China historically adhered to the concept of liability among blood relatives. During the Qin and Han dynasties, families were subject to various punishments according to the punishment of the offending member. When the offense was punishable by death by severing the body at the waist, the offender's parents, siblings, spouse, and children were executed. When the offense was punishable by death and public display of the body, the offender's family was subject to imprisonment with hard labor. When the offender's sentence was exile, their kin was exiled along with them. [ 6 ]  The most severe punishment, given for capital offenses, was the  nine familial exterminations  (zú zhū (族誅), literally "family execution", and miè zú (灭族/滅族)), implemented by tyrannical rulers. This punishment entailed the execution of all the close and extended kin of the individual, categorized into nine groups: four generations of the paternal line, three from the maternal line, and two from the wife's. In the case of  Confucian  scholar  Fang Xiaoru , his students and peers were uniquely included as a tenth group. [ citation needed ]


During the  Ming dynasty  of China (1368–1644), 16 palace women  attempted to assassinate  the  Jiajing Emperor . All were sentenced to death by  slow slicing . Ten members of the women's families were also beheaded, while a further 20 were enslaved and gifted to ministers. Collective punishment was officially repealed by the government of the  Qing dynasty  (1644–1912) in 1905. [ 7 ]


In traditional Germanic law, the law of  Germanic peoples  (before the widespread adoption of Roman canon law) accepted that the clan of a criminal was liable for offenses committed by one of its members. In  Nazi Germany , this concept was revived so that the relatives of persons accused of crimes against the state, including desertion, were held responsible for those crimes. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]


Numerous testimonies of  North Korean defectors  confirm the practice of kin punishment (연좌제,  yeonjwaje  literally "association system") in  North Korea , under which three to eight generations of a political offender's family can be summarily imprisoned or executed. [ 10 ]  Such punishment is based on internal  Workers' Party  protocols and lies outside the formal legal system. [ 11 ]  Relatives are not told why they fell under suspicion and the punishment extends to children born in prison. [ 12 ]  The association system was introduced with the North Korean state's founding in 1948, having previously existed under the  Joseon  kingdom. [ 12 ] [ 10 ]


In the State of Israel, there is a legal prohibition against punishing relatives for the actions of a family member. This principle is based on the idea that individuals should not be held accountable for the actions of others, especially their family members, who are presumed to be innocent unless proven otherwise. Despite this, pro-Palestinian groups accuse the  demolition of the homes  of terrorists, which directly led to deaths, as a form of kin punishment, since family members are also at risk of being harmed by this measure.


The practice an appeals process against demolition was established in 1989, and consequently the number of demolitions declined. However, in an effort to prevent  Palestinian suicide attacks , targeting Israeli civilians during the  Second Intifada , the   Supreme Court of Israel  in July 2002 upheld the legality of expelling to Gaza family members that they had assisted in carrying out the attack, or had supported the terrorist's activities. It was limited the use of expulsion to cases where "that person, by his own deeds, constitutes a danger to security of the state." [ 13 ]  Expulsion to Gaza was discontinued after  Israeli disengagement from the Gaza Strip . [ 14 ] [ 15 ] , and this policy has been carried out only in cases where was involved murder.


The  Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Venezuela  concluded in a September 2021 report that Venezuelan security and intelligence agents reportedly applied the principle of  Sippenhaftung , using methods including and kidnapping and detention of relatives of critics, real or perceived, to accomplish arrests. [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ]


Race  is a categorization of  humans  based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given  society . [ 1 ]  The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close  kinship  relations. [ 2 ]  By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical ( phenotypical ) traits, and then later to  national  affiliations. Modern  science  regards race as a  social construct , an  identity  which is assigned based on rules made by society. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] [ 5 ]  While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. [ 1 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ]  The concept of race is foundational to  racism , the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.


Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving  folk taxonomies  that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. [ 8 ]  Modern scientists consider such biological  essentialism  obsolete, [ 9 ]  and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits. [ 10 ] [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ]


Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable, [ 15 ] [ 16 ] [ 17 ] [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ]  scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways. [ 21 ]  While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the  scientific community  suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive [ 10 ]  or simplistic. [ 22 ]  Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same  subspecies ,  Homo sapiens sapiens . [ 23 ] [ 24 ]


Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of  scientific racism , and has become increasingly seen as a largely  pseudoscientific  system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and/or  loaded  terms:  populations ,  people (s) ,  ethnic groups , or  communities , depending on context. [ 25 ] [ 26 ]  Its use in genetics was formally renounced by the U.S.  National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine  in 2023. [ 27 ]


Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an  identity  created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time.


Historical race concepts  have included a wide variety of schemes to divide local or worldwide populations into races and sub-races. Across the world, different organizations and societies choose to disambiguate race to different extents:


The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the  one-drop rule  used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as " white ". [ 1 ]  Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of  European colonial expansion . [ 6 ]  This view rejects the notion that race is  biologically  defined. [ 30 ] [ 31 ] [ 32 ] [ 33 ]


According to geneticist  David Reich , "while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real". [ 34 ]  In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was "flawed" as "the  meaning and significance  of the groups is produced through social interventions". [ 35 ]


Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of the race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. [ 1 ]  Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance,  African-American English  is a language spoken by many  African Americans , especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of a race for political reasons. [ 1 ]


When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a  social reality  through which social categorization is achieved. [ 36 ]  In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. [ 37 ]  These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and  sociopolitical  contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of  major social situations. [ clarify ] [ 38 ]  While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through  institutionalized  practices of preference and  discrimination . [ 39 ]


Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. [ 40 ]   Racial discrimination  often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an  outgroup  as both racially defined and morally inferior. [ 41 ]  As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while  hegemonic  individuals and  institutions  are charged with holding racist attitudes. [ 42 ]  Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including  slavery  and  genocide . [ 43 ]


In some countries,  law enforcement  uses race to  profile  suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of  social stratification , for  social scientists  studying social inequality, race can be a significant  variable . As  sociological  factors, racial categories may in part reflect  subjective  attributions,  self-identities , and social institutions. [ 44 ] [ 45 ]


Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed. [ 46 ]  For example, in 2008, John Hartigan Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. [ 47 ]  Accordingly, the racial  paradigms  employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on  biological reduction  as contrasted with societal construction.


In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as  racial formation theory  and  critical race theory  investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups.


Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during the historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences. [ 48 ]  The term  race  was often used in a general  biological taxonomic sense , [ 25 ]  starting from the 19th century, to denote  genetically differentiated  human  populations  defined by phenotype. [ 49 ] [ 50 ]


The modern concept of race emerged as a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification. [ 51 ]  According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790. [ 52 ]


According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the  scientific revolution , which introduced and privileged the study of  natural kinds , and the age of  European imperialism  and  colonization  which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political  traditions . [ 48 ] [ 53 ]  As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the  world , they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the  Atlantic slave trade , which gradually displaced an earlier  trade in slaves  from throughout the world, created a further  incentive  to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African  slaves . [ 54 ]


Drawing on sources from  classical antiquity  and upon their own internal interactions – for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people [ 55 ]  – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of  folk beliefs  took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to  inherited intellectual ,  behavioral , and  moral  qualities. [ 56 ]  Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, [ 57 ]  for example in  China , where a concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the  Yellow Emperor , and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world. [ 58 ]


