AAPA Statement on Race and Racism

作者：Agustín Fuentes, R. Ackermann, Sheela G. Athreya, Deborah A. Bolnick, Tina Lasisi, Sang‐Hee Lee, Shay‐Akil McLean, Robin G. Nelson · 发表于：American Journal of Physical Anthropology · 年份：2019 · DOI：10.1002/ajpa.23882 · 被引用次数：185 · 研究领域：Nutrition, Genetics, and Disease、Race, Genetics, and Society

Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination. It thus does not have its roots in biological reality, but in policies of discrimination. Because of that, over the last five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and how we experience the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences. Humans share the vast majority (99.9%) of our DNA in common. Individuals nevertheless exhibit substantial genetic and phenotypic variability. Genome/environment interactions, local and regional biological changes through time, and genetic exchange among populations have produced the biological diversity we see in humans today. Notably, variants are not distributed across our species in a manner that maps clearly onto socially-recognized racial groups. This is true even for aspects of human variation that we frequently emphasize in discussions of race, such as facial features, skin color and hair type. No group of people is, or ever has been, biologically homogeneous or "pure." Furthermore, human populations are n...