Presentation and PowerPoint - Joseph L. Graves Jr.

Presentation and PowerPoint - Joseph L. Graves Jr.

 

Biological conceptions of racial variation in humans were influenced by the historical and social processes that brought phenotypically and culturally different groups together.  This process created new social relations, with concomitant physical and cultural environmental differences, which in turn had profound biological impacts on patterns of behavior, morbidity, and mortality between these groups.  Initially it was assumed that these differences were innate and therefore racial characteristics.  These differences contributed to the development of social definitions of race that were discordance with underlying human genetic variation.  

Throughout the 20th century, evolutionary, population, and quantitative genetics developed both theoretical and experimental tools that have debunked social racial schemes.  Unfortunately, the insights of these sciences are not included as a standard part of the training experienced by the majority of college trained professionals, including biomedical researchers and clinical practitioners.  This paper reviews the biological and social definitions of race, examining how understanding evolutionary mechanisms are indispensible for grasping the true nature of human biological variation and how in turn to apply this perspective to disease with regard to addressing ongoing health disparities.