The first post- Graeco-Roman  published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be  François Bernier 's  Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent  ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. [ 59 ]  In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of  Carl Linnaeus , inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species  Homo sapiens  into continental varieties of  europaeus ,  asiaticus ,  americanus , and  afer , each associated with a different  humour :  sanguine ,  melancholic ,  choleric , and  phlegmatic , respectively. [ 60 ] [ 61 ]   Homo sapiens europaeus  was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas  Homo sapiens afer  was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless. [ 62 ]


The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind", by  Johann Friedrich Blumenbach  proposed five major divisions: the  Caucasoid race , the  Mongoloid race , the Ethiopian race (later termed  Negroid ), the  American Indian race , and the  Malayan race , but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races. [ 62 ]  Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them". [ 63 ]


From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an " ideology  of race". [ 53 ]  According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. [ 58 ]  Subsequent influential classifications by  Georges Buffon ,  Petrus Camper  and  Christoph Meiners  all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. [ 62 ]  In the  United States  the racial theories of  Thomas Jefferson  were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described  Native Americans  as equals to whites. [ 64 ]


In the last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of  polygenism , the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, [ 65 ]  was advocated in England by historian  Edward Long  and anatomist  Charles White , in  Germany  by ethnographers  Christoph Meiners  and  Georg Forster , and in  France  by  Julien-Joseph Virey . In the US,  Samuel George Morton ,  Josiah Nott  and  Louis Agassiz  promoted this theory in the mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the  Anthropological Society of London  (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the  Ethnological Society of London  and its  monogenic stance , their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called "Negro question": a substantial racist view by the former, [ 66 ]  and a more liberal view on race by the latter. [ 67 ]


Today, all  humans  are classified as belonging to the species  Homo sapiens . However, this is not the first species of  homininae : the first species of genus  Homo ,  Homo habilis , evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different parts of Africa in a relatively short time.  Homo erectus  evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all  physical anthropologists  agree that  Archaic Homo sapiens  (A group including the possible species  H. heidelbergensis ,  H. rhodesiensis , and  H. neanderthalensis ) evolved out of African  H. erectus  ( sensu lato ) or  H. ergaster . [ 68 ] [ 69 ]  Anthropologists support the idea that  anatomically modern humans  ( Homo sapiens ) evolved in North or East Africa from an  archaic human  species such as  H. heidelbergensis  and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing  H. heidelbergensis  and  H. neanderthalensis  populations throughout Europe and Asia, and  H. rhodesiensis  populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of the  Out of Africa  and  Multiregional  models). [ 70 ] [ verification needed ]


In the early 20th century, many  anthropologists  taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity, a position commonly called  racial essentialism . [ 71 ]  This, coupled with a belief that  linguistic , cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called  scientific racism . [ 72 ]  After the  Nazi eugenics  program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. [ 73 ]  New studies of  culture  and the fledgling field of  population genetics  undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. [ 71 ]  A significant number of modern anthropologists and  biologists  in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation. [ 74 ]


The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the  anthropologists   Franz Boas , who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, [ 75 ]  and  Ashley Montagu , who relied on evidence from genetics. [ 76 ]   E. O. Wilson  then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies". [ 77 ]


Human genetic variation  is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races. [ 78 ]  According to the biological anthropologist  Jonathan Marks , [ 48 ]


By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small.


A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.


The term  race  in biology  is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of  subspecies . [ 79 ]  (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the  species  level is usually the subspecies; [ 80 ]  there are narrower  infraspecific ranks in botany , and  race  does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally,  subspecies  are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations. [ 81 ]  Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated. [ 82 ]  and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies. [ 83 ]


In 1978,  Sewall Wright  suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued: "It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other." [ 84 ]  While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists. [ 85 ]  Likewise this  typological  approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists. [ 86 ] [ 17 ]


In 2000, philosopher Robin Andreasen proposed that  cladistics  might be used to categorize human races biologically, and that races can be both biologically real and socially constructed. [ 87 ]  Andreasen cited tree diagrams of relative  genetic distances  among populations published by  Luigi Cavalli-Sforza  as the basis for a phylogenetic tree of human races (p. 661). Biological anthropologist  Jonathan Marks  (2008) responded by arguing that Andreasen had misinterpreted the genetic literature: "These trees are phenetic (based on similarity), rather than cladistic (based on  monophyletic  descent, that is from a series of unique ancestors)." [ 88 ]  Evolutionary biologist  Alan Templeton  (2013) argued that multiple lines of evidence falsify the idea of a phylogenetic tree structure to human genetic diversity, and confirm the presence of gene flow among populations. [ 33 ]  Marks, Templeton, and Cavalli-Sforza all conclude that genetics does not provide evidence of human races. [ 33 ] [ 89 ]


Previously, anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995) had also critiqued the use of cladistics to support concepts of race. They argued that "the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories  in their initial grouping of samples ". For example, the large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. They argued that this  a priori  grouping limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of the true patterns of affinity. [ 90 ]


In 2015, Keith Hunley, Graciela Cabana, and Jeffrey Long analyzed the  Human Genome Diversity Project  sample of 1,037 individuals in 52 populations, [ 91 ]  finding that diversity among non-African populations is the result of a serial founder effect process, with non-African populations as a whole nested among African populations, that "some African populations are equally related to other African populations and to non-African populations", and that "outside of Africa, regional groupings of populations are nested inside one another, and many of them are not monophyletic". [ 91 ]  Earlier research had also suggested that there has always been considerable gene flow between human populations, meaning that human population groups are not monophyletic. [ 81 ]  Rachel Caspari has argued that, since no groups currently regarded as races are monophyletic, by definition none of these groups can be clades. [ 92 ]


One crucial innovation in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation was the anthropologist  C. Loring Brace 's observation that such variations, insofar as they are affected by  natural selection , slow migration, or  genetic drift , are distributed along geographic gradations or  clines . [ 93 ]  For example, with respect to skin color in Europe and Africa, Brace writes: [ 94 ]


To this day, skin color grades by imperceptible means from Europe southward around the eastern end of the Mediterranean and up the Nile into Africa. From one end of this range to the other, there is no hint of a skin color boundary, and yet the spectrum runs from the lightest in the world at the northern edge to as dark as it is possible for humans to be at the equator.


In part, this is due to  isolation by distance . This point called attention to a problem common to phenotype-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore a host of other similarities and differences (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion was that, since clines cross racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines". [ 95 ]


In a response to Livingstone,  Theodore Dobzhansky  argued that when talking about race one must be attentive to how the term is being used: "I agree with Dr. Livingstone that if races have to be 'discrete units', then there are no races, and if 'race' is used as an 'explanation' of the human variability, rather than vice versa, then the explanation is invalid." He further argued that one could use the term race if one distinguished between "race differences" and "the race concept". The former refers to any distinction in gene frequencies between populations; the latter is "a matter of judgment". He further observed that even when there is clinal variation: "Race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena ... but it does not follow that racially distinct populations must be given racial (or subspecific) labels." [ 95 ]  In short, Livingstone and Dobzhansky agree that there are genetic differences among human beings; they also agree that the use of the race concept to classify people, and how the race concept is used, is a matter of social convention. They differ on whether the race concept remains a meaningful and useful social convention.


In 1964, the biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly – for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for the haplotype for  beta-S hemoglobin , on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa. [ 96 ]  As the anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observed, "Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous". [ 90 ]


Patterns such as those seen in human physical and genetic variation as described above, have led to the consequence that the number and geographic location of any described races is highly dependent on the importance attributed to, and quantity of, the traits considered. A skin-lightening mutation, estimated to have occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, partially accounts for the appearance of light skin in people who migrated out of Africa northward into what is now Europe. East Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. [ 97 ]  On the other hand, the greater the number of traits (or  alleles ) considered, the more subdivisions of humanity are detected, since traits and gene frequencies do not always correspond to the same geographical location. Or as  Ossorio & Duster (2005)  put it:


Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans' physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 1930s and 1950s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races. [ 98 ]  Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people.


Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist  William C. Boyd  defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant 'constellation'". [ 99 ]  Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that "the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing". [ 100 ]  Moreover, the anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless. [ 101 ]  The  Human Genome Project  states "People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other." [ 102 ]   Massimo Pigliucci  and Jonathan Kaplan argue that human races do exist, and that they correspond to the genetic classification of  ecotypes , but that real human races do not correspond very much, if at all, to folk racial categories. [ 103 ]  In contrast, Walsh & Yun reviewed the literature in 2011 and reported: "Genetic studies using very few chromosomal loci find that genetic polymorphisms divide human populations into clusters with almost 100 percent accuracy and that they correspond to the traditional anthropological categories." [ 104 ]


Some biologists argue that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g.  phenotype ), and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. [ 105 ]


The distribution of genetic variants within and among human populations are impossible to describe succinctly because of the difficulty of defining a population, the clinal nature of variation, and heterogeneity across the genome (Long and Kittles 2003). In general, however, an average of 85% of statistical genetic variation exists within local populations, ≈7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ≈8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents. [ 106 ] [ 107 ]  The  recent African origin  theory for humans would predict that in Africa there exists a great deal more diversity than elsewhere and that diversity should decrease the further from Africa a population is sampled. Hence, the 85% average figure is misleading: Long and Kittles find that rather than 85% of human genetic diversity existing in all human populations, about 100% of human diversity exists in a single African population, whereas only about 60% of human genetic diversity exists in the least diverse population they analyzed (the Surui, a population derived from New Guinea). [ 108 ]  Statistical analysis that takes this difference into account confirms previous findings that "Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance". [ 91 ]


A 2002 study of random biallelic genetic loci found little to no evidence that humans were divided into distinct biological groups. [ 109 ]


In his 2003 paper, " Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy ",  A. W. F. Edwards  argued that rather than using a locus-by-locus analysis of variation to derive taxonomy, it is possible to construct a human classification system based on characteristic genetic patterns, or  clusters   inferred from multilocus genetic data . [ 110 ] [ 111 ]  Geographically based human studies since have shown that such genetic clusters can be derived from analyzing of a large number of loci which can assort individuals sampled into groups analogous to traditional continental racial groups. [ 112 ] [ 113 ]  Joanna Mountain and  Neil Risch  cautioned that while genetic clusters may one day be shown to correspond to phenotypic variations between groups, such assumptions were premature as the relationship between genes and  complex traits  remains poorly understood. [ 114 ]  However, Risch denied such limitations render the analysis useless: "Perhaps just using someone's actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? ... Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn't preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility." [ 115 ]


Early human genetic cluster analysis studies were conducted with samples taken from ancestral population groups living at extreme geographic distances from each other. It was thought that such large geographic distances would maximize the genetic variation between the groups sampled in the analysis, and thus maximize the probability of finding cluster patterns unique to each group. In light of the historically recent acceleration of human migration (and correspondingly, human gene flow) on a global scale, further studies were conducted to judge the degree to which genetic cluster analysis can pattern ancestrally identified groups as well as geographically separated groups. One such study looked at a large multiethnic population in the United States, and "detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity – as opposed to current residence – is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population." [ 113 ]


Witherspoon et al. (2007)  have argued that even when individuals can be reliably assigned to specific population groups, it may still be possible for two randomly chosen individuals from different populations/clusters to be more similar to each other than to a randomly chosen member of their own cluster. They found that many thousands of genetic markers had to be used in order for the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" to be "never". This assumed three population groups separated by large geographic ranges (European, African and East Asian). The entire world population is much more complex and studying an increasing number of groups would require an increasing number of markers for the same answer. The authors conclude that "caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes". [ 116 ]  Witherspoon, et al. concluded: "The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population." [ 116 ]


Anthropologists such as  C. Loring Brace , [ 117 ]  the philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther, [ 118 ] [ 119 ] [ 120 ] [ 121 ]  and the geneticist  Joseph Graves , [ 122 ]  have argued that the cluster structure of genetic data is dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the influence of these hypotheses on the choice of populations to sample. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental, but if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials. [ 123 ]  Kaplan and Winther therefore argue that, seen in this way, both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one  wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers) . Under Kaplan and Winther's view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998 [ 124 ] ) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as the categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons. In earlier work, Winther had identified "diversity partitioning" and "clustering analysis" as two separate methodologies, with distinct questions, assumptions, and protocols. Each is also associated with opposing ontological consequences vis-a-vis the metaphysics of race. [ 125 ]  Philosopher Lisa Gannett has argued that biogeographical ancestry, a concept devised by  Mark Shriver  and  Tony Frudakis , is not an objective measure of the biological aspects of race as Shriver and Frudakis claim it is. She argues that it is actually just a "local category shaped by the U.S. context of its production, especially the forensic aim of being able to predict the race or ethnicity of an unknown suspect based on DNA found at the crime scene". [ 126 ]


Recent studies of human genetic clustering have included a debate over how genetic variation is organized, with clusters and clines as the main possible orderings.  Serre & Pääbo (2004)  argued for smooth, clinal genetic variation in ancestral populations even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques.  Rosenberg et al. (2005)  disputed this and offered an analysis of the Human Genetic Diversity Panel showing that there were small discontinuities in the smooth genetic variation for ancestral populations at the location of geographic barriers such as the  Sahara , the Oceans, and the  Himalayas . Nonetheless,  Rosenberg et al. (2005)  stated that their findings "should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race ... Genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive 'diagnostic' genotypes." Using a sample of 40 populations distributed roughly evenly across the Earth's land surface,  Xing & et al. (2010 , p. 208) found that "genetic diversity is distributed in a more clinal pattern when more geographically intermediate populations are sampled".


Guido Barbujani  has written that human genetic variation is generally distributed continuously in gradients across much of Earth, and that there is no evidence that genetic boundaries between human populations exist as would be necessary for human races to exist. [ 127 ]


Over time, human genetic variation has formed a nested structure that is inconsistent with the concept of races that have evolved independently of one another. [ 128 ]


As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term  population  to talk about genetic differences,  historians ,  cultural anthropologists  and other  social scientists  re-conceptualized the term "race" as a cultural category or  identity , i.e., a way among many possible ways in which a society chooses to divide its members into categories.


Many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word " ethnicity " to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history. Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with "race", following the  Second World War , evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination,  apartheid , slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the  civil rights movement  in the United States and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. They thus came to believe that race itself is a social construct, a concept that was believed to correspond to an objective reality but which was believed in because of its social functions. [ 129 ]


Craig Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000. Upon examining the data from the genome mapping, Venter realized that although the genetic variation within the human species is on the order of 1–3% (instead of the previously assumed 1%), the types of variations do not support the notion of genetically defined races. Venter said, "Race is a social concept. It's not a scientific one. There are no bright lines (that would stand out), if we could compare all the sequenced genomes of everyone on the planet. ... When we try to apply science to try to sort out these social differences, it all falls apart." [ 130 ]


Anthropologist Stephan Palmié has argued that race "is not a thing but a social relation"; [ 131 ]  or, in the words of  Katya Gibel Mevorach , "a metonym", "a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference". [ 132 ]  As such, the use of the term "race" itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race; only history and social relationships will.


