Race

The term race describe populations or groups of people distinguished by different sets of characteristics, and beliefs about general ancestry. The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible qualities and self-identification.

Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by way of life and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. Many scientists contend that while the features on which a racial categorizations are made may be based on inherited factors, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into groups based on selected hereditary features, are social constructs.

The 1940s, some evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race as a biologically important concept. A majority of evolutionary scientists reject the notion that any explanation of race pertaining to humans can have any taxonomic rigour and validity. Mainstream scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from convention, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further continue that race as such is best understood as a social construct.

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