I have something that I want you to think about.  I think we are at a crucial stage as homo sapiens.  I use the term homo sapiens because that is the term that represents our species.  All of us humans that are capable of producing offspring with one another are all the same species.  We see proof of this all around us.  This angers some of us but it is time that we got over it.  What happens when a black man and an asian or white woman have a child.  The child looks like both parents.  The child is neither an exact copy of the father or the mother.

To put the example I am using into black and white i will ask.  What happens when a black man and a white woman have a child?  The questions fill my head.  What does it mean to be a black man?  What does it mean to be a white woman?  What does it mean to be the child of that union?  I could keep on asking questions but I am using this example to get to a point so here it is.

We use the terms black and white to refer to the races of the parents.  I contend that the term race doesn’t mean anything genetically.  Skin color is just an expression of certain genes.  Said another way there are no races in our species from a scientific or more correctly from an evolutionary perspective.  We are looking at genetic variation and referring to it as race.  The phenotype that seems to be causing so much trouble within the members of our species is skin color.  We call people by words that are supposed to refer to that persons race but it a persons “race” says nothing about the person.  We use race to refer to phenotypic expressions of genes or combinations of these phenotypic expressions but these differences are nothing but genetic variation within our species.  The physical or phenotypic expressions are just surface differences.  They don’t make the person different psychologically.  The genes that cause the physical differences are not linked to personality or value differences.

At some point in history, someone used skin color to make a decision about who was a part of our group.  Put another way this person used skin color to make an in-group versus out-group decision.  The person that did this wanted to be able to distinguish her group from another group.  What if this person would have picked another distinguishable differentiating characteristic.  What if they would have chosen hair color or texture or eye color or shape?  How different would the world of humans be?

We all live in an interesting time.  It is a time when the planet is becoming a smaller place and more and more different humans are coming in contact with one another.  We have a choice.  We can choose to continue to use our phenotypic differences to cause separation between ourselves or we can recognize the faulty thoughts of our ancestors and see that we are all part of the same group.

 

The discoveries of anthropology and evolution suggest that all of the people alive today have ancestors in common.  If we didn’t we would not be the same species.  If the genetic variation inside of our racial group doesn’t cause separation then why should the genetic variation outside of our group?  Put another way if we of the same “race” don’t further separate into further classes by eye color or hair texture, why should we continue to use these randomly chosen physical characteristics to cause division in our species.

The house that we all live in is this planet and we all have common ancestors so I will use the common terms: sisters, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles.  WE, all of us that are part of the same species are all part of the same family.  We are all sisters and brothers with common ancestors.