Culture Not Race Explains Human Diversity Summary

Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity, Mark Nathan Cohen, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 17, 1998, pp.B4-B5. The term race refers to a biological subdivision of a species. At one time, scientists held that there were as few as three such subdivisions in the species Homo sapiens: Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid. Mark Anthony Cohen points out that this is an antiquated view, yet it lingers as a common belief in society. Mark Nathan Cohen makes an interesting point in his article “Culture, Not Race, Explains Human Diversity”. While the article does deal wholly in the realm of the opinion, it is supported by numerous scientific facts. In fact, Cohen’s usual method of drawing in a reader is to make a blanket statement and then “beef it up” with several scientific facts.

After Cohen makes the claim that culture explains human diversity, he follows it by stating several facts about how race isn’t fit to explain human diversity: it has been scientifically proven that various traits such as skin color come in infinite variations, the genes of two different-colored people are most likely 99.9% alike, and no gene is known to control differences in specific behavior. Cohen maintains that greater efforts need to be made in educating the public as to the fact that we are all of the same race, and that what we perceive as racial differences are in fact, largely cultural differences. While anthropologists continue to study how and why humans vary biologically, it is apparent that human populations differ from one another much less than do populations in other species because we use our cultural, rather than our physical differences to aid us in adapting to various