There are a number of myths and misunderstandings out there regarding race, some of which are more insidious than others. Here are some of the more common race myths and the actual facts behind

Race myth: Race is a legitimate way to distinguish people

Fact: The biggest race myth of all is that humans can be divided up into separate races to begin with. The racial categories we use are entirely arbitrary, and have no scientific merit. A white person can have much more in common with a black person than they do another white person. (See: The Race Illusion) So the fact that we categorize people by races at all is itself based on a myth.

Race myth: Certain races are inherently smarter or better at certain mental tasks than others

Fact: While it is true that African Americans and other marginalized groups tend to score lower on IQ tests and struggle more in school, this can be entirely explained by social and cultural factors. Nor are Asians inherently better at math, they simply face stronger social pressure to excel in school.

As Haviland, Prins, Walrath & McBride note, “Because genes are inherited independently of one another, alleles that may be associated with intelligence bear no relationship with the ones for skin pigmentation or with any other aspect of human variation such as blood type.” (2005, p. 334) In other words, whites, Blacks, Asians, Eskimos, or anyone else all have equal chance of inheriting whatever genes might promote intelligence, and environmental factors such as diet, early childhood experiences, and educational level of one’s parents are what lead to any racial disparities in IQ.

When all other factors are held equal, both African Americans and European Americans tend to score equally well on IQ tests. (Sanday, 1975) Moreover, when disadvantaged African-American children are adopted into affluent and stable families, their IQ scores can rise by as much as 20 points, showing that “the assertion that IQ is biologically fixed and immutable is clearly false.” (Haviland et al., 2005, p. 335)

Race myth: Black people have an extra muscle in their buttocks that helps them run faster and jump better

Fact: Nonsense. The human template is exactly the same across all peoples of the world. While some may be shorter or taller, or more prone to body fat (such as Alaskan Eskimos), the structure of the human body is the same everywhere. The reason African Americans seem to excel at sports has to do with A) It’s one of the few paths to the “American dream” available to them, and B) They live more active lifestyles and train harder. (They are, after all, the descendants of people who were forced into very hard labor, which might have produced epigenetic changes that can carry over for several generations.) White men can jump just as well as African Americans, it’s just that Blacks tend to spend more time on the things that would make them more athletic.

Race myth: White people are becoming an “endangered species” as a result of itnerbreeding between the races.

Reality: One fear commonly expressed by racists and white supremacists is that whites are being “replaced” or becoming an “endangered species.” They are especially upset about intermingling between the races, as well as what they perceive as black men “taking” white women. A lot of this has to do with unexpressed sexual insecurities and fears about how they measure up (in a very literal sense), but the other fear is that white people are steadily being bred out of existence. Even those of us who aren’t racist can feel a little sad at the idea of no more little blond-haired, blue-eyed kids running around. After all, variety is what makes the human tree so interesting.

Have no fear. All the intermingling in the world isn’t going to push all the little Dakota Fannings or Taylor Swifts into extinction. The idea that it would is based on a misunderstanding of what produces fair-skinned and light-haired people in the first place.

Climatic conditions are what gave rise to blond hair and blue eyes, not recombination of the genome. As Haviland, Prins, Walrath and McBride state, “alleles for dark skin are found in high frequency in human populations native to regions of heavy ultraviolet radiation (sunshine), whereas alleles for light skin have a high frequency in populations native to regions farther from the equator where ultraviolet radiation is reduced.” (2005, p. 320) In other words, the production of white people is a geographic phenomenon.

So long as there are people living in cold northern climates such as Sweden, Norway, or Canada, there will always be a steady supply of lighter skinned people being produced by the environmental conditions that led to this adaptation in the first place. In that regard, global warming is more of a threat to the existence of “white” (fair skinned) people than is breeding between dark-skinned people and lighter-skinned ones.