Most starting running backs in the NFL are black and most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are white. Men dominate in the economic and political worlds and women excel at child rearing and caring for the home...
These and many other patterns of difference and inequality between sexes and races are just a part of human nature, right?
Wrong.
There are many myths about human nature. Luckily, we have data from across the social and biological sciences that bust some of the worst ones. Two of the most pernicious, and erroneous, myths are about race and sex:
Race: Humans are divided into biological races (black, white, Asian, etc.).
Sex: Men and women are truly different in behavior, desires, and internal wiring.
Why should we care that myths of race and sex are so resilient, in spite of their inaccuracy? Because they matter in our daily lives.
While race is not biology, racism can certainly affect our biology. Racial social structures, from access to health care to one's own racialized self-image, can impact the ways our bodies and immune systems develop. This means that race, while not a biological unit, can have important biological implications and significant societal impacts. So what do we know about human biological diversity?
There is substantial biological variation within and between the thousands of human populations on the planet, but population race. These patterns of variation are shaped by culture, language, ecology, history, and geography. The vast majority of social and biological scientists recognize that race is not an accurate or productive way to describe modern human biological variation. However, race in the USA is a cultural construct that affects our social realities, and racial inequality (racism) can affect individuals' biology.
There are no genetic sequences ("genes") unique to blacks or whites or Asians. There is more genetic variation in populations from the continent of Africa than exists in ALL populations from outside of Africa (the rest of the world) combined! There is no neurological patterning that distinguishes races from one another, nor are there patterns in muscle development and structure, digestive tracts, hand-eye coordination, or any other such measures. Dark or light skin tells us only about a person's amount of ancestry relative to the equator, not anything about the specific population(s) they might be descended from.
Recommendation and review posted by G. Smith
