Race: An Analysis Of Genetic Differences

The class of students that were doing the genetic testing experiment assumed that they would have the most in common, genetically, with the people they looked the most alike and had similar ethnic backgrounds. The white males assumed they would be most similar with the other white males who looked the most similar to them, the African American with the other African American because they both had the same skin color, the Latin-American female with the other Latin-American female because they had the same ethnicity and looked alike, and so on. They used mitochondrial DNA for the experiment which is the DNA that comes from the mother and does not code for any traits.
Humans have the least amount of genetic variation compared to other organisms. Even penguins who look almost identical and you would assume are more genetically similar, have 2 times more genetic variability from each other than two humans have between each other. Fruit flies have 10 times more genetic variability between each other than humans have. Humans only have variations about every one in one-thousand

nucleotides which is a significantly lower genetic variability compared to other organisms such as fruit flies and penguins. Fruit flies have about the same variability with another fruit fly as would a human with a chimpanzee.
Alan Goodman, biological anthropologist, made a very good point about how race is not based on biology, it is an idea that we try to describe with biology; an excuse used for differences socially as Mr.

Goodman would say. Race is a cultural concept. Physical differences can be explained by mutations, breeding, migration, and geography. What I found to be the biggest factor was first migration from central Africa to the rest of the world and the different environmental stressors to survive where they migrated, such as skin color which is what seems to be the largest definer of race. As humans moves to other areas of the earth that did not have such harsh heat they did not need the same amount of melanin in their skin anymore so skin color got lighter. Then when these people settle in the area they breed and have children that carry on the gene for lighter skin and other

differences.
There are often more genetic difference between people within the same racial group as there is between individuals between two separate racial groups. This defeats the idea of “race” as a whole. According to the video,more than 85% of all the variation in human beings is between two different individuals within the same local population that are often considered the same race socially, when compared to two different individuals who are considered two different races socially. This means that there can be as much difference between two white males as there would be between one of those white males and a black female. There are no traits that are found strictly within one race. Scientist spent many many years comparing every part of the body of an black person in comparison with a white person trying to find a difference that only one race had that would scientifically separate the two. Some scientists even tried to say that black people lived in poverty and had high infant mortality rates and poor health because they were black and this is not where they are meant to be. This was a biased notion and completely false. The notion of race is a completely social and cultural concept. As one man in the video said, we are all pretty much the same under our skin; on the inside we are extremely similar. However, we have skin color, hair texture, nose size, and other superficial traits that people try to group into a particular race having that particular feature which is untrue.