Posted by Kamil Link: Races
on 4/5/2004, 5:06 pm, in reply to "Is appearance important?"
4.246.18.155
Argument against basing races on phenotype is that relatively few genes determine surface characteristics, such as skin color, hair color, and facial features. For example, fewer than ten genes determine skin color. Considered against the nearly 100,000 genes that make up the entire human genome (the total of all human genes), skin color and other external features represent a trivial source of biological variation. There are many other sources of human biological variation that we cannot see, such as variations in blood type and susceptibility to certain diseases. It is of course inevitable to be influenced by what we see, and this helps to explain why people attribute so much more importance to visible physical traits.