Imani Perry  has argued that race "is produced by social arrangements and political decision making", [ 133 ]  and that "race is something that happens, rather than something that is. It is dynamic, but it holds no objective truth." [ 134 ]  Similarly, in  Racial Culture: A Critique  (2005), Richard T. Ford argued that while "there is no necessary correspondence between the ascribed identity of race and one's culture or personal sense of self" and "group difference is not intrinsic to members of social groups but rather contingent o[n] the social practices of group identification", the social practices of  identity politics  may coerce individuals into the "compulsory" enactment of "prewritten racial scripts". [ 135 ]


Compared to 19th-century United States, 20th-century  Brazil  was characterized by a perceived relative absence of sharply defined racial groups. According to anthropologist  Marvin Harris , this pattern reflects a different history and different  social relations .


Race in Brazil was "biologized", but in a way that recognized the difference between ancestry (which determines  genotype ) and  phenotypic  differences. There, racial identity was not governed by rigid descent rule, such as the  one-drop rule , as it was in the United States. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only a very limited number of categories to choose from, [ 136 ]  to the extent that full  siblings  can pertain to different racial groups. [ 137 ]


Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in  conformity  with all the possible combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and not one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred preferentially to appearance, not heredity, and appearance is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes are responsible for someone's skin color and traits: a person who is considered white may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered black, and the reverse can be also true about European ancestry. [ 139 ]  The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil reflects the extent of genetic mixing in  Brazilian society , a society that remains highly, but not strictly,  stratified  along color lines. These  socioeconomic  factors are also significant to the limits of racial lines, because a minority of  pardos , or brown people, are likely to start declaring themselves white or black if socially upward, [ 140 ]  and being seen as relatively "whiter" as their perceived social status increases (much as in other regions of Latin America). [ 141 ]


Fluidity of racial categories  aside, the "biologification" of race in Brazil referred above would match contemporary concepts of race in the United States quite closely, though, if Brazilians are supposed to choose their race as one among, Asian and Indigenous apart, three IBGE's census categories. While assimilated  Amerindians  and people with very high quantities of Amerindian ancestry are usually grouped as  caboclos , a subgroup of  pardos  which roughly translates as both  mestizo  and  hillbilly , for those of lower quantity of Amerindian descent a higher European genetic contribution is expected to be grouped as a  pardo . In several genetic tests, people with less than 60-65% of European descent and 5–10% of Amerindian descent usually cluster with  Afro-Brazilians  (as reported by the individuals), or 6.9% of the population, and those with about 45% or more of Subsaharan contribution most times do so (in average, Afro-Brazilian DNA was reported to be about 50% Subsaharan African, 37% European and 13% Amerindian). [ 142 ] [ 143 ] [ 144 ] [ 145 ]


If a more consistent report with the genetic groups in the gradation of genetic mixing is to be considered (e.g. that would not cluster people with a balanced degree of African and non-African ancestry in the black group instead of the multiracial one, unlike elsewhere in Latin America where people of high quantity of African descent tend to classify themselves as mixed), more people would report themselves as white and  pardo  in Brazil (47.7% and 42.4% of the population as of 2010, respectively), because by research its population is believed to have between 65 and 80% of autosomal European ancestry, in average (also >35% of European mt-DNA and >95% of European Y-DNA). [ 142 ] [ 148 ] [ 149 ] [ 150 ]


From the last decades of the  Empire  until the 1950s, the proportion of the white population increased significantly while Brazil welcomed 5.5 million immigrants between 1821 and 1932, not much behind its neighbor Argentina with 6.4 million, [ 151 ]  and it received more European immigrants in its colonial history than the United States. Between 1500 and 1760, 700.000 Europeans settled in Brazil, while 530.000 Europeans settled in the United States for the same given time. [ 152 ]  Thus, the historical construction of race in Brazilian society dealt primarily with gradations between persons of majority European ancestry and little minority groups with otherwise lower quantity therefrom in recent times.


According to the  Council of the European Union :


The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.


The  European Union  uses the terms racial origin and ethnic origin synonymously in its documents and according to it "the use of the term 'racial origin' in this directive does not imply an acceptance of such [racial] theories". [ 153 ] [ 154 ] [ full citation needed ]   Haney López  warns that using "race" as a category within the law tends to legitimize its existence in the popular imagination. In the diverse geographic context of  Europe , ethnicity and ethnic origin are arguably more resonant and are less encumbered by the ideological baggage associated with "race". In European context, historical resonance of "race" underscores its problematic nature. In some states, it is strongly associated with laws promulgated by the  Nazi  and  Fascist  governments in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, in 1996, the  European Parliament  adopted a resolution stating that "the term should therefore be avoided in all official texts". [ 155 ]


The concept of racial origin relies on the notion that human beings can be separated into biologically distinct "races", an idea generally rejected by the scientific community. Since all human beings belong to the same species, the  ECRI  (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) rejects theories based on the existence of different "races". However, in its Recommendation ECRI uses this term in order to ensure that those persons who are generally and erroneously perceived as belonging to "another race" are not excluded from the protection provided for by the legislation. The law claims to reject the existence of "race", yet penalize situations where someone is treated less favourably on this ground. [ 155 ]


The immigrants to the  United States  came from every region of Europe, Africa, and Asia. They  mixed  among themselves and with the  indigenous inhabitants of the continent . In the United States most people who self-identify as  African American  have some  European ancestors , while many people who identify as  European American  have some African or Amerindian ancestors.


Since the early history of the United States, Amerindians, African Americans, and European Americans have been classified as belonging to different races. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories, such as  mulatto  and  octoroon . The criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During the  Reconstruction  era, increasing numbers of Americans began to consider anyone with " one drop " of known "Black blood" to be Black, regardless of appearance. By the early 20th century, this notion was made statutory in many states.  Amerindians  continue to be defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called  blood quantum ). To be White one had to have perceived "pure" White ancestry. The one-drop rule or  hypodescent  rule refers to the convention of defining a person as racially black if he or she has any known African ancestry. This rule meant that those that were mixed race but with some discernible African ancestry were defined as black. The one-drop rule is specific to not only those with African ancestry but to the United States, making it a particularly African-American experience. [ 156 ]


The  decennial censuses  conducted since 1790 in the United States created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into these categories. [ 157 ]


The term " Hispanic " as an  ethnonym  emerged in the 20th century with the rise of migration of laborers from the  Spanish-speaking countries  of  Latin America  to the United States. Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". The definitions of both terms are non-race specific, and include people who consider themselves to be of distinct races (Black, White, Amerindian, Asian, and mixed groups). [ 158 ]  However, there is a common misconception in the US that Hispanic/Latino is a race [ 159 ]  or sometimes even that national origins such as Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Salvadoran, etc. are races. In contrast to "Latino" or "Hispanic", " Anglo " refers to non-Hispanic  White Americans  or non-Hispanic  European Americans , most of whom speak the English language but are not necessarily of English descent.


