Race As a Biological Category Applicable to Humans
Question
ANTHRO 101 ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Essay
Prompt: Refute the notion of race as a
biological category applicable to humans
__________________________________________________________________________________________
An assignment link is set up on Canvas for you to submit
your essay. The assignment link takes you directly into our class page for
Turnitin.com, so you don’t need to create an account and you don’t need a class
ID or password.
ê You must submit a properly formatted essay
that includes in text citations and a reference page. ê You
must use APA formatting for your essay (APA formatting resources are provided
for you).
You should upload your essay a few days before the
deadline, because if Turnitin.com detects any plagiarism or other issues, you
can fix your mistakes and then re-upload your essay before the deadline
expires. (If you need to make changes and then re-submit your essay, that will
completely replace your previous submission.)
• Submit
your essay no later than a few days before the deadline (you may submit as
early as you like).
• Log
back in afterwards and check your originality report (any plagiarized material
will be highlighted).
▪ If
plagiarized material is detected, remove and replace it with your own words and
resubmit your essay.
▪ Make sure
that you have uploaded a properly formatted (APA) essay with a reference page.
▪ There
should be at least 3 articles listed in your bibliography (that you read for
your literature review).
In order to
successfully complete this assignment, you must follow these instructions:
Complete your literature review before
attempting to write your essay!!!
Literature review – For your research, you
must read at least three (3) of the
peer reviewed scientific articles provided to you on our class Canvas page -
also included under the Essay Instructions folder. You may also look up peer
reviewed scientific articles via the campus library. You must conduct an appropriate academic literature review in order to
gain adequate knowledge of the topic. You are required to read at least
three (3) articles for your literature review, but you can read more if you
choose. Don’t search for articles on the
Internet! You may only use peer
reviewed scientific articles published in scholarly journals. DO NOT USE INFORMATION FROM THE INTERNET!!! NO WIKIPEDIA!!!
If you need
assistance writing your paper:
• A
scientific writing guide is also posted for you on Canvas under the Essay
Instructions folder.
• If
you need help with the structure of your essay and in-text citations, work with
a writing tutor.
If you need
assistance with APA formatting:
• APA
formatting resources are included under the Essay Instructions folder and APA
formatting links can be found within the module for this assignment.
Paper
Formatting:
F Cover
page and headers are not required (you may include them if you use a formatting
template).
F Your
paper should be typed double-spaced, using a clear font, no larger than 12pt. F Your paper should be two (2) full pages minimum and three (3)
full pages maximum.
Essay
structure:
• Your
essay must include all the required components: introduction, thesis statement,
body, and conclusion - and a reference page (bibliography).
• You
must write an original essay (ENTIRELY IN YOUR OWN WORDS) containing your own
objective perspectives on the topic, making references to factual information
(written in your own words) that you learned from the three articles you read
for your literature review.
• Include
in-text citations to identify for your readers what specific literature sources
your statements are based on. Your essay should have adequate and properly formatted
in-text citations throughout. (If you need help with in-text citations, you must work with a writing tutor!)
• Do NOT
plagiarize! Your essay must be entirely in your own words. Plagiarism will result in a zero grade for
this assignment, which will detrimentally impact your overall grade for the
course.
• Please
note that excessive use of quotations (too many quotes) in your paper is
considered to be a form of plagiarism. *This is a short essay, so you don’t include
more than 2 one-sentence quotes.
• Be
very specific with your sentences and do not make vague statements. Do not
leave the reader guessing or requiring clarification as to what you are saying.
• Do
not use incomplete or run-on sentences and be sure that your paragraphs flow
properly.
Introduction:
Your introduction will be one or two paragraphs long and
will tell the reader:
• The
subject or topic of the essay (a brief and concise introduction to the topic).
• In
a science essay, the topic will often constitute an unresolved problem.
• Don’t write random statements.
Everything you write must be attributed to a source from your literature review
and you must cite all sources of information that your statements are based on!
