Race isn't biology

Thoughts: So, I very much liked the first article. I myself usually take a statistical approach to methods of research and data so the way the article presented itself, as a matter of fact rather than opinion, made the article very effective. However, the article itself was nothing I hadn’t learned in sociology and the very subject of an impassioned point the professor made on the first day, race isn’t biology and it isn’t based on science. As the article explained, humans are extremely similar. Regardless of where two people came from or their varied physical and ethnic background, the genetic differences beyond the phenotype are negligible. This means that there is not nearly enough genetic difference to constitute a different species. Rather, race is constructed. The physical traits associated with certain groups are more compose on phenotype and environment rather than a different type of human. The idea that stuck the most with me was that it was a mistake to assume one distance equals another. This break through helped drive the point home that race is really just a box you fill out, it's not necessarily who you are. This article transitioned really well into the second article which talked about how race is defined and how people refer to and perceive themselves. It also talked about a very interesting thing, race is differently defined in different places. While the US sees race as simply “a scientific fact” and often forces many groups to identify themselves in terms of their ethnic background regardless of the percentage. In other places, it’s based on more of a socioeconomic approach. These different factors are as much based on chances after birth as phenotype. As a result, with race being a fluid factor I have no other logical conclusion that race having flexible definitions means that it's constructed differently by different societies