The concept of race classification in physical anthropology lost credibility around the 1960s and is now considered untenable. [ 160 ] [ 161 ] [ 162 ]  A 2019 statement by the  American Association of Physical Anthropologists  declares:


Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. [ 86 ]


Wagner et al. (2017) surveyed 3,286 American anthropologists' views on race and genetics, including both cultural and biological anthropologists. They found a consensus among them that biological races do not exist in humans, but that race does exist insofar as the social experiences of members of different races can have significant effects on health. [ 163 ]


Wang, Štrkalj et al. (2003) examined the use of race as a biological concept in research papers published in China's only biological anthropology journal,  Acta Anthropologica Sinica . The study showed that the race concept was widely used among Chinese anthropologists. [ 164 ] [ 165 ]  In a 2007 review paper, Štrkalj suggested that the stark contrast of the racial approach between the United States and China was due to the fact that race is a factor for social cohesion among the ethnically diverse people of China, whereas "race" is a very sensitive issue in America and the racial approach is considered to undermine social cohesion – with the result that in the socio-political context of US academics scientists are encouraged not to use racial categories, whereas in China they are encouraged to use them. [ 166 ]


Lieberman et al. in a 2004 study researched the acceptance of race as a concept among anthropologists in the United States, Canada, the Spanish speaking areas, Europe, Russia and China. Rejection of race ranged from high to low, with the highest rejection rate in the United States and Canada, a moderate rejection rate in Europe, and the lowest rejection rate in Russia and China. Methods used in the studies reported included questionnaires and content analysis. [ 21 ]


Kaszycka et al. (2009) in 2002–2003 surveyed European anthropologists' opinions toward the biological race concept. Three factors – country of academic education, discipline, and age – were found to be significant in differentiating the replies. Those educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle-aged persons rejected race more frequently than those educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations. "The survey shows that the views on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education." [ 167 ]


Since the second half of the 20th century,  physical anthropology  in the United States has moved away from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective. Anthropologists have tended to understand race as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is understood in the social sciences. [ 92 ] [ 161 ]  Since 1932, an increasing number of college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have rejected race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. According to one academic journal entry, where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931  Journal of Physical Anthropology  employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996. [ 168 ]


A 1998 "Statement on 'Race'" composed by a select committee of anthropologists and issued by the executive board of the  American Anthropological Association , which they argue "represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists", declares: [ 169 ]


In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species. ...
With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, ... it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. ... Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.


An earlier  survey , conducted in 1985 ( Lieberman et al. 1992 ), asked 1,200 American scientists how many  disagree  with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species  Homo sapiens ." Among anthropologists, the responses were:


Lieberman's study also showed that more women reject the concept of race than men. [ 171 ]


The same survey, conducted again in 1999, [ 172 ]  showed that the number of anthropologists disagreeing with the idea of biological race had risen substantially. The results were as follows:


A line of research conducted by Cartmill (1998), however, seemed to limit the scope of Lieberman's finding that there was "a significant degree of change in the status of the race concept".  Goran Štrkalj  has argued that this may be because Lieberman and collaborators had looked at all the members of the American Anthropological Association irrespective of their field of research interest, while Cartmill had looked specifically at biological anthropologists interested in human variation. [ 173 ]


In 2007,  Ann Morning  interviewed over 40 American biologists and anthropologists and found significant disagreements over the nature of race, with no one viewpoint holding a majority among either group. Morning also argues that a third position, "antiessentialism", which holds that race is not a useful concept for biologists, should be introduced into this debate in addition to "constructionism" and "essentialism". [ 174 ]


According to the 2000  University of Wyoming  edition of a popular physical anthropology textbook,  forensic anthropologists  are overwhelmingly in support of the idea of the basic biological reality of human races. [ 175 ]  Forensic physical anthropologist and professor  George W. Gill  has said that the idea that race is only skin deep "is simply not true, as any experienced forensic anthropologist will affirm" and "Many morphological features tend to follow geographic boundaries coinciding often with climatic zones. This is not surprising since the selective forces of climate are probably the primary forces of nature that have shaped human races with regard not only to skin color and hair form but also the underlying bony structures of the nose, cheekbones, etc. (For example, more prominent noses humidify air better.)" While he can see good arguments for both sides, the complete denial of the opposing evidence "seems to stem largely from socio-political motivation and not science at all". He also states that many biological anthropologists see races as real yet "not one introductory textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship". [ 175 ]


In partial response to Gill's statement, Professor of Biological Anthropology  C. Loring Brace  argues that the reason laymen and biological anthropologists can determine the geographic ancestry of an individual can be explained by the fact that biological characteristics are  clinally  distributed across the planet, and that does not translate into the concept of race. He states:


Well, you may ask, why can't we call those regional patterns "races"? In fact, we can and do, but it does not make them coherent biological entities. "Races" defined in such a way are products of our perceptions. ... We realize that in the extremes of our transit – Moscow to Nairobi, perhaps – there is a major but gradual change in skin color from what we euphemistically call white to black, and that this is related to the latitudinal difference in the intensity of the ultraviolet component of sunlight. What we do not see, however, is the myriad other traits that are distributed in a fashion quite unrelated to the intensity of ultraviolet radiation. Where skin color is concerned, all the northern populations of the Old World are lighter than the long-term inhabitants near the equator. Although Europeans and Chinese are obviously different, in skin color they are closer to each other than either is to equatorial Africans. But if we test the distribution of the widely known ABO blood-group system, then Europeans and Africans are closer to each other than either is to Chinese. [ 176 ]


The concept of "race" is still sometimes used within  forensic anthropology  (when analyzing skeletal remains),  biomedical research , and  race-based medicine . [ 177 ] [ 178 ]  Brace has criticized forensic anthropologists for this, arguing that they in fact should be talking about regional ancestry. He argues that while forensic anthropologists can determine that a skeletal remain comes from a person with ancestors in a specific region of Africa, categorizing that skeletal as being "black" is a socially constructed category that is only meaningful in the particular social context of the United States, and which is not itself scientifically valid. [ 179 ]


In the same 1985 survey ( Lieberman et al. 1992 ), 16% of the surveyed  biologists  and 36% of the surveyed  developmental psychologists  disagreed with the proposition: "There are biological races in the species  Homo sapiens ."


The authors of the study also examined 77 college textbooks in biology and 69 in physical anthropology published between 1932 and 1989. Physical anthropology texts argued that biological races exist until the 1970s, when they began to argue that races do not exist. In contrast, biology textbooks did not undergo such a reversal but many instead dropped their discussion of race altogether. The authors attributed this to biologists trying to avoid discussing the political implications of racial classifications, and to the ongoing discussions in biology about the validity of the idea of "subspecies". The authors concluded, "The concept of race, masking the overwhelming genetic similarity of all peoples and the mosaic patterns of variation that do not correspond to racial divisions, is not only socially dysfunctional but is biologically indefensible as well (pp. 5 18–5 19)."( Lieberman et al. 1992 , pp. 316–17)


A 1994 examination of 32 English sport/exercise science textbooks found that 7 (21.9%) claimed that there are biophysical differences due to race that might explain differences in sports performance, 24 (75%) did not mention nor refute the concept, and 1 (3.1%) expressed caution with the idea. [ 180 ]


In February 2001, the editors of  Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine  asked "authors to not use race and ethnicity when there is no biological, scientific, or sociological reason for doing so". [ 181 ]  The editors also stated that "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex". [ 182 ]   Nature Genetics  now ask authors to "explain why they make use of particular ethnic groups or populations, and how classification was achieved". [ 183 ]


Morning (2008) looked at high school biology textbooks during the 1952–2002 period and initially found a similar pattern with only 35% directly discussing race in the 1983–92 period from initially 92% doing so. However, this has increased somewhat after this to 43%. More indirect and brief discussions of race in the context of medical disorders have increased from none to 93% of textbooks. In general, the material on race has moved from surface traits to genetics and evolutionary history. The study argues that the textbooks' fundamental message about the existence of races has changed little. [ 184 ]


