Analysis Of Kenan Malik s The Meaning Of Race Race,...

In Kenan Malik’s, The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society, Paul Broca stated, â€Å"Race in the present state of things is an abstract conception.† He further stated that race is â€Å"a conception of continuity in discontinuity, of unity in diversity. It is the rehabilitation of a real but directly unobtainable thing.† Based on Broca’s statements, it is difficult to classify humans into racial categories because the definition of what makes a person a member of a particular race differs from region to region around the world. Scientists have collected data about the genetic make-up of people around the world in an effort to ascertain a person’s racial identity. Some groups of people do differ genetically from others, however, the methods used to categorized people depend on the genes examined. According to Bamshad and Olson (2003), many studies have demonstrated that roughly 90% of human genetic variation occurs within a p opulation living on a particular continent, whereas about 10% of the variation distinguishes continental populations. On average, people from different populations are just slightly different from one another than are individuals from the same population. Accordingly, human populations are very similar, although they can be distinguished. In the absence of a scientific categorization of race, geneticists and anthropologists normally use the racial categories used in everyday life, although these categories are often contradictory and