races

Races refer to social and sometimes biological concepts used to categorize humans into groups based on characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, facial features, and ancestry. Across cultures and histories, racial categories have varied and have often been linked to power, policy, colonization, and social hierarchy, rather than to fixed natural divisions.

From a biological perspective, human genetic variation is shallow and continuously distributed. There are no universally agreed-upon, discrete racial boundaries in humans, and most genetic diversity occurs within populations rather than between them. Modern science emphasizes ancestry and population history rather than race as a strict biological classification, and many scholars treat race as a social or cultural construct rather than a precise genetic category.

As a social construct, race has real consequences. It shapes personal and collective identities, social experiences, and access to resources and opportunities. Racial categorizations can reinforce prejudice and discrimination, influence policy, and affect outcomes in education, employment, housing, and health. Efforts to counter racism focus on civil rights, anti-discrimination measures, and policies that address structural inequality, while recognizing that race itself is not a fixed biological fact.

In medicine and public health, race has been used as a variable in research and practice, but relying on race as a proxy for genetics or biology is controversial. Critics urge approaches that consider genetic ancestry alongside social determinants of health, including environment, socioeconomic status, and access to care. In non-human biology, terms like race are less common for humans, with ancestry, ethnicity, or population used to describe lineage and cultural background.