Surveying views on race in the scientific community in 2008, Morning concluded that biologists had failed to come to a clear consensus, and they often split along cultural and demographic lines. She notes: "At best, one can conclude that biologists and anthropologists now appear equally divided in their beliefs about the nature of race." [ 174 ]


Gissis (2008) examined several important American and British journals in genetics, epidemiology and medicine for their content during the 1946–2003 period. He wrote that "Based upon my findings I argue that the category of race only  seemingly  disappeared from scientific discourse after World War II and has had a  fluctuating yet continuous use  during the time span from 1946 to 2003, and has even  become more pronounced from the early 1970s on ". [ 185 ]


33 health services researchers from differing geographic regions were interviewed in a 2008 study. The researchers recognized the problems with racial and ethnic variables but the majority still believed these variables were necessary and useful. [ 186 ]


A 2010 examination of 18 widely used English  anatomy  textbooks found that they all represented human biological variation in superficial and outdated ways, many of them making use of the race concept in ways that were current in 1950s anthropology. The authors recommended that anatomical education should describe human anatomical variation in more detail and rely on newer research that demonstrates the inadequacies of simple racial typologies. [ 187 ]


A 2021 study that examined over 11,000 papers from 1949 to 2018 in the  American Journal of Human Genetics , found that "race" was used in only 5% of papers published in the last decade, down from 22% in the first. Together with an increase in use of the terms "ethnicity", "ancestry", and location-based terms, it suggests that human geneticists have mostly abandoned the term "race". [ 188 ]


The  National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine  (NASEM), supported by the US the  National Institutes of Health , formally declared that "researchers should not use race as a proxy for describing human genetic variation". [ 189 ]  The report of its Committee on the Use of Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry as Population Descriptors in Genomics Research titled  Using Population Descriptors in Genetics and Genomics Research  was released on 14 March 2023. [ 190 ] [ 27 ]  The report stated: "In humans, race is a socially constructed designation, a misleading and harmful surrogate for population genetic differences, and has a long history of being incorrectly identified as the major genetic reason for phenotypic differences between groups." [ 3 ]  The committee co-chair  Charmaine D. Royal  and  Robert O. Keohane  of Duke University agreed in the meeting: "Classifying people by race is a practice entangled with and rooted in racism." [ 189 ]


Lester Frank Ward  (1841–1913), considered to be one of the founders of American sociology, rejected notions that there were fundamental differences that distinguished one race from another, although he acknowledged that social conditions differed dramatically by race. [ 191 ]  At the turn of the 20th century, sociologists viewed the concept of race in ways that were shaped by the  scientific racism  of the 19th and early 20th centuries. [ 192 ]  Many sociologists focused on African Americans, called  Negroes  at that time, and claimed that they were inferior to whites. White sociologist  Charlotte Perkins Gilman  (1860–1935), for example, used biological arguments to claim the inferiority of African Americans. [ 192 ]  American sociologist  Charles H. Cooley  (1864–1929) theorized that differences among races were "natural", and that biological differences result in differences in intellectual abilities. [ 193 ] [ 191 ]   Edward Alsworth Ross  (1866–1951), also an important figure in the founding of American sociology, and a  eugenicist , believed that whites were the superior race, and that there were essential differences in "temperament" among races. [ 191 ]  In 1910, the  Journal  published an article by  Ulysses G. Weatherly  (1865–1940) that called for white supremacy and segregation of the races to protect racial purity. [ 191 ]


W. E. B. Du Bois  (1868–1963), one of the first African-American sociologists, was the first sociologist to use sociological concepts and empirical research methods to analyze race as a social construct instead of a biological reality. [ 192 ]  Beginning in 1899 with his book  The Philadelphia Negro , Du Bois studied and wrote about race and racism throughout his career. In his work, he contended that  social class ,  colonialism , and  capitalism  shaped ideas about race and racial categories. Social scientists largely abandoned scientific racism and biological reasons for racial categorization schemes by the 1930s. [ 194 ]  Other early sociologists, especially those associated with the  Chicago School , joined Du Bois in theorizing race as a socially constructed fact. [ 194 ]  By 1978,  William Julius Wilson  argued that race and racial classification systems were declining in significance, and that instead,  social class  more accurately described what sociologists had earlier understood as race. [ 195 ]  By 1986, sociologists  Michael Omi  and  Howard Winant  successfully introduced the concept of  racial formation  to describe the process by which racial categories are created. [ 196 ]  Omi and Winant assert that "there is no biological basis for distinguishing among human groups along the lines of race". [ 196 ]


Eduardo Bonilla-Silva , Sociology professor at Duke University, remarks: [ 197 ]  "I contend that racism is, more than anything else, a matter of group power; it is about a dominant racial group (whites) striving to maintain its systemic advantages and minorities fighting to subvert the racial status quo." [ 198 ]  The types of practices that take place under this new color-blind racism is subtle, institutionalized, and supposedly not racial. Color-blind racism thrives on the idea that race is no longer an issue in the United States. [ 198 ]  There are contradictions between the alleged color-blindness of most whites and the persistence of a color-coded system of inequality. [ citation needed ]


Today, sociologists generally understand race and racial categories as socially constructed, and reject racial categorization schemes that depend on biological differences. [ 194 ]


In the United States, federal government policy promotes the use of racially categorized data to identify and address health disparities between racial or ethnic groups. [ 199 ]  In clinical settings, race has sometimes been considered in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. Doctors have noted that some medical conditions are more prevalent in certain racial or ethnic groups than in others, without being sure of the cause of those differences. Recent interest in  race-based medicine , or race-targeted  pharmacogenomics , has been fueled by the proliferation of human genetic data which followed the  decoding  of the  human genome  in the first decade of the twenty-first century. There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. Proponents of the use of racial categories in biomedicine argue that continued use of racial categorizations in biomedical research and clinical practice makes possible the application of new genetic findings, and provides a clue to diagnosis. [ 200 ] [ 201 ]  Biomedical researchers' positions on race fall into two main camps: those who consider the concept of race to have no biological basis and those who consider it to have the potential to be biologically meaningful. Members of the latter camp often base their arguments around the potential to create genome-based  personalized medicine . [ 202 ]


Other researchers point out that finding a difference in disease prevalence between two socially defined groups does not necessarily imply genetic causation of the difference. [ 203 ] [ 204 ]  They suggest that medical practices should maintain their focus on the individual rather than an individual's membership to any group. [ 205 ]  They argue that overemphasizing genetic contributions to health disparities carries various risks such as reinforcing stereotypes, promoting racism or ignoring the contribution of non-genetic factors to health disparities. [ 206 ]  International epidemiological data show that living conditions rather than race make the biggest difference in health outcomes even for diseases that have "race-specific" treatments. [ 207 ]  Some studies have found that patients are reluctant to accept racial categorization in medical practice. [ 201 ]


In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the job of  law enforcement officers  seeking to apprehend suspects, the United States  FBI  employs the term "race" to summarize the general appearance (skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend. From the perspective of  law enforcement  officers, it is generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily suggest the general appearance of an individual than to make a scientifically valid categorization by DNA or other such means. Thus, in addition to assigning a wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will include: height, weight, eye color, scars and other distinguishing characteristics.


