Discussion Forum #2 - Do Human Races Exist - Assignment Example

Discussion Forum #2 - Do Human Races Exist? Evidently, most anthropologists feel that “human races” have very little meaning as biology, but the races ought to be understood as an aspect of culture. As seen in the research conducted by Jurmain, Kilgore & Trevathan, race varies from one context to the next (313). The same can be evidenced in the audio lecture (2015) that explains the term race referring to a sub species. The speaker, however, indicates that there is no great variation between different human populations that allows for classification as sub-species (Audio lecture 2015).

This means that the races can be viewed both as a biological construct that focuses on low levels of genetic diversity of humans, the clinical distribution of human characteristics, the non-concordance of human traits as well as the greater polymorphic as opposed to polytypic variants. In the case of cultural construct, it is arguable that the concept of race simply exists in the minds of different people. The anthropologists, therefore, believe that race cannot be solely explained through biology but by the understanding of the how individuals use the external attributes of humans to link them to different genetic traits that classify humans.

This explains that it is extremely practical to understand the concept of race by assessing how humans create different groups in the society and how they strive to identify with these groups. Racial identification is evident in the different group interactions (Audio lecture 2015). It is, therefore, worth to conclude that an understanding of relations of different people in relation to culture as well as understanding of their physical characteristics is extremely vital and useful in the study pf races as compared to applying biological concepts.

For instance, race is non-concordant since it is not correlated to bodily attributes such as skin color, weight or height. Race is also clinally invariant since we cannot trace its onset or its end. Works CitedJurmain, Robert. Kilgore, Lynn & Trevathan, Wenda. Essentials of Physical Anthropology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. 2012. Print. “The Nature of Human Biological Variation.” Anthropology. 3 Jun. 2015. Lecture.