The Facts of Race

In the statements made on “Race”, by both the American Anthropological Association and the American Association of Physical Anthropologists, there is the common thread of agreement on how and why we are all Homo sapiens of all one human race. In the statement of the AAPA (“Statement on Biological Aspects of Race”, Published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, vol. 101, pp. 569-570, 1996), “ All humans living today belong to a single species, Homo sapiens, and share a common descent.” The AAPA statement goes on to say that there is a good amount of genetic diversity within all of the human species of today and in the past, but the variations have to do more with any specific area of people in relations based upon their nutritional needs that may or may not be met and their environmental conditions that effects any given population on a daily bases.

There are also the genetic inherited factors that lie within all human beings that make up our own very individual DNA. The similarities and differences among all the human species vary throughout all the global human populations. But there has not ever been found any type of differences so large and varying in degree to keep any one human being from the capability of intermarriage and children to be able to happen. Our DNA is individual, but not incompatible for intermarriage and family between any two human beings from any place on this earth. All throughout history, interbreeding has happened to some degree and the only problems ever related to inter-marriage lies within the cultural and social realms.

Both the AAPA and the AAA stated this. Another strong point made by both the AAPA and the AAA is how the early 19th and 20th Century played a huge role in trying to classify races into there own categories and levels of intelligence and or superiority of the human races based on physical and cultural traits only. It is now known that people cannot be specified into clean tidy categories in this manner on legitimate bases. Globally in every group of people there are varying degrees of intelligence based only on the individual unrelated to any of their racial and or physical traits. The statement by the American Anthropological Association (Statement on “Race”, May 17, 1998) goes into slightly more detail on how physical traits has played a role through out history for defending horrible events like slavery and the Holocaust.

In the AAA it is stated “Historical research has shown that the idea of “race” has always carried more meanings than mere physical differences, indeed, physical variations in the human species have no meaning except the social ones that humans put on them”. (AAA Statement on “Race”, May 17, 1998). The association goes on to state that it has been the first European Americans who were starting the U.S. that made up the cultural and behavioral characteristics of each varying racial group. In this process for their own benefit of superiority, Europeans exaggerated their linkage of superiority with positive traits and fabricating inferiority with any other race that was not of their European decent.

This false provado on the European-American’s part helped in taking over the Indians’ lands and promoted African American Slavery. Although the AAPA is heavier on the proven, but general overall analysis of the past and present biological history and how scientifically the human “Race” is of all the same decent, they do mention that there has also only been cultural stigmas of other races that cause false classifications of the varying “Races” of Homo sapiens through out any given time of human history.

The last point of comparison between the two statements that I would like to share is the references of globalization clearly stating that there will be more and more mixture of “Races” through the internalization of our own making throughout all cultural realms because of globalization. The world is getting smaller in the matter of easier travel access and the many other means of communications all around the world. There has always been travels throughout time, but never before has so many varying “Races” and cultures mixing and intermingling to one degree or another, but never before to the extent as of today. That reminds me of the saying, “ There is only six degrees separation between us”.

On my own personal experience in this area of inter-marriages, I am of European and Cherokee decent from Tennessee. My husband is a Hindu Indian of Silk and Punjabi descent from the Fiji Islands. We have a beautiful 10 month old little girl who is of her own kind in so many ways, but yet no different than any of her brothers and sisters on both sides from our previous marriages. We have integrated two distinct cultures and still today are judged and looked down upon by some (not all) of those within our genetically related relatives because of the marriage outside of our original cultures. All though this is very wrong, it is still a reality of today and we continue to have positive influences for proving them wrong with out even trying because in our hearts, there are no true differences between us to prove them right in any way. In my eyes, all of our children will continue to break down these false barriers of “Race”, and that is one of our small contributions to society today.