many+races

=How many R a c e s  are there in the world? =

 Five? Fifty? Five hundred? How does race collaborate with religion? Whats [|the difference]? There are so many unanswered questions that have to do with race, so I decided to do a little investigation.

A lot of defining how many races are in the world depends on personal opinion. Sort of like saying what [|the definition of race] is, the number of races (according to the general public) would (and most likely always will) vary. After researching this question on the internet, many yahoo answers and sci-forums websites came up, so I decided to read further into this (even though they are not websites containing necessarily factual information). They are places where anyone can enter their opinions and share them with the world. After reading several of the entries, it seems that they cannot come to a conclusion of whether or not there is an exact number of races, or even a general idea of how many there are. Most of these points people made lead to arguments, and this all seemed to lead back to what people’s different definition of race is; when their definition is different, their whole opinions change. In these opinion-based entries, people also start bringing in the topic of respect for different races. **Andrew1234 says: “In my opinion. There is only one race. The Human Race. Everything else is just cultural diversities.” **  I think this is a very valid point because race and culture are very different, but they also have a big affect on one another. Race and Culture is also something that people often mix up and associate, but usually in the wrong ways.

 The picture above came from a blocked storm front website so I couldn't get further information on it; however, I thought it was very interesting how the map is labelled:
 * "white" ** as the color red
 * "yellow" **: as the color yellow
 * "brown" **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">: as the color brown
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"black": **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;"> as the color grey
 * <span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">"Amerindian" **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">: as the color orange

Going along with the information provided by that picture, are these the "most common" races? Similar to everything else, that is also based on personal opinion. I did some research on another yahoo answers site and found a [| list of human races]. One interesting entry from this website showed this list:

<span style="color: #12a1a1; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px;">__What I found factually:__
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A German physician/physiologist/anthropologist named [|Johann Friedrich Blumenbach] was the first person to classify different human races, and he came up with five. To do so he analyzed human skulls and their different characteristics, and the five classifications he came up with include: Caucasian (what he called the white race), Mongolian (what he called the yellow race), the Malayan (what he called the brown race), the Negroid (what he called the black race), and the American (what he called the red race). Can the races still be classified as this? In my opinion, the answer is no due to interracial relationships and different family trees being developed as years progress. Also, this classification took place much earlier and new things have been discovered.

After finding this source, I decided I wanted to do some research on [|racial classification]. The main website I found was a website from the U.S. [|Census] Bureau and it talked about the old standards of classification, and how in 1977 there were four different classifications of race; they included: American Indian, Asian, Black, and White. Following this, it talked about changing these "old standards" and their reason for it. It states that their reasoning is because the racial makeup of the country has changed since 1977 due to interracial relationships, etc; therefore, they needed to address this change and take a step back to look at the diversity in the country's present population. After doing this, in October of 1997 they came up with the new race classifications of: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and White. There is no updated information (or statement saying that these classifications have changed for 2009).

There are also interesting [|CNN reports] that I looked at that shows opinions about different races in America. To summarize some of this, I found some interesting facts such as: "Post WWII, approximately 4 million born Mexican Americans was deported to Mexico because they were born with brown skin." I thought this was interesting because with the topic of number of races and it led to discrimination in a way.

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Everything having to do with race connects in some way eventually; for example, there is not one answer to how many races there are in the world, and this also connects with the judgments people make based upon race. As I said before, a lot of times people confuse race with heritage/culture/religion- so this is something that has to be defined in order for there to be one conclusion on the amount of races in the world. I would like to research: When do certain judgments and assumptions cross the line of being racist? Is this opinion based too?
 * <span style="color: #12a1a1; font-family: Georgia,serif;">What do I want to do next? **<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif;">AnnBibBaum