Are there different human races alive today?

Question

Okay, I just try to clarify something. I am from Germany and I often was in an argument that there can't be racism in the sense of the word, because homo sapiens sapiens is as low as it gets on the evolutionary branch. Therefore we are all from the same race. And therefore it is quite reasonable to extend the term racism to other areas, such as basketballers versus footballers. In a specific case example of course.

I reasently used that argument in an English chat and people responded supprinsingly negative and tried to refute me. Sadly the chat wasn't scrollable and so I missed all the good arguments. I only got to read them half before they were replaced with answers like "lol, dude, wtf?"

I think it's quite possible that there is a translation mistake. It happened before. Like for instance in the famous phrase: "We didn't decend from monkeys, but we do have common ancestors." This sentence is also often repeated in German, but the problem is that both "ape" and "monkey" is translated into the same German word "Affe" and since we are apes, we did decend from apes and therefore we did decend from "Affen". 

So I suspect I might am a victim of a quite similar translation mistake. Can anyone tell me something about the meaning of races in terms of humans in a biological context?

JazSinc · Accepted Answer

> Are there different human races alive today?
Yes.  "Race" refers to populations that have distinctive characteristics.  There's no mistaking an African pygmy for a man from Finland.
Think of "race" as a classification below the level of subspecies.

> "We didn't descend from monkeys, but we do have common ancestors."
That's a thoroughly silly statement, akin to saying that your great grandfather wasn't human because he's dead now.  "Monkey" is a term inclusive of forms both extant and extinct.

We have monkey ancestors.  The common ancestor we share with any particular extant Old World monkey would itself have been an ancient Old World monkey.  Here's what George G. Simpson said on the subject:

"On this subject, by the way, there has been too much pussyfooting. Apologists emphasize that man cannot be descendant of any living ape–-a statement that is obvious to the verge of imbecility–-and go on to state or imply that man is not really descended from an ape or monkey at all, but from an earlier common ancestor. In fact, that earlier ancestor would certainly be called an ape or monkey in popular speech by anyone who saw it. Since the terms ape and monkey are defined by popular usage, man’s ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both). It is pusillanimous if not dishonest for an informed investigator to say otherwise (1964, 121)."


Disclaimer:  I disagree with some of the other Biology top contributors on this point.  I define the crown Catarrhini as being an ancient Old World monkey.  Those who disagree confine the name "Old World monkey" to Cercopithecidae.

basant · Answer

properly DNA has shown , all of us got here from some people . In Evolution , there replace into approximately 6 or 7 bushes of adult adult males or something like that , yet in simple terms a style of , is the place we got here from . something went extinct . as a strategies by way of fact the various races , the DNA of each race is very just about comparable , so in simple terms like Darwin's concept of organic decision , the various races stepped forward by , the factors they lived in , and alter right into a version to the ambience .

Are there different human races alive today?

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