Human Genetics Says 'No' To Racism

What is racism? The Oxford dictionary describes it as follows:

“The term ‘racism’ is often poorly understood. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as, “Prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior.”

I never understood racism, and it surrounded me growing up in apartheid South Africa. When governments censor and suppress information and control the narrative, we can easily divide the populace in several ways. The most visible and easiest way to do this is by physical characteristics.

The power of media and technology currently is wonderful and scary at the same time.

History has shown us that the most divisive tactics we use have to do with race, but are human races just a myth? Are we not all the same, or at least very similar?

When we go down deep, I mean deep into the very building blocks that make us what we are, the program that drives our development, the language of DNA, we find something very interesting

The stupidity of racism is glaringly obvious when we look closer at the genetics of humans. We have made some astounding discoveries in human genetics. When I say ‘we’ I mean us humans and as you read further, you will realize we are all one enormous family.

It amazed me to read that all humans on the planet have a single female ancestor. Based on our mitochondrial lineages, we inherit our mitochondrial DNA from our mothers. Mitochondria are the powerhouses in a cell that create the chemical energy to power the cell’s biochemical reactions.

So if you lack energy, you can cast your suspicions towards your Mom, as long as you are eating healthily, sleeping properly and are not suffering from any chronic diseases.

Men have a Y chromosome, and all men on the planet share a common male ancestor based on the ancestral lineage of Y chromosome DNA.

Then further to these discoveries, geneticists have found that the common male and female ancestor to everyone on the planet lived around the same time, cue the twilight music….

Looking at the differences in DNA between humans, the DNA similarities are so close that ‘race’ as a thing loses all it’s meaning at a genetic level.

The science paper probably states it better than I can so I quote.

“ Ongoing investigation of human genetic variation has even led biologists and physical anthropologists to rethink traditional notions of human racial groups. The amount of genetic variation between these traditional classifications actually falls below the level that taxonomists use to designate subspecies, the taxonomic category for other species that corresponds to the designation of race in Homo sapiens. This finding has caused some biologists to call the validity of race as a biological construct into serious question.”

source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK20363/

Translation being a racist is stupid, but we all knew that, well, some of us did.

The differences in genetic makeup between two humans, say one from the jungles of Africa or the Amazon when compared to someone from Northern Denmark is 0.1%.

It is that tiny difference that gives us all our variability in appearances like skin color, eye shape and the amazing beauty and difference that make up all people in the world.

I remember watching a documentary that brought this point home in the best way ever, where certain people’s prejudices towards other people were eliminated once they ran an ancestry genetic test. The people that they were prejudiced about, were present in their own ancestral lineage genetically. Suddenly it dawned on them, that we are all one big family.

We don’t know everything about human genetics yet and studies are ongoing, but it is interesting where these studies are taking us.