Criminal justice agencies in  England  and  Wales  use at least two separate racial/ethnic classification systems when reporting crime, as of 2010. One is the system used in the  2001 Census  when individuals identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnic group: W1 (White-British), W2 (White-Irish), W9 (Any other white background); M1 (White and black Caribbean), M2 (White and black African), M3 (White and Asian), M9 (Any other mixed background); A1 (Asian-Indian), A2 (Asian-Pakistani), A3 (Asian-Bangladeshi), A9 (Any other Asian background); B1 (Black Caribbean), B2 (Black African), B3 (Any other black background); O1 (Chinese), O9 (Any other). The other is categories used by the police when they visually identify someone as belonging to an ethnic group, e.g. at the time of a stop and search or an arrest: White – North European (IC1), White – South European (IC2), Black (IC3), Asian (IC4), Chinese, Japanese, or South East Asian (IC5), Middle Eastern (IC6), and Unknown (IC0). "IC" stands for "Identification Code;" these items are also referred to as Phoenix classifications. [ 208 ]  Officers are instructed to "record the response that has been given" even if the person gives an answer which may be incorrect; their own perception of the person's ethnic background is recorded separately. [ 209 ]  Comparability of the information being recorded by officers was brought into question by the  Office for National Statistics  (ONS) in September 2007, as part of its Equality Data Review; one problem cited was the number of reports that contained an ethnicity of "Not Stated". [ 210 ]


In many countries, such as  France , the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race. [ 211 ]


In the United States, the practice of  racial profiling  has been ruled to be both  unconstitutional  and a violation of  civil rights . There is active debate regarding the cause of a marked correlation between the recorded crimes, punishments meted out, and the country's populations. Many consider  de facto   racial profiling  an example of  institutional racism  in law enforcement. [ 212 ]


Mass incarceration in the United States disproportionately impacts African American and Latino communities. Michelle Alexander, author of  The New Jim Crow : Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness  (2010), argues that mass incarceration is best understood as not only a system of overcrowded prisons. Mass incarceration is also, "the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison". [ 213 ]  She defines it further as "a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls", illustrating the second-class citizenship that is imposed on a disproportionate number of people of color, specifically African-Americans. She compares mass incarceration to  Jim Crow laws , stating that both work as racial caste systems. [ 214 ]


Many research findings appear to agree that the impact of victim race in the  interpersonal violence  (IPV) arrest decision might include a racial bias in favor of white victims. A 2011 study in a national sample of IPV arrests found that female arrest was more likely if the male victim was white and the female offender was black, while male arrest was more likely if the female victim was white. For both female and male arrest in IPV cases, situations involving married couples were more likely to lead to arrest compared to dating or divorced couples. More research is needed to understand agency and community factors that influence police behavior and how discrepancies in IPV interventions/ tools of justice can be addressed. [ 215 ]


Recent work using DNA  cluster analysis  to determine race background has been used by some criminal investigators to narrow their search for the identity of both suspects and victims. [ 216 ]  Proponents of DNA profiling in criminal investigations cite cases where leads based on DNA analysis proved useful, but the practice remains controversial among medical ethicists, defense lawyers and some in law enforcement. [ 217 ]


The  Constitution of Australia  contains a line about 'people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws', despite there being no agreed definition of race described in the document.


Similarly,  forensic anthropologists  draw on highly heritable morphological features of human remains (e.g. cranial measurements) to aid in the identification of the body, including in terms of race. In a 1992 article, anthropologist  Norman Sauer  noted that anthropologists had generally abandoned the concept of race as a valid representation of human biological diversity, except for forensic anthropologists. He asked, "If races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?" [ 162 ]  He concluded:


[T]he successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed "racial" category. A specimen may display features that point to African ancestry. In this country that person is likely to have been labeled Black regardless of whether or not such a race actually exists in nature. [ 162 ]


Identification of the ancestry of an individual is dependent upon knowledge of the frequency and distribution of phenotypic traits in a population. This does not necessitate the use of a racial classification scheme based on unrelated traits, although the race concept is widely used in medical and legal contexts in the United States. [ 218 ]  Some studies have reported that races can be identified with a high degree of accuracy using certain methods, such as that developed by Giles and Elliot. However, this method sometimes fails to be replicated in other times and places; for instance, when the method was re-tested to identify Native Americans, the average rate of accuracy dropped from 85% to 33%. [ 78 ]  Prior information about the individual (e.g. Census data) is also important in allowing the accurate identification of the individual's "race". [ 219 ]


In a different approach, anthropologist  C. Loring Brace  said:


The simple answer is that, as members of the society that poses the question, they are inculcated into the social conventions that determine the expected answer. They should also be aware of the biological inaccuracies contained in that "politically correct" answer. Skeletal analysis provides no direct assessment of skin color, but it does allow an accurate estimate of original geographical origins. African, eastern Asian, and European ancestry can be specified with a high degree of accuracy. Africa of course entails "black", but "black" does not entail African. [ 220 ]


In association with a NOVA program in 2000 about race, he wrote an essay opposing use of the term. [ 221 ]


A 2002 study found that about 13% of human craniometric variation existed between regions, while 6% existed between local populations within regions and 81% within local populations. In contrast, the opposite pattern of genetic variation was observed for skin color (which is often used to define race), with 88% of variation between regions. The study concluded: "The apportionment of genetic diversity in skin color is atypical, and cannot be used for purposes of classification." [ 222 ]
Similarly, a 2009 study found that craniometrics could be used accurately to determine what part of the world someone was from based on their cranium; however, this study also found that there were no abrupt boundaries that separated craniometric variation into distinct racial groups. [ 223 ]  Another 2009 study showed that American blacks and whites had different skeletal morphologies, and that significant patterning in variation in these traits exists within continents. This suggests that classifying humans into races based on skeletal characteristics would necessitate many different "races" being defined. [ 224 ]


In 2010, philosopher  Neven Sesardić  argued that when several traits are analyzed at the same time, forensic anthropologists can classify a person's race with an accuracy of close to 100% based on only skeletal remains. [ 225 ]  Sesardić's claim has been disputed by philosopher  Massimo Pigliucci , who accused Sesardić of "cherry pick[ing] the scientific evidence and reach[ing] conclusions that are contradicted by it". Specifically, Pigliucci argued that Sesardić misrepresented a paper by Ousley et al. (2009), and neglected to mention that they identified differentiation not just between individuals from different races, but also between individuals from different tribes, local environments, and time periods. [ 226 ]


Social interpretations of race  regard the common  categorizations of people into different races . Race is often culturally understood to be rigid categories ( Black ,  White ,  Pasifika ,  Asian , etc) in which people can be classified based on biological markers or physical traits such as  skin colour  or facial features. This rigid definition of race is no longer accepted by scientific communities. [ 1 ] [ 2 ]  Instead, the concept of 'race' is viewed as a  social construct . [ 3 ]  This means, in simple terms, that it is a human invention and not a biological fact. The concept of 'race' has developed over time in order to accommodate different societies' needs of organising themselves as separate from the 'other' ( globalization  and  colonization  have caused conceptions of race to be generally consolidated). The 'other' was usually viewed as inferior and, as such, was assigned worse qualities. Our current idea of race was  developed primarily  during  the Enlightenment , [ 4 ] [ 5 ]  in which scientists attempted to define racial boundaries, but their  cultural biases  ultimately impacted their findings and reproduced the  prejudices that still exist in our society today .


