A bit controversial but definitely worth your time at $16 from Amazon but much less ($1.99) as an e-book.
Race has evolved into a divisive issue that faces our nation. I have written this monograph to clear up my own confusion and try to answer some of the questions that I have had. I hope to answer some of yours as well. I include the early origins of mankind, our evolution, and some of the controversies of race. I am not a geneticist, anthropologist, or paleontologist, even though much of this book expounds on those topics. I am, however, an applied scientist and am now a retired Professor of Surgery. I have practiced my profession for over half a century and have learned some things, and come to some conclusions, that I believe worthy of sharing with you. In my job, I have dealt with all races as patients, colleagues, allied health professionals, and students from college to graduate and professional school. Most recently, I have dealt with postgraduates in the profession of surgery, teaching the art and science of cutting on human beings to cure disease and alleviate suffering.
One thing that I will share with you now is that once you get below the skin, we all look the same! Race has become a more consuming topic. It has evolved from its first inception when described in the 1700s by Carl Linnaeus, a Swedish botanist, zoologist, and physician in his Magnus Opus, Systema Naturae. Since then, much has changed. Above all, we now have mapped the human genome, and guess what? There is no scientifically classifiable division of H. sapiens into various races. Race is supposed to be a grouping of humans based on shared physical characteristics. 99.9% of DNA is shared. There is only a 0.1%variablility. Besides being only a 0.1%variability, the shared physical characteristics blend, and blur across groups. There would be at least 300 groups that share many, but not all, characteristics to conform to the definition of a group with shared characteristics. We have trouble dealing with three to four racial groups. How would you like to deal with 300 racial groups? The first grouping, and still the most utilized, is skin pigmentation. I would expect this from the mindset of the 18th Century. Little did they know that skin color is the least significant in groupings of H. sapiens. Melanocytes are the cells that make melanin that gives us the pigment. All races have the same number of melanocytes. It is one locus on our DNA double helix, the MC1 R locus, that directs the melanocyte to make melanin. There are muscles that some of us have that others don’t. There are diseases that affect some of us and not others. There are some of us that can’t drink cow’s milk, which makes some of us deathly sick. Caucasians have more type A blood, while Asians have more type B blood, and the Blacks have both A and B. Eye shape is often the defining characteristic of Asians. IQ turns out not to be a very distinguishing characteristic. Too many social factors enter into it. Primary education, culture, and parental pressure factors more than race. Neil deGrasse Tyson, a black Astrophysicist, is said to have an IQ of 142. While Philip Emeagwali, a black computer scientist, is ranked at 190, 30 points higher than Einstein. There are studies dating back to World War II showing black troops from northern states outperforming white troops from the south on average. IQ matches better with social class than race in multiple studies. We are left with skin color, facial features, hair texture, and a few other physical traits that are basically meaningless. We are making much more of it than it deserves! My point is that race does not have meaningful characteristics to allow us to separate H. sapiens, and skin pigmentation is not enough. Nevertheless, the topic is timely and does deserve discussion.
The exact appearance of racial origin is not known. It is clearly environmental adaptation that gave rise to the most obvious trait, skin pigmentation. I delve into our evolution, from coming down from the trees, migrating across the savannahs of Africa, nearly becoming extinct with only a few hundred females with reproducing capabilities surviving during two separate natural disasters in our short 200,000 years of existence, outperforming and out surviving our competitor hominids, likely even eating some of them. I have compiled a series of thoughts, ideas, and musings on the subject of human origins, evolution, and race, based on my readings, my life experiences, and my own ideas. I have tried to be as factual as my study of the subject has allowed. These are my observations and interpretations as a pre-woke college graduate, to the best of my knowledge and abilities. My conclusion (spoiler alert!) is that we need to start acting like we believe our name, Homo sapiens (wise Human)!