Thesis
statement:
Your
thesis statement is a rational, objective, and well-informed statement about
the topic that directly addresses the prompt. Be very specific and concise. Your thesis statement should be one
sentence. Underline your thesis statement.
Your thesis statement should be the last
sentence of your first paragraph (introduction paragraph).
Your essay
should be constructed around your thesis statement.* You should begin
with a clear and concise (one sentence) thesis statement and build the rest of
your essay around it. This is an example of a good thesis statement that
directly addresses the prompt: Science proves
that human “races” do not exist, yet people
ignorantly still believe they do.
Body:
The body of your essay will usually incorporate these
elements:
1)
A background to the problem at issue. Your
background will incorporate a (brief) literature review of each of the existing
perspectives addressing the problem.
2)
The main points and rationale of your own
argument supported by factual references. You must have adequate in text
citations throughout your paper, but do not over-cite material into your essay
(i.e., do not incorporate more than
two sentences of direct quotes).
3)
Completely and adequately address and support your
thesis statement. Do not leave the reader requiring further clarification of
the points you are making or guessing as to what particular aspects of the
topic you are referring to.
A good essay body closely addresses and
adequately supports the thesis statement. The number one error in
undergraduate essays is not completely addressing and adequately supporting the
thesis statement. The body of your essay
must adequately address and support your thesis statement without being
tangential.
Conclusion:
Your conclusion should be a paragraph summarizing the
essential points of your argument and clearly stating your conclusions. The golden rule of conclusion writing is
not to include any material that has not been discussed in the body (i.e., don’t introduce any new
information). Do not repeat information or state the exact same sentences you
included earlier in your paper. Science essays are different from
non-scientific critical writing, and your reader should not be kept in suspense
about your conclusions. Spell out your
conclusions as soon as possible in the interests of clarity and to help your
reader evaluate the strength of your argument. At the very least you should
be able to clearly indicate the perspective that you are supporting.
Reference Page
(Bibliography):
At the end of your essay you must include a properly formatted (APA) reference page, which lists the articles, books, etc., that you read/viewed for your literature review. Your reference page must be on its own separate page, placed at the end of your essay. You may title it: “References,” “References Cited,” or “Bibliography.” The reference list must be in proper APA format. The specific format of each reference included in your list is different, depending on what type of source it comes from (e.g., journal article, textbook, documentary, etc.). Your reference page must include a minimum of 3 peer reviewed scholarly articles you read for your literature review. (You may include additional articles.)


Solution
Race As a Biological
Category Applicable to Humans
Culturally, race occurs in humans. However, the race’s
biological aspects are required for the accessibility of their actualism in a
non-species-specific way and to determine whether cultural categorization is in
line with biological categorization within the human. Today’s racial biological
aspects can be objectively instigated with hereditary molecular data via
hypothesis testing. Hereditary data sets are utilized to unfold whether
biological races occur between humans and chimpanzees, human’s closest evolutionary
relation. The human race has been categorically grouped depending on adaptive
characteristics like skin color. However, such characteristics portray the
underlying environmental elements on which their adaptation is based and not
general hereditary variation. Notably, there is a lack of objective measures
for pinpointing one characteristic over another to the racial definition in
humans. Humanity possesses much hereditary diversity, but this diversity’s vast
majority portrays personal uniqueness and not a race.
Review
of Literature
Although adaptive traits like skin color are widely used to
distinguish human races, they represent the underlying environmental aspect individuals
adapt to, not overall genetic divergence. Different adaptive traits form
discordant groupings. According to Templeton (2013), racism cannot be defined
by a single adaptive characteristic. As a result, human races are not
determined by adaptive traits. Humans have a wide range of genetic variations,
although the vast majority reflect individual differences and not a race. To
implement modern biological racial notions, hypotheses can be tested using
molecular genetic data. The chimpanzee, the closest living relative of humans,
and genetic data sets are being utilized to investigate the possibility of
biological races. Chimpanzees can be categorized into races according to the
two most widely accepted biological conceptions of race, but humans cannot.
