Race Myth
Some of the earliest ideas of race were inspired by Linnaeus' findings. Linnaeus had published his work, Systema Naturae, as a way to present a classification of living organisms, including humans. However, "the 1792 English translation of Systema Naturae presented Linnaeus’ human varieties as “subspecies,” which likely led to the later assumption that Linnaeus himself believed in human races" (Kenyon-Flatt, 2021). The concept of "race" as a meaning, however, was not used in the 18th century. That was until "these ideas were picked up by eugenicists such as German biologist Ernst Haeckel in the 19th century. Haeckel divided humans into 12 hierarchical species and 36 races, with the “Mediterranese” (specifically, the “Indo-Germanians”) ranked the highest and groups that made up “Primaeval Man” (Indigenous peoples in Africa and Oceania) ranked the lowest. He used physical but also cultural traits, such as language, to both define these “races” and make claims about their evolution" (Kenyon-Flatt, 2021). The use of Taxonomy in order to classify the animal kingdom had only led to the idea that these classifications could also be applied to race in the human context. Linnaeus had also fueled the idea that a human's skin color was dependent on where they lived geographically, he based his classifications "physical characteristics such as skin color and hair color; geographic location; and perceived behaviors" (Kenyon-Flatt, 2021).
Linnaeus' claim that skin color was biased on geographical location generated the infamous map (pictured to the right) most people interact with at least once throughout their education. This map and it's message is still thought to be true by most people today. This is because most schools don't bother to explain race as a concept, the map is taught as a truth rather than an outdated idea. It isn't, most times, until higher up education (college, etc.) that the concept of race is tested, and race is explained as a societal construct. One such way that the concept of race can be disproved on a biological level is through the research done by The Human Genome Project.
The Human Genome Project, completed by scientists in 2003, made is possible to trace ones human ancestry through their genetics. Ancestry testing became affordable and a super popular way to sort people into the "five races:" African, European, Asian, Oceania, and Native American. Estimating our "ancestral composition down to 0.1% seem to suggest that there are exact, categorical divisions between human populations. But reality is far less simple....research indicates that the concept of “five races” does, to an extent, describe the way human populations are distributed among the continents—but the lines between races are much more blurred than ancestry testing companies would have us believe (Figure 1B)" (Chou, 2017). This was only further supported by a Stanford study, stating that "over 92% of alleles were found in two or more regions, and almost half of the alleles studied were present in all seven major geographical regions. The observation that the vast majority of the alleles were shared over multiple regions, or even throughout the entire world, points to the fundamental similarity of all people around the world" (Chou, 2017). Biologically, there is nearly no difference whatsoever between races, as we share a near identical makeup. The small differences that are present also don't point to any specific racial category.