Can you give me some insight on a few questions regarding race?

Question

I need some insight from 5 different people for a project for my Anthropology class. What better way then Yahoo! answers! Please include your first name (can be made up if you want), age and state (optional) along with complete answers. Thanks so much for the help!

1. According to you, how many human races are there?
2. What factor/s did you use to come up with that number?
3. What is your ethnicity (please be as specific as possible)?
4. How important is race to you?

Thanks so much for the help! Any answers would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

1. I do not think we could place an actual number on the different races in the world.
2. When Jerusalem was destroyed and the Jews were taken captive into Syria and Babylon these people mixed with other races of people in those cultures. The tower of Babel created many different languages and the groups gathered according to the language and left and setteled in many different parts of the world. All this created a mix of races giving way to even more races through the combination of the races.
3. I am Caucasian of the lineage of Ephraim.
4. The most important thing about race is that we are all part of the human family that God created and no matter your race we are all children of our Heavenly Father and thus we are brothers and sisters. So I do not judge others according to their race or skin color.

Scott age 39 from NC.

Good Luck on your project.

Answer 2

There is one race. With in the race there are variations of the homosapiens specie. The factors are as one other stated that we can all procreate no matter the ethnicity or religion etc. My ethnicity is caucasian. Noticeable difference in homosapiens weren't even visible until about 400,000 years ago (roughly) as they can tell by bone structure. The main concentrations of our original hominid ancestors were in Africa and Asia. However they weren't as dark as say a Kenyan is today. They became that way due to thousands of years of higher melanin count in the skin providing them protection from the sun, and they procreated more because of less skin cancer etc. In the search for food some of these ancient hominids migrated north. Up there, they did not need this higher melanin count in the skin and therefore had no reason to adapt to a darker skin color-Which is to say , there was no advantage to doing so. The Asian branches of these ancestors also branched out, think about it-The Chinese are very slender, while their Mongolian and Eskimo cousins are thicker and short limbed to protect them from the cold. Almost anywhere on the planet the closer to the equator people are the darker they are. and vice versa, Swedish and Finnish people are very fair skinned. When the original man was sent from the trees by lack of foliage and forced to find food, this began the first great migrations. Only after a few million years did they even get far enough away from their beginnings for adaptive traits to become more important depending on the environment they found themselves in, and which traits would help them survive. You really are asking a huge question and I give you thumbs up for that. I have a major in Physical Anthropology. I tried my best to put this in an extremely small nutshell, because it's a huge topic.

I really could go on and on with examples but hopefully this helps.

Answer 3

1. According to you, how many human races are there?
One, the human race
2. What factor/s did you use to come up with that number?
If you lined up everyone on Earth from dark to light, where would you draw the lines between the "races"? You couldn't! Color doesn't matter, and "race" is a cultural construct, not a biological fact.
3. What is your ethnicity (please be as specific as possible)? I'm white, pasty in fact.
4. How important is race to you? Not at all, I judge people on their character, not their skin color.
Adrienne, 22, PA

Answer 4

1. There is only one race of people.
2. Human DNA is readily identifiable as human, therefore, there aren't different kinds or humans in nature. Society has constructed differences based upon appearance. What we normally call 'race' are only defined by traits, in genes, in chromosomes, in DNA. The same process that makes one person have blue eyes and another brown eyes is the process that determines pigmentation, nose size, etc.
3. I am of European descent. More specifically, I am mostly Irish with a heavy dose of Cherokee.j
4. What is called race is not important to me at all. I agree with the late Rev. Dr. Martin L. King.....what matters is the quality of the character, not the color of the skin.

William in Alabama, USA

Answer 5

1. According to you, how many human races are there?
The term race, to me, is totally unscientific. I believe it's just a man-made word.

2. What factor/s did you use to come up with that number?
*Points to previous question*

3. What is your ethnicity (please be as specific as possible)?
100% pure Taiwanese.

4. How important is race to you?
Not race, but for my heritage, it's very important.

Answer 6

okay i think that there are many races in this world, many that i dont even know. ill name the races of people ive known... black, white, indians, mexicans... probably more i cant think of.(i live on a reservation and dont meet people of different races as often as i did in the city.)

the factors i used is just the people i remember meeting before

i am native american(mohawk/apache) im 17, my name is katherine, and i live in ny

race isnt important to me. we are all the same. i hate how people stereotype others by there race. people think us indians dont like other races because they took our land. thats not true. i would never look at a white person in a bad way, but they think badly of us and do it first. it hurts how people discriminate indians, and how they discriminate blacks, and whites, and so on. race shouldnt be important. but it is and its just how the world is. and it seems it will never change. well thats all i have to say about that

Answer 7

One race: the World has made it diversified
We all have the same color from the inside out
Hispanic, 38
Not important at all

Answer 8

Gomar
20s
1. one
2.humanity as a whole, we are in this together
3. black, native American
4. the good of human kind is very important to me

Answer 9

1. Human races-
a. Asian(browns)
b. mongoloid (yellows)
c. Caucasians (Whites/Europeans)
d. African (Black/*****)
e. African (Black, short )
f. Native American
g. Aborigines/Maoris of Australia- NZ

2. answered as above

3. Me Indian- Brown- Hindi speaking-28 yrs name Kapil

4. Importance of race? not much. except in deciding marital and national issues.

Answer 10

Ivan Matich
1.There are lots of human color varieties, but only ONE race!
2.Modern science (genetic research) tells us that we're all one species- Homo Sapiens.
3.I'm Serbian (state in south-east Europe-part of former Yugoslavia). Serbs are Slavs (like Russians, Poles, Ukrainians..).
Slavs are considered as "Caucasians"-Indo Europeans.
4.I like to consider myself as anti racist (if something like that exists...). We're all wearing our pair of "cultural glasses". It is difficult to be objective!