'The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea'

[professors]

To clear up any confusion about what the difference is between race and ethnicity I'll post this comment.

Hopefully it will help those to understand why Robert Sussman labeled his book as he did.

Races are those generalized labels such as "black", "white", "asian" and "hispanic". They are judged by the traits that people display.

Ethnicities are groups of people that have their own customs and languages that have settled in locations around the world.

An example of some ethnic groups would be the Ashkenazi Jews, Italians, Germans, Irish... There are thousands of ethnic groups that are still in the world today, and many that are ancient and forgotten.

While ethnicities do exist, races have been proven to be biologicaly inaccurate. Most of the time people judge a race by the physical traits a person has.

For instance, someone belonging to the so called "black race" is supposed to have dark skin.

So does this mean that a person belonging to an ethnic group in Africa is part of the black race?

No. We cannot assign a race to a person from any ethnic group for the following reasons:

1) First, all ethnicities were originally one group that came Sub-Saharan Africa. They lived there for at least 2 million years. Because of this, people from all ethnic groups today have 99.9 percent of their genetics in common.

2) It was only 60, 000 years ago that a group of africans left Africa and formed the various ethnic groups.

3) We can observe that the traits that have been traditionally associated with race are shared across all ethnic groups. In other words, dark skin is seen in the ethnic groups in the Indian subcontinent, in the Middle East, in South America, and many other parts of the world...not just in Africa.

4) And finally, ethnic groups have been mating with each other for thousands of years after their initial move out of Africa. This means that that all people are genetically mixed. There are no "pure" ethnic groups despite what some people may want to think.

So ethnicities do exist, but we can't group any ethnic group or any person into a race based on their physical traits. Races are a socially constructed myth. People actually have more in common genetically than they do different, despite what society and the media has taught us.

So that is why Robert Sussman had titled his book "The myth of race, the troubling persistance of an unscientific idea."

[Aimeecroft]

Ive juat brought this book. Ive read the intro and 3 pages if 1st chapter. In those 3 pages i learnt so much, that i had to sit back and think about what i already know and comply it to how the world us constructed.... You definitely need to pause and think critically about what your reading.

This may actually help me for my dissertation in psychology. 😁

[apowerseeninnatureandinthe]

one thing for sure the very oldest humans are of dark skin that not a myth but a fact and those dark skin human beings are the mothers and fathers of all today -FROM AFRICA

[sierrahotel]

Do you talk about Jewish racists and supremacism in your book?

[professors]

Race has been proven to be a social construct only. Ethnic groups however are true and real. Observed traits can be found within them. Race attempts to lump all these ethnic groups together based on traits, but the problem is that these traits are blurred across ethnic boundaries. Modern genetics have proven this. In other words, from the result of thousands of years of migratory patterns between ethnic groups, our DNA has been mixing and traits within groups are also shared. This has been happening even after our initial migration out of Africa 60000 years ago. And because our ancestors are all from subsaharan Africa and spent the majority of their time on earth there, the bulk of our genetics are also shared. If you want to think in terms of race, were all black. Understand that the concept of race was based on bias and before a time that modern science was able to dig into genetics and find antholopological evidence. These new findings show that while race is a myth, complex ethnicity is what really defines who we are. The old concept of race has not only been inaccurate in describing our genetics, but has it served to perpetuate prejudice within society....and scientific racism.

[MShmalamala]

So the only real differences between the races are the ones that you would literally need to be blind to deny, like height, skin tone, eye shape, facial features. How convenient.

[christat]

You should be in prison.. but iam not in charge in America