Another essential smackdown to so called “scientific racialists”.

Perhaps I was too harsh on the “race realists” in my previous video. Human races exist in about the same way that eras in history exist. They are arbitrary and useful as broad generalizations. What I think I can easily show is that the Victorian idea of race essentialism: that the categories themselves are somehow more meaningful than any other, or that they are homotypic, is unscientific.

Part 2 will cover more on this topic, particularly the abuse of the sociological definition of race to justify a kind of genetic determinism.

A great number of primary sources went into the research for this video. I’ve annotated when I used figures, but you may also find the following articles useful in learning more:

1. “Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity Within and Among Continents”

Genome Res. 2004. 14: 1679-1685.

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/14/9/1679.long

2. “Against Racial Medicine”

Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 40, 4:5, 2006

http://ncat.academia.edu/JosephGravesJr/Papers/148490/Against_Racial_Medicine

NOTE: Graves is not without controversy, but this article covers many important topic at a level that many can understand.

3. “Fine-scaled human genetic structure revealed by SNP microarrays”

Genome Res. 2009. 19: 815-825.

http://genome.cshlp.org/content/19/5/815.long