Transcript
The world often categorizes each individual based on their race/ethnicity and society gives the perception that each individual race is different through appearance but genetically were actually really not different from one another Which makes senses because through a simplistic outlook we are same species that can function such as walk, talk, think, touch, etc with the exception of people with deformities/ mutations in their DNA. Biological differences between human beings reflect both hereditary factors and the influence of natural and social environments. In most cases, these differences are due to the interaction of both. The degree to which environment or heredity affects any particular trait varies greatly. Many scientist believe the reason towards the human population being so similar through genetics is that, even though it’s not 100% proven, this low level of variation in modern day human population suggests that the size of the human population was much smaller in the relatively recent past. There is great genetic diversity within all human populations. Much of the biological variation among populations involves modest degrees of variation in the frequency of shared traits. Human populations have at times been isolated, but have never genetically diverged enough to produce any biological barriers to mating between members of different populations. Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogenous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past. Which only further supports the idea that modern humans evolved as a relatively small group in eastern Africa within the past 200,000 years and then spread out to occupy the rest of the world, with little or no interbreeding between modern humans and the archaic humans that they gradually replaced.
The human species has a past rich in migration, in territorial expansions, and in contractions. As a consequence, we are adapted to many of the earth's environments in general, but to none in particular. For many centuries, human progress in any field has been based on culture and not on genetic improvement. Mating between members of different human groups tends to diminish differences between groups, and has played a very important role in human history. Wherever different human populations have come in contact, such matings have taken place. Obstacles to such interaction have been social and cultural, not biological. The global process of urbanization, coupled with intercontinental migrations, has the potential to reduce the differences among all human populations.
The misconception of genetics blatantly being associated with race is due to the way how people view it and in this article, Genetic Factors in Ethnic Disparities in Health by Richard S. Cooper, it goes into the controversy of race, “The two main dimensions of the race controversy can be discussed separately. First, the (“ideological”) concept of race informs popular discourse and shapes policy, with a parallel impact in public health. This version of race is defined by social and historical forces and is used to create and justify many of the divisions that exist among people of varying religious, ethnic, or geographic backgrounds. A second use of race has assumed new relevance. As a label for regional populations, race has a long history in population genetics, and in this arena, important opportunities exist to revisit old questions on interethnic variation in health. At stake is whether or not we can move beyond the indirect methods applied in epidemiology or the generalizations built on estimation of genetic distance that have preoccupied population geneticists and anthropologists (Cavalli-Sforza, Menozzi, and Piazza, 1996; Relethford, 1998)( Anderson, Norman B ). As you can see the first aspect goes off social norm while the second is based off scientific fact and history in migration patterns. Even though the human population genetics are similar to one another does not mean that their identical otherwise we would essentially be like a mirror to one another. Racial conflict has long been a part of human societies. Along with that conflict has come frequent speculation that one race is inferior to another. Some have been worried that modern genetics would substantiate that belief, but our best genetic evidence to date shows those worries unfounded. The way how traits are passed down to one person to another is through reproduction when the offspring takes 50 percent of its DNA from each parent, and its traits are determined by which parts of its parents' DNA are passed on. A personal example would be me, even though I am originally from Eritrea my hair is really curly, my facial hair is different from other people I know from Eritrea/ Ethiopia, and apparently to most people I don’t even look 100% African. Basically what I’m trying to say is that my traits aren’t fully contributed because of my race but rather it’s due to the traits I received from my parents. While it’s not impossible to completely say that in one way or another that race has nothing to do with genetically inherited traits, however it would require a lot of data gathering and statistical analysis in different ethnic groups in different parts of the world as described in this article on how one scientist who doesn’t see race as a meaningless or antediluvian notion, ''I think racial classifications have been useful to us,'' said Dr. Alan Rogers, a population geneticist and professor of anthropology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. ''We may believe that most differences between races are superficial, but the differences are there, and they are informative about the origins and migrations of our species. To do my work, I have to get genetic data from different parts of the world, and look at differences within groups and between groups, so it helps to have labels for groups''(Angier, Natalie). In order for Dr. Alan to prove that race is somewhat associated with race he would have travel the world and gather statistical data from all races and even if he accomplished it still wouldn’t be 100% accurate.
To further prove my case I found an interesting article that fully goes in depth of the differences towards the genetics in ancestry compared to genetics in race and developed a method called genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to search for genetic markers that may increase the risk of developing common complex diseases , “Instead of designing their genetic analysis by relying on a priori designations of population categories, such as pre-existing race or nationality labels, the medical geneticists we studied used a statistical procedure that they regard as more accurate for adjusting for population substructure. That is, although some of their samples may have been collected and labeled using racial or ethnic category designations, these medical geneticists specifically chose not to use such information in their analyses. Instead, they chose to develop ways to control for substructure by adjusting their genotyping data before conducting statistical analyses of SNP associations to disease. Some of them stated that they believe that racial or ethnic categories do not refer to a genetic set of categories, and therefore, are inappropriate for controlling for substructure and analyzing genetic associations”( Fujimura, Joan and Ramya Rajagopalan ). To be more specific, this software has the function to analyze a person’s trait without having to use race as a category and the article highlights that race was never a factor in checking genetic markers for disease, “They affirmed that their genetic analyses ‘were not about race’—whether defined by ideas about phenotypic characteristics like skin color or self-described categories. They have sometimes worked with samples that were originally collected in terms of race or ethnic categories, but they did not use these categories in their analysis of correlations between SNP variation and disease. Some of them believe that race is an incorrect concept to use in disease genetics, because race categories are insufficient proxies for specifying groups in which individuals have relatively similar genetics. Instead, they use their EIGENSTRAT technology to produce numerical SNP variation scores that are similar for people with similar genetic marker patterns. In general, the geneticists we studied who are using the EIGENSTRAT technology praised its technical merits for aiding the search for genetic factors that may contribute to CCD”(). The article, in my opinion, goes on to prove that it what’s inside of us that makes each individual unique in their own way.
Society makes everyone profile each other based on their race and assume that individuals within the same race have identical traits but that entirely false. Each person has something unique that others within the same race would never have.
