you’ll find a very different pattern. “In many Polynesian cultures, where skin color is not a determinant of social status, people really pay little attention to this physical characteristic,” write Haviland, Prins, Walrath & McBride. “By contrast, in countries such as the United States, Brazil, and South Africa, where skin color is a significant social and political category, it is one of the first things people notice.” (2005, p. 320)

Meanwhile, a sociologist in Nigeria informally polled locals to see if they could spot any important physical differences between him and a fellow researcher who was Japanese. “All respondents agreed that they could detect no differences. To them, Japanese and Americans looked the same. Yet local people were certain that the half dozen ethnic groups in the area were very different in appearance – though neither researcher could detect them.” (Thompson & Hickey, 2008, p. 260)

It’s noted that “Ethnic groups also may be redefined as ‘races’ for political or economic purposes. For example, when the Nazis found it impossible to distinguish Jews from their German neighbors on physical grounds, they mandated that all Jews wear yellow stars. The fact that they could not identify them did not dissuade the Nazis from arguing that Jews were ‘biologically inferior. ‘” (ibid, p. 262)

Similar absurdities were occurring right here in America. In 1900, it was common in the U.S. to consider people of Irish, Italian or Jewish ancestry “nonwhite.” By 1950, the social dynamics had changed, and the significance of these distinctions had vanished, so that Irish and Italians had now become “white.” (Macionis, 2009, p.305)

“Race is a cultural construct without objective scientific merits.”
– Haviland et ale (2005, p. 318)

Skin Color
Let’s start by debunking the myths associated with skin color, since this is the trait most often used to distinguish “racial” differences. Not only is it an arbitrary human characteristic that is literally only skin deep, but the idea that skin color can be used to neatly divide us into separate and distinct races is complete folly.

What determines a person’s skin color
A person’s skin color is determined by a number of things, but “there are at least four main factors associated with it: transparency or thickness of the skin, a copper-colored pigment called carotene, reflected color from the blood vessels (responsible for the rosy color of lightly pigmented people), and the amount of melanin found in a given area of skin. Exposure to sunlight increases the amount of melanin, a dark pigment, causing skin color to deepen.” (Haviland et al., 2005, p. 330) For example, sailors who are darkened and burned by long hours at sea being exposed to the sun and wind will become darkened. (ibid, p. 320)

Moreover, all human beings, even light-pigmented ones, contain enough of the enzyme tyrosinase, which converts the amino acid tyrosine into a precursor to melatonin, to make them very “black.” The reason their skin doesn’t become dark is that they have other genes that inhibit its expression. (Wills, 1994) But just as other genes can flip on and off depending on our experiences, epigenetic changes (methyl tags added to DNA that alter how genes are expressed) would progressively darken or lighten the skin in a particular family if this were adaptive to their environmental conditions.

Over time, a population that is continually exposed to climatic conditions that are rich in sunlight will see their skin progressively darken, whereas those exposed to less sunlight will see their skin lighten.

Or consider the phenomenon of freckles. “Freckles are a result of melanin overproduction as your skin tries to protect you from the sun,” says dermatologist Anni Chiu, M.D. Freckles are typically reddish-brown. They fade during the winter months from less sun exposure and get darker during the summer. (Reimel, 2019)