For many years, anthropologists have been screaming that race is not biological and that we are all one race. Biologically, this is true. However, arguing that we are one race does a disservice in attempting to create a trajectory for racial equality. Claiming that we are one race essentially ignores the painful history and implications of the establishment of social races and discredits sentiments of those still suffering in our current sociopolitical climate.
It is important that we recognize our past and celebrate diversity rather than drawing arbitrary lines between people based on the way they look. The long history of viewing people as the “other” based on phenotypic traits has had lasting effects in our society. All those not included within the confines of “white America” have been subjected to poverty, higher rates of disease, and higher infant mortality rates, to name a few. Governmental policies were created in the past to keep large populations of people in lower socioeconomic status in order to exploit them and/or take their resources. Those policies continue to cause inequality in our country today between people based on phenotypic variation.
However, you now know that phenotypic variation is a result of a population’s history, their genetic structure, and the climate in which they live. You also learned that the human population has relatively low genetic variation. Given that phenotypic variation is continuous and no phenotypic traits are discrete to a single population, arbitrary circles cannot and should not be drawn around groups of people based on their appearances. Thus, these historical notions of social race cannot and should not be used to create policy or play a role in our sociopolitical climate.