Race and ethnicity

Humans often categorize themselves in terms of raceor ethnicity, sometimes on the basis of differences in appearance. Human racial categories have been based on both ancestry and visible traits, especially facial features, skull shape, skin color and hair texture. Most current genetic and archaeological evidence supports a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa. Current genetic studies have demonstrated that humans on the African continent are most genetically diverse.However, compared to the other great apes, human gene sequences are remarkably homogeneousThe predominance of genetic variation occurs withinracial groups, with only 5 to 15% of total variation occurring between groups. Thus the scientific concept of variation in the human genome is largely incongruent with the cultural concept of ethnicity or race. Ethnic groups are defined by linguistic, cultural, ancestral, national or regional ties. Self-identification with an ethnic group is usually based on kinship and descent. Race and ethnicity are among major factors in social identity giving rise to various forms of identity politics, e.g., racism. (Humans have turned to violence and social exclusion as part of their identity politics; a side effect isname-calling, which has produced numerous offensive terms for humans.)

There is no scientific consensus of a list of the human races, and few anthropologists endorse the notion of human "race". For example, a color terminology for race includes the following in a classification of human races: Black (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (e.g. Native Americans), Yellow (e.g. East Asians) and White (e.g. Europeans).

Referring to natural species, in general, the term "race" is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950). Genetic studies have substantiated the absence of clear biological borders, thus the term "race" is rarely used in scientific terminology, both in biological anthropology and in human genetics. What in the past had been defined as "races"—e.g., whites, blacks, or Asians—are now defined as "ethnic groups" or "populations", in correlation with the field (sociology, anthropology, genetics) in which they are considered.