Race Science

Race Science

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When Racial Categories Make No Sense

By Dan Gardner, social policy researcher and freelance write

Race is a category people use to identify themselves and others. In biology, race refers to those who share a genetic heritage. Most biologists today believe that it is a meaningless concept. As one scientist noted, "Human racial differentiation is, indeed, only skin deep. Any use of racial categories must take its justification from some other source than biology. The remarkable feature of human evolution and history has been the very small degree of divergence between geographical population as compared with the genetic variation among individuals" (Not in our Genes, Richard Lewontin)

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