sun + location = skin colour

“There’s no sci­en­tif­ic ba­sis for Race – it’s a made-up la­bel. It’s been used to de­fine and sep­a­rate peo­ple for mil­len­nia. But the con­cept of race is not ground­ed in ge­net­ics … [and] in a very real sense, all peo­ple alive to­day are Africans.”
—Eliz­a­beth Kol­bert, Na­tion­al Geographic

 

In my bi­o­log­i­cal an­thro­pol­o­gy class I learned that dur­ing evo­lu­tion of peo­ple on earth, our skin colour was based out of mi­gra­tion of peo­ple and their liv­ing for hun­dreds of thou­sands of years in dif­fer­ent ar­eas on earth and their dif­fer­ing prox­im­i­ties to the sun, where one per­son may need a par­tic­u­lar vi­t­a­min like vi­t­a­min d and an­oth­er may need less.

All skin colour and fea­tures of our bod­ies are a prod­uct of evolution.

Some fea­tures of our bod­ies have evolved with par­tic­u­lar rea­son and oth­ers have been found to have lit­tle reason.

The amaz­ing thing about hu­mans is that we’re adapt­able to our en­vi­ron­ments. This is what sur­vival of the fittest means. The ones who adapt via evo­lu­tion to sur­vive are the “fittest.”

So as we mi­grat­ed from one place to dif­fer­ent places on earth, as cli­mate changed etc. over time our bod­ies changed to adapt to the en­vi­ron­ments, ac­quir­ing what’s need­ed to live in that en­vi­ron­ment, in­clud­ing changes to colour of skin.

It’s more com­pli­cat­ed than that be­cause in that time we also mat­ed and shared vari­a­tions in ge­net­ics, but in gen­er­al that’s a sim­ple base.

In gen­er­al we’re are all re­lat­ed via ge­net­ics. Our ge­net­ic codes con­nect us. Skin is just prod­uct of evo­lu­tion­ary adap­tiv­i­ty to dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ments over time (and then some). The the­o­ry is that hu­mans orig­i­nat­ed, and mi­grat­ed out of Africa over time.

So when some­one says we’re all re­lat­ed, this is what they mean. This is stud­ied. It is not “not real.”

This is what I re­fer to when I try to ex­plain that if you’re racist or prej­u­diced then you are like­ly uneducated.

If this in­for­ma­tion is new to you this Na­tion­al Ge­o­graph­ic ar­ti­cle is a good place to start.

Then fol­low that up with a bi­o­log­i­cal an­thro­po­log­i­cal book about evolution.

Hu­mans are fas­ci­nat­ing. Our his­to­ry and the sci­ence with­in us is fas­ci­nat­ing. This does not take away from heritage.

And as a side note: The rea­son why some­one would want to de­fund “high­er ed­u­ca­tion” is sim­ply that they do not want oth­ers to learn.

Maybe they don’t be­lieve in evo­lu­tion. But the truth is that every­one de­serves to know some ba­sic and fas­ci­nat­ing truths. In­for­ma­tion is out there. And we shouldn’t have to wait for col­lege to learn this stuff.

And if we learned this as chil­dren maybe we would not grow up to be racist adults.

 

—rose fante

Flom­mist Rose Fante is a wan­der­er, “yeah a wan­der­er, I roam around around around around around …” Copy­right © 2020 Rose Fante.

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