Is race real or is it just a human invention?

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I believe they are social constructs, but even such constructs could incite people to act in destructive ways.

The concept of race is a human invention much like the difference between the different parts of the pelagic zone in the ocean. There is no border with signs and guards, but they serve as an arbitrary distinction between wide categories. Within these wide categories, there are plenty of differences, and that is where the people who simplify the idea make their mistakes. There is no 'white' race, or 'black' race. They serve as wide categories. Within what would commonly be referred to as 'black race', you'd find ethnic groups like the Pygmees, the Kongo, the Xhosa, the Zulus, the Hausa, the Igbo, the Hutu and the Ashanti. These have - in skin colour, physical build and genetic material - much more in common with each other than they do with any other groups.

The idea that race is simply skin colour is, of course, not true, and that's where the other extreme goes wrong. There are many more differences that make these categories. There are confirmed differences in plenty of genetic material, facial structure, and physical build, and suspected differences in psychology. These differences would certainly exist between precise groups, but the differences between precise groups in one category would be much smaller than the differences between two random groups belonging to two different categories.

Basically, it's about the size of the groups you compare. If you compare Xhosa and Zulus, specific ethnic groups living largely in South Africa, very few outsiders would be able to tell the difference, but genetic differences do exist between the two groups to some extent. If you compare Xhosa and Zulus to Tigray-Tigrinya and ethnic Somalians, people will be able to tell clear differences. If you compare Xhosa and Zulus to Koreans and Chinese people, most people would be able to tell which ones are Asian and which ones are African. That's what those categories serve to do. They do not tell you specific differences, but they allow you to zoom in on a more precise genetic profile.

There's a really interesting book, "The Seven Daughters of Eve", that goes into detail of tracing the matrilineal ancestry of groups of people via mitochondrial DNA. It can give you a pretty good idea of what what the ancestry of the human race is like.

It's a way of categorizing physical and cultural differences, but genetic relationships also have a lot to do with that categorizing, so yes it's real, but it's only really important if one is curious about how we evolved, how we're all related.

It's more a pattern of relationship than a pattern of non-relationship as racists seem to think.

If I look at all my cousins as a group, and see one type of eyes, and that tells me this person is related to my mom's sister, or hair color tells me another is related to my dad's brother, that doesn't mean I value one cousin over another. The differences and characteristics simply show me how we're related, through what branch of the family tree. That's what race is on a much larger scale.

Depends what you mean.

There is a biological concept that could be labelled "race". Basically, it works like this. Our ancestors all originally came from the same place in Africa, and then spread out across the world. Geographical and cultural isolation took place, and different groups of humans became "stranded". During this time, each group changed, partly to adapt to their new environment, and partly just due to other things like genetic drift and founder effect.

However, when people say that race is "socially constructed", they are usually talking about something else. They are saying that when we deal with the concept of "race" in our day-to-day lives, we are not actually referring to this biological heritage, but to a "folk" classification of humanity. For example, in the US, a half-black half-white man can be called black, but cannot be called white. This isn't to do with biology, it is to do with the particular history of "race" as a social construct in the US.

All taxonomy is artificial. And trees arent really trees. THat's just a name we made up.

Is something being described by race? Sure.

Races, as they are usually understood in the U.S., were the results of slavery and colonialism. There is no scientific basis to different races.

On the other hand, racial traits (hair color, blood type, skin color, eye color, etc.) vary throughout the human population. For instance, blonde-haired people are more common in Scandinavia than in Italy.

However, discussing a fixed number of races is just a social and historical construction.

Sure, different populations belong to differing genetic haplogroups, and one would have to be blind not to see characteristics separating them, but the fact remains, all humans can interbreed and produce viable offspring. That alone proves the primary race is the human race.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Race is best defined as a set of physical traits that are all inherited as one "package". The whole concept of race is that a persons ancestry can be determined by their appearance......nothing could be further from the truth. It turns out that what determines our ancestry is genetic markers on mitochondrial and Y-chromosomal DNA, AKA haplogroups. I will say however, that indo-europeans(including white people)do indeed have a common genetic as well as linguistic lineage. However, when it comes to *negroid* people(black africans and melanesians), the situation is far more complex as black africans have considerably more genetic diversity than (white)europeans.

What I often wonder is if the Basque and Khoisan peoples should be considered distinct "races" because these people are genetically distinct and unrelated to other people living in the same geographical region. In fact, the Khoisans are among the most genetically unique people in the entire world and may be the oldest race of human beings on Earth.

If we look for them, we are indeed absolutely certain to find them.