When the billboard shining in the neon lights says, “white skin increases confidence in you; so try this cream “, one can but scorn at the deliberate ignorance in the head of so-called marketers and the likes of those, who believe that the skin color affects the personality of the person. Yes, the people living in the equatorial regions are born with dark skin unlike the ones born in the north pole or the mountains of Norway. But, as the science of evolution is so beautiful as always, human, among all the primates are blessed with the varying skin colors to get adopted in nature. According to the article published by the Jablonski and Chaplin, human skin has enough dark pigmentation to protect the destruction of nutrient folate by the excessive IV radiation while white enough to emphasize the production of essential vitamin D in the body (Jablonski and Chaplin). So, the evolution of first Homo sapiens in Africa gradually shed their hairs and developed the dark skin but the eventual relocation to the wider parts of the world changed the color of the skin of the fellow species. Hence, the varying degree of darkness of human skin color is the result of the natural selection, one if the ways, nature selects the best-fit species, not otherwise.
To this date, no anthropologists and the scientists have found the scientific base to classify the humans on the basis of race; there’s only one race, genetically and that is the Homo sapiens. But it was always not the case in the earlier centuries and still today, in many parts of the world, people still tend to believe that some races are superior to others because nature classifies the human on the basis of so-called “skin color”, “eye texture” and so forth. This same notion of the race created slavery in the countries like the United States and the apartheid in many African nations including South Africa. Throughout history, this imaginative classification has given rise to racism, and hence the degree of social acceptance, privileges, benefits, and power. “By the end of 19 century, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge pressed Congress to cut off immigration to the United States; Teddy Roosevelt raised the alarm of “race suicide” and took Anglo Saxon women to task for allowing “native” stock to be outbred by inferior immigrants” (Brodkin 118). The so-called Nazis anthropologists created a false narrative that the Aryans are more culturally superior due to their physical attribute and skin color was the most nonsensical rhetoric, human civilization has ever seen. To the same degree, the treatment of the Black Americans in the educational institutions, hospitals, public transport and many facets of lives since the 19th century by the White supremacists in the USA can be taken as the shortcoming of human civilization.
Our skin color is totally dependent on how our body adapts to a particular environment for the best physiological setting. Furthermore, it is also worth noting that humans have relied more on their culture to adopt in a particular environment. Sunlight influences the synthesis of vitamin D in our body but the excess of UV rays in the sunlight also pose threat to our nutrient folate. So, the people in the tropical areas have dark skin to ward off the UV rays whereas the white population in colder regions need more sunlight to observe UV (Jablonski and Chaplin).In addition to the sin color, the culture has played a crucial role in the adaption. The people on the East and West Bank of the Red Sea have adapted to the environment by their dark skin and longer limbs, however, the early Arab settlers in the same region have adopted totally by the cultural means; hey use protective clothing, a similar hat, and tent for the shades. So, their way of customs and culture have played a large role.
In a nutshell, it can hence be concluded that to classify humans on the basis of race can be the most foolish stance, a human in the 21st century can take.
Works Cited
Brodkin, Karen. “Race and Racism.” How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in America. New Brunswick, N.J: Rutgers University Press, 1998. Print.
Jablonski, Nina, and George Chaplin. “Skin deep.” Understanding and Applying Medical Anthropology (2009): 44.
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