The biological anthropologist  Jonathan Marks  (1995) argued that even as the idea of "race" was becoming a powerful organizing principle in many societies, the shortcomings of the concept were apparent. In the Old World, the gradual transition in appearances from one racial group to adjacent racial groups emphasized that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them," as Blumenbach observed in his writings on human variation. [ 6 ]  In parts of the Americas, the situation was somewhat different. The immigrants to the New World came largely from widely separated regions of the Old World—western and northern Europe, western Africa, and, later, eastern Asia and southern and eastern Europe. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to  mix  among themselves and with the  indigenous  inhabitants of the continent. In the United States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ~23% for a sample of African Americans from New Orleans. [ 7 ]  In a survey of college students who self-identified as  white  in a northeastern U.S. university, the west African and Native American genetic contribution were 0.7% and 3.2%. [ 8 ]


In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time that forced individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories. [ 9 ]  An example is the " one-drop rule " implemented in some state laws that treated anyone with a single known African American ancestor as black. [ 10 ]  The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States also created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into those categories. [ 11 ]  In other countries in the Americas, where mixing among groups was more extensive, social non racial categories have tended to be more numerous and fluid, with people moving into or out of categories on the basis of a combination of socioeconomic status, social class, ancestry. [ 12 ]


Efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete racial categories generated many difficulties. [ 13 ]  Additionally, efforts to track mixing between census racial groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as  mulatto  and  octoroon ) and "blood quantum" distinctions that became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. [ 14 ]  A person's racial identity can change over time. One study found differences between self-ascribed race and  Veterans Affairs  administrative data. [ 15 ]


The notion of a biological basis for race originally emerged through speculations surrounding the "blood purity" of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, eventually translating to a general association of one's biology with their social and personal characteristics. In the 19th century, this recurring ideology was intensified in the development of the racial sciences, eugenics and ethnology, which meant to further categorize groups of humans in terms of biological superiority or inferiority. [ 16 ]  While the field of racial sciences, also known as  scientific racism , has expired in history, these antiquated conceptions of race have persisted throughout the 21st century. (See also:  Historical origins of racial classification )


Contrary to popular belief that the division of the human species based on physical variations is natural, there exists no clear, reliable distinctions that bind people to such groupings. [ 17 ]  According to the  American Anthropological Association , "Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes." [ 18 ]  While there is a biological basis for differences in human phenotypes, most notably in skin color, [ 19 ]  the genetic variability of humans is found not amongst, but rather within racial groups – meaning the perceived level of dissimilarity amongst the species has virtually no biological basis. Genetic diversity has characterized human survival, rendering the idea of a "pure" ancestry as obsolete. [ 16 ]  Under this interpretation, race is conceptualized through a lens of artificiality, rather than through the skeleton of a scientific discovery. As a result, scholars have begun to broaden discourses of race by defining it as a social construct and exploring the historical contexts that led to its inception and persistence in contemporary society. [ 20 ]


A significant number of  historians , [ 21 ]   anthropologists , [ 22 ]  and  sociologists , [ 23 ] [ 24 ]  such as David Roediger, Jennifer K. Wagner,  Tanya Golash-Boza  and Ann Morning, describe human races as a social construct. They argue that it would be more accurate to use the terms ' population'  or ' ancestry' , which can be given a clear  operational definition . However, it is common for people who reject the formal concept of race, to continue their use of the word ' race'  in day-to-day language. This continuation could be credited to  semantics , or to the underlying cultural significance of race within societies where racism is commonplace. Whilst the concept of race is challenged, it would be useful in medical contexts to have practical categorisation between 'individual' and 'species' because in the absence of affordable and widespread genetic tests, various race-linked gene mutations (see  Cystic fibrosis ,  Lactose intolerance ,  Tay–Sachs disease  and  Sickle cell anemia ) are difficult to address. As genetic tests for such conditions become cheaper, and as detailed  haplotype  maps and  SNP  databases become available, identifiers of race should diminish. Also, increasing interracial marriage is reducing the predictive power of race. For example, babies born with  Tay–Sachs disease  in North America are not only or primarily Ashkenazi Jews, despite stereotypes to contrary; French Canadians, Louisiana Cajuns, and Irish-Americans also see high rates of the disease. [ 25 ]


Michael Brooks, the author of “ The Race Delusion”  suggests that race is not determined biographically or genetically, but that it is socially constructed. He explains that nearly all scientists in the field of race, nationality, and ethnicity will confirm that race is a social construct. It has more to do with how people identify rather than genetics. He then goes on to explain how “black” and “white” have different meanings in other cultures. People in the United States tend to label themselves black if they have ancestors that are from Africa, but when you are in Brazil, you are not black if you have European ancestry. DNA shows that the human population is a result of populations that have moved across the world, splitting up and interbreeding. Even with this science to back up this concept, society has yet to believe and accept it. No one is born with the knowledge of race, the split between races and the decision to treat others differently based on skin color is completely learned and accepted by society.


Experts in the fields of genetics, law, and  sociology  have offered their opinions on the subject. Audrey Smedley and  Brian D. Smedley  of Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine [ 26 ]  discuss the anthropological and historical perspectives on ethnicity, culture, and race. They define culture as the habits acquired by a society. Smedley states "Ethnicity and culture are related phenomena and bear no intrinsic connection to human biological variations or race" (Smedley 17). The authors state using physical characteristics to define an ethnic identity is inaccurate. The variation of humans has actually decreased over time since, as the author states, "Immigration, intermating, intermarriage, and reproduction have led to increasing physical heterogeneity of peoples in many areas of the world" (Smedley 18). They referred to other experts and their research, pointing out that humans are 99% alike. That one percent is caused by natural genetic variation, and has nothing to do with the ethnic group of the subject. Racial classification in the United States started in the 1700s with three ethnically distinct groups. These groups were the white Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans. The concept of race was skewed around these times because of the social implications of belonging to one group or another. The view that one race is biologically different from another rose out of society's grasp for power and authority over other ethnic groups. This did not only happen in the United States but around the world as well. Society created race to create hierarchies in which the majority would prosper most.


Another group of experts in sociology has written on this topic. Guang Guo, Yilan Fu, Yi Li,  Kathleen Mullan Harris  of the University of North Carolina [ 27 ]  department of sociology as well as Hedwig Lee (University of Washington Seattle), Tianji Cai (University of Macau) comment on remarks made by one expert. The debate is over DNA differences, or lack thereof, between different races. The research in the original article they are referring to uses different methods of DNA testing between distinct ethnic groups and compares them to other groups. Small differences were found, but those were not based on race. They were from biological differences caused from the region in which the people live. They describe that the small differences cannot be fully explained because the understanding of migration, intermarriage, and ancestry is unreliable at the individual level. Race cannot be related to ancestry based on the research on which they are commenting. They conclude that the idea of "races as biologically distinct peoples with differential abilities and behaviors has long been discredited by the scientific community" (2338).


One more expert in the field has given her opinion. Ann Morning of the New York University Department of Sociology, [ 28 ]  and member of the  American Sociological Association , discusses the role of biology in the social construction of race. She examines the relationship between genes and race and the social construction of social race clusters. Morning states that everyone is assigned to a racial group because of their physical characteristics. She identifies through her research the existence of DNA population clusters.  She states that society would want to characterize these clusters as races. Society characterizes race as a set of physical characteristics. The clusters though have an overlap in physical characteristics and thus cannot be counted as a race by society or by science. Morning concludes that "Not only can constructivist theory accommodate or explain the occasional alignment of social classifications and genetic estimates that Shiao et al.'s model hypothesizes, but empirical research on human genetics is far from claiming—let alone demonstrating—that statistically inferred clusters are the equivalent of races" (Morning 203). Only using ethnic groups to map a genome is entirely inaccurate, instead every individual must be viewed as having their own wholly unique genome (unique in the 1%, not the 99% all humans share).