Race (biology)

Race is a controversial term for a group of individuals of the same (animal) species that are classified on the basis of arbitrarily chosen similarities of phenotype (appearance, physiological characteristics, behaviour). With the demarcation to a specific race, a direct genetic lineage of all group members is assumed.

Defined vaguely since time immemorial, the term "race" used to be applied to all possible levels (for example, instead of "species"). Since the beginning of the 20th century, a definition of sub-specific groups has taken place (below the level of the species). Thus race became largely synonymous with the term "subspecies". Thus, as late as 1988, Wolf Schneider wrote in a Stern book, "This definition coincides with race; the term 'subspecies' is thus superfluous."

In biology, the term is avoided today. Breeds are now only spoken of in connection with animal breeding, which deliberately breeds its own populations with certain characteristics. These then inevitably do indeed have great genetic similarities.

The division of the human species into races or subspecies, on the other hand, is now obsolete from a scientific point of view (compare race theory). The visible differences of humans from different geographically separated areas do not lead to objectively delimitable groups, because visual differences do not necessarily indicate the existence of genetic differences beyond the phenotype - the genetic range of variation within so-called races is greater than between them: "In humans, by far the largest part of genetic differences does not exist between geographical populations, but within such groups. [...] External characteristics such as skin color, used for typological classification or in everyday racism, are a highly superficial and easily changeable biological adaptation to local conditions." The term "ethnicity" is commonly used to describe individual membership in a group of peoples. When geographical proximity with gene exchange is involved, the term population can be used.

Use of terms, definition

Currently, "breed" is used taxonomically only for domestic animals and cultivated plants (compare race (breeding)), is scientifically obsolete and is increasingly out of use. In the rest of biology, the term has been used less and less since the 1950s. Although some biologists believe that it is possible to find human populations with genetic differences roughly corresponding to different ecotypes in other biological species, these populations have nothing in common with the traditionally defined human races, and use of the term race in the taxonomic sense is never justified because of the extensive gene flow between them.

The naturally evolved diversity within a species is now referred to as "genetic variation".

A definition from animal breeding was formulated by Hans Hinrich Sambraus:

A possible more general definition of race is (in the context of genetics):

This definition goes back essentially to the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975).

Currently, however, the formula "a breed is a breed if enough people testify to it" is just as valid among domestic animal geneticists, which makes it clear that there is no uniform and generally usable definition of the term here either.

The increasing avoidance of the term is based primarily on its use for "races of people". This concept was and still is used as a justification for racism. According to research on the genetics of human populations, the concept of the human race is scientifically outdated. Anthropologists and human geneticists, especially in the USA, continue to use the - not entirely congruent - term "race" in some cases (compare Race (United States Census)). Its use in the context of biomedical research is also still common in North America and has tended to increase again since around 2000 in the context of genomic research in connection with personalised medicine, even if this tends to be viewed critically by experts.

On 12 July 2018, the French National Assembly, on the initiative of President Macron and his party La République en Marche, unanimously decided to delete "race" from Article 1 of the French Constitution: The term, originally listed in it after World War II since 1946 as an antithesis to German Nazi racial theories, was outdated. In the prohibition of discrimination in Article 3 of the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, "race" is still listed.

Breeding for certain breed characteristics can produce sick, deformed, "overbred" individuals, see also Torment Breeding - Photo: Naked Cat

Anthropology (human races)

In different social and political milieus and at different times, the term "race" experienced different uses. Such subdivisions of humanity were sometimes neutrally intended attempts at classification, but usually, consciously or unconsciously, they were associated with evaluations; they were misused as apparent scientific bases for racism, or at least ethnocentrism, and for the justification of slavery. For most biologists of the age of colonialism, the superiority of the "white" or "Caucasian" race was beyond question, with members of one's own nation usually taking the top position. Many scientists, such as the biologist Ernst Haeckel, considered the difference between races to be so significant that, applied to a species other than man, it would suffice to distinguish several species. In Germany and other countries, these categorizations ultimately led to the National Socialists' "Aryan master race." These National Socialist ideas - without being identical to them, the focus on the Aryan originated not in biology but in linguistics - were capable of tying in with ideas of leading German anthropologists and human geneticists about the existence of human races, especially in connection with eugenic efforts, and also - for example at the leading university of Jena - with an overall anti-Semitic atmosphere and the widespread idea of weighty differences between Jews and other Europeans.

According to American biochemist and entrepreneur Craig Venter, whose company Celera Corporation sequenced an entire human genome (DNA) for the first time and published the result in September 2007,

Corresponding differences in the appearance of humans have their cause above all in migration, selection due to evolution, environmental influences as well as socio-culturally different developments.

If people from very distant populations are placed next to each other, the large phenotypic variation can give the false impression of definable human races. However, the transition is fluid and the genetic variation even within the assumed race is so great that the concept of race in humans is no longer used in science today.