For other uses, including athletics events and other speed competitions, see Race (disambiguation).

The term race distinguishes one population of humans (or non-humans) from another. The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color and facial features), genes, and self-identification. Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and over time and are often controversial, for scientific reasons as well as their impact on social identity and identity politics. The term continent of ancestry is gaining acceptance as a replacement for the word race^*.

Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race according to which a number of finite lists of essential characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races. Many evolutionary and social scientists think common race definitions, or any race definitions pertaining to humans, lack taxonomic rigour and validity. They argue that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, and that the races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further maintain that "race" as such is best understood as a social construct, and conceptualize and analyze human genotypic and phenotypic variation in terms of populations and clines instead. Other scientists, however, have argued that this position is motivated more by political than scientific reasons.

Since the 1990s, data and models from genomics and cladistics have resulted in a revolution in the understanding of human evolution, which has led some to propose a new "lineage" definition of race. These scientists have made related arguments that splitting humanity into separate races is valid when they are understood as fuzzy sets, clusters, or extended families.

Current disagreement across disciplines

One result of debates over the meaning and validity of the concept "race" is that the current literature across different disciplines regarding human variation lacks consensus, though some fields, such as biology, have strong consensus. Some studies use the word race in its previously essentialist taxonomic sense. Many still use the term race, but use it to mean a population, clade, or haplogroup. Others eschew the word race altogether, and use the word population as a less pejorative synonym.

More on [ Race ]