Norviel's Thoughts on Race

1. The main topic of this video is about how we classify different races, and if the methods or criteria we use for classification is legitimate. Throughout the entire streaming the narrators continually say that there are no biological or scientific difference between people of different skin color, therefore all humans are scientifically almost identical.

2. The video shows a classroom experiment that contains outcomes that are very different than what we would expect them to be. Most of us think that someone of African American decent has DNA most similar to someone else who is African American, but the student's experiment proved this to be wrong. The African American male in the experiment was more compatible with a Caucasian girl than he was with an African American girl. There is no genetic gene for skin color. Humans are genetically more similar than any other species, between one fruit fly to another there is a much greater genetic difference than there is between two humans. There are multiple ways in which people pick apart others in order to try and classify them into a race group. Some of those differences in which people use are eye shape, hair form, skull size, hand texture, brain color, and facial slants. According to Eugenics you do not want to mix race, because you do now want to lower the quality of civilization. There is no way to measure race and there is no way to isolate a gene for any complex traits such as athletic or musical ability, and you do not find these traits in one specific "race". It wa said that geography has a much greater impact on genes than skin color does. Eugenics posed restricted measures on races, due to the idea of hierarchy, in which these measures were carried out. An example of the carrying out of these was when the Nazi's took over and killed many Jews.

3. Who defines race? What is your opinion of race and how do you personally define it?

4. I found the movie to be interesting and surprising. Like the students in the film I thought that there would be more of a genetic difference between people of different skin color, and that people of similar skin color would be more alike than those of obviously different skin color. When classifying race I personally go by skin color and facial features such as the shape of the eyes and nose, as do most people. After watching this video I feel now that race is more of a made-up thought that people have developed in order to group individuals together to feel that they are more different than what they really are.