Race and ethnicity have been a topic of discussion on various platforms. One important aspect that is worth addressing relates to how race/ethnicity relates to sociology. According to the video on the biology of race and the absence of biological races, race is a problematic concept both in the written research and medical research. For instance, some of the existing medical research literature notes that race can be used to predict certain diseases. If this is the case, it leaves us with the question of whether certain races such as black Americans have higher chances of suffering from prostate cancer when compared to the whites or if certain biological or environmental factors play a role in certain races suffering from certain medical conditions.
However, when race is divided based on disease and ancestry, there are no human races, instead, there are important demographic populations in the United States that are defined by race. As a result, there is no race that is biological, instead, it is a social construct. Since race is not socially identifiable, certain groups become racialized through a distinct social process which on most occasions marks the basis for their unequal treatment (Gannon, 2016). When considering aspects such as skin color, the social construct of race recognizes that the relative fairness or darkness of skin is an evolutionary process that occurred due to available sunlight in the different parts of the globe. For instance, when analyzing the genetic variations of African Americans, the video reveals that when the Africans were being enslaved, a large section of them later moved to the North to look for better jobs while some of them remained in the south (Gannon, 2016). Through their movement from one place to the other, it resulted in the black race being dominant in North and South America. By using the presented examples, it reveals that race is socially constructed and is not an aspect that can be biologically explained.
References
Gannon, M. (2016). Race is a social construct, scientists argue. Scientific American, 5, 1-11.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAWrwexw-To&feature=emb_title