There is a common misconception that humans may be classified based on skin
color; however, this is not always true. Skin color is more of an adaptive
attribute than a marker of genetic distinction. Choosing one adaptive
characteristic over another to identify race does not have objective criteria.
As a result, human races are not defined by their adaptive qualities. Humans
are frequently represented as distinct divisions on an evolutionary tree in the
most present methodical literature on the human evolutionary subject. Every
time this approach has been tested, a human tree-like structure is false,
making it scientifically untenable. It is also socially irresponsible since
these images of human development significantly impact the general public more than
a scientific paper’s more nuanced language would. Individual differences, not a
race, account for most of the human genome’s richness.
Consequently, racial prejudice and the justification of
discrimination against people of different races could result from such beliefs.
According to Kang and colleagues (2015), many individuals estimate many genetic
commonalities amongst humans. Furthermore, some lay people believe that humans
have a great deal of genetic resemblance, while others believe this genetic
similarity is minimal. These studies investigate the impact of racial ambiguity
and biracial targets on neurological and evaluative responses influenced by
ideas about genetic overlap. According to their initial investigation, Kang et
al. (2015) revealed that people with fewer genetic overlap estimates were more sensitive
to multiracial targets than those with higher genetic overlap estimates. In a
second study, the researchers found that genetic overlap’s lower estimates
projected longer response times when comparing biracial (as opposed to
monoracial) faces to racial categories. Finally, their third study claim that modified
biological overlap assumptions and people in the low overlap condition openly
judged multiracial individuals more negatively than those in the high overlap
category. According to this research, bi-racial and mixed-race persons’
perceptions may be affected by their ideas regarding genetic overlap. Deficit
models of education, for example, are based on the idea that students from
minorities are less intelligent and thus less capable of succeeding in school
because of their race, which is a genetically determined category. Because of
this, science education must pay special attention to the biological
conceptualization of race; profound educational efforts are needed to ensure an
accurate understanding of race.
It’s possible, according to a recent study by Outram et al.
(2018), that the growing interest in genetics will lead people to believe that
racial imbalances are innate and unchangeable. Using data from a nationally
representative poll, the authors examine whether or not people in the United
States feel that race and heredity play a significant role in explaining racial
health disparities, such as general aptitude, athleticism, and intellectual
capacity. Their findings indicate that self-described racial construct is
primarily significant in attributing overall racial ability, age maximization
is an elementary factor in athleticism attribution, and genetic and racial
intellect, as well as education, is paramount in lowering such deterministic
perspective of race and genetics. Arguably, their findings claim that racial
comprehension’s biological and non-biological forms continue playing a crucial
function in the racial politics and social variation within contemporary
American society.
Conclusion
The racial case in this presentation offers a prime instance
of this inadvertent biological conceptualization. Many related concepts to
human diversity, such as gender, and personality type, could readily be found
as a biological aspect in a person’s mind. Unfortunately, though, comprehending
human beings’ biological aspects can negatively impact their attitudes and
behaviors regarding human diversity.
References
Kang, S. K., Plaks, J.
E., & Remedios, J. D. (2015). Folk beliefs about genetic variation predict
avoidance of biracial individuals. Frontiers in Psychology, 6.
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00357
Outram, S., Graves, J.
L., Powell, J., Wolpert, C., Haynie, K. L., Foster, M. W., Blanchard, J. W.,
Hoffmeyer, A., Agans, R. P., & Royal, C. D. M. (2018). Genes, Race, and
Causation: US Public Perspectives About Racial Difference. Race and Social
Problems, 10(2), 79–90. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12552-018-9223-7
Templeton, A. R. (2013).
Biological races in humans. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences,
44(3), 262–271. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2013.04.010




About Author
Tough Essay Due? Hire Tough Essay Writers!
We have subject matter experts ready 24/7 to tackle your specific tasks and deliver them ON TIME, ready to hand in. Our writers have advanced degrees, and they know exactly what’s required to get you the best possible grade.
Find the right expert among 500+
We hire Gradewriters writers from different fields, thoroughly check their credentials, and put them through trials.
View all writers