There Is No Biological Basis for Different Races in Modern Humans

In the video @arminnavabi argued that in Social Sciences there is a such thing as more than one human race, even though the Biologist was stating the idea that based on Biology there isn't.

Well all humans are human so there's a fact but certain ethnic groups do you have different DNA patterns some have advantages some have mutations etc. People are known to appear physically different for no reason it's called EVOLUTION. Thinking from the scientific context, your statement sounds very poetic and blissful. Thank you.

I actually don't really agree with him.

I agree with the science he references but I don't believe I should tell someone I am a "sapien" every time someone asks me what my race is.

Most people just want to discuss common sense and are not asking me for a lecture in biology when they ask me my race.. having said that, most people I know tend to say "Where are you from" or "What country are you from" instead of "What is your race".

Very True, Segregation within Segregation is the real root cause of the problem.

So if the race is a social construct, can I identify as black to take advantage of affirmative action?
That Alian innovation thing is dope. hahahaha Good thinking @aceeca

It's genetics that make people look different from each other and social constructs that make us act a certain way because of those differences.

You phrased that really well @aceeca thank you 😊

Just to clear this up for those who find this sounds sort of ridiculous (which honestly is understandable): Nobody's saying skin colour is a social construct, only the transition between races is so smooth, that any hard distinction would be arbitrary.

It's not like with different animal species where you can clearly say "this is that species, this is that species, there's no in-between or transition".

Imagine all of your male ancestors standing in one line, back to the fish: Sure, you could put them into categories, and say "this here is a fish and this is a human". And there'd be genetic differences and commonalities, and you could clearly say there's a difference.

But it's completely arbitrary how we divide these ancestors up. We divide them up by how their appearance has changed, and that is, well: All very subjective. Scientifically, we can only say that there's a line of animals which have slowly transitioning differences, but there is no scientific way to clearly divide them up.

So you could say "This person is clearly of an African race, this person clearly of a European race", but what about the in-betweens? "Well", you might say, "the transition is the Arabs". 'But the Turks don't look very different from Eastern Europeans' I say, "So there's also a Balkanise race". And so on, and so on. But it's an infinitely smooth transition, and our DIVISION of races is arbitrary. Or in other words: Based on social concepts, such as the history of different groups (Wonder if Muhamad may be led to the idea of the "Arab" race).

If they ask for race it would probably be better for them to use checkboxes now where more than one can be checked.

Having to say either or is definitely making it difficult for people who have more than one ethnicity.. good point @donald.glover 👍

I find it amazing and disappointing that so-called scientific Minds can't understand complex overlapping structures. They want to over simplify things into Oblivion.

The guest speaker wasn't exactly speaking of racism, he was actually saying that there is NO SUCH thing as race.

If a form asked you what your race was would you pencil in "Sapien" or would you just check the box assigned to your "race"?

I tend to agree with you @wayo, and if you noticed, @arminnavabi tried to tolerate the guest speakers exclusion of the word race and used "Populations" instead.

That's kind of similar to what you are saying, "Populations of certain people in certain places" 👍