Students explore the idea of race

Why do we often judge people we don’t know by the way they look? Do genetic traits like skin color, hair texture or the shape of someone’s eyes tell us whether that person is good or smart, or talented at music or sports?

To help us figure this out, we talked to Alan Goodman and Yolanda Moses, co-chairs of the RACE Project, an interactive exhibit that has traveled to over 20 cities since 2007 and had millions of hits on its website. The RACE Project was created by the American Anthropological Association to challenge how we think about race and human variation and the differences and similarities among people.

Goodman says that the AAA wants to reach out to a wide audience with its “academic conversations about race, racism and human variation.” Goodman, who is vice president for academic affairs and dean of faculty at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA,  says, “In essence, we want to begin talking clearly and engagingly about what race is and is not.”

Is race in your genes?
It doesn’t take much to see that human beings are not all alike. However, the explanations for these differences have changed dramatically over time.

Through the 1800s and through most of the 1900s, according to Goodman, scientists tried almost every trait and trick imaginable to prove that race was a biological fact — that is, that humans could be reliably grouped into races, characterized by shared characteristics, traits or genes.  Nothing worked.

That’s because the popular idea that an individual’s race is a biological fact is false, he says. And while some may find that hard to believe, there is lots of research to back it up.

Goodman explains: In the 1950s, a geneticist named William Boyd looked at blood group variation and found that people in the same race don’t share a common blood type. He found tremendous variation within any so-called race.

In 1972, geneticist Richard Lewontin published another experiment with blood group polymorphisms (different types of the same trait) and other genetic traits.  Lewontin’s research became famous for proving that nearly all variation in blood group genes occurs within rather than among races.

Goodman cites a more recent study showing that two Africans are more different from each other than one African is from a European or Asian.

So although human biological variation is real and obvious, not one characteristic, trait or gene distinguishes all the members of one so-called race from all the other members of another so-called race, Goodman says.

Do you think that you can tell where a man is from by looking at him? Not necessarily. Scientists such as Nina Jablonski have shown that skin color is related to sun exposure, natural selection and evolution.

You probably wouldn’t say that people from Australia, southern India and equatorial Africa belong to the same race, but the same shades of dark skin can be found in each place. Dark skin tells you only that someone’s ancestors came from a climate with lots or little sun.

Goodman says that most traits are inherited independently from one another. The genes influencing skin color have nothing to do with the genes influencing hair form, eye shape, blood type, musical talent, athletic ability or forms of intelligence.

“To be blunt, the racist notion of race, such that race is in the genes, and peoples of different races have different abilities and traits, is like a loaded gun. We want to take the bullets out,” he says, because the notion that race is tied to genes is just plain false.

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