The society has long been exposed to the idea of race, and the different way people think about race has been a product of a long history. This interpretation of race is based on society, but science presents a new perspective about the concept of race. Anthropologists Loring Brace from the University of Michigan, and George Gill from the University of Wyoming offer two different but related explanations about race.
Dr. Loring Brace claims that “there is no bilogical entity that warrants the term ‘race’.” Brace states that the idea of race that the people have been introduced into is more a product of the perception formed based on the patterns of features that people who have lived in a certain area for a period of time share (Brace). These characteristics are what made them indentifiable to the said regional patterns, and while it can be called a variation in ‘race,’ these are more linked into perception. Brace maintains that despite the physical differences that can be observed of perceived from people living in Oslo in Norway and the people in Cairo in Egypt, there is no visible boundary that separates these two groups of people. When a person in Cairo walks beside the Nile to the Khartoum in the Sudan, there won’t be any differences that one person will see from the people that s/he would meet along the way (Brace). There would be gradual change in skin color, but this is only caused by the geographical location of the country, wherein some live near the equator which give them darker skin color due to the ultraviolet rays, while those who live farther from the equator would have lighter skin color.
Gill, on the other hand, state that race is “more than skin deep.” Studying bones in order to identify the geographic racial affinity of a person is proof that certain groups of people share similarities that are only unique to them who belong to the same race. These bone features include midfacial measurements, femur traits,among others (Gill). These identifications of skeletons as belonging to a racial origin is a clear indication that there is race. Gill accepts that blood factor analysis does not show differences among people living in different places, such as the Chinese who seem to share closer blood group system with those of the Europeans, but so do bones show that there are indeed differences that separate people according to their race.
Work Cited
Brace, Loring and George Gill. “Does Race Exist?.” Pbs.org. NOVA. 15 Feb. 2000. Web.
