Biological Race Issues

The Anthropology: The Human Challenge defines race as “the taxonomic category of a subspecies that is not applicable to humans because the division of humans into discrete types does not represent the true nature of human biological variation. In some societies race is an important social category.” (Haviland, Prins, Walrath, McBride, 2014). Although the biological race concept does not pertain to human disparities, race remains a significant cultural and social issue. Prime example of biological and social race issues is in The World at War Ep20 Genocide video. The Nazis in Germany had taken racialized worldview and turned it into policy. Hitler had refined the philosophy of Nazism from its ideas on politics and race. He agenda was inspired/influenced a few factors such as the American eugenics movement of the early 20th century as well as a book titled as The Passing of the Great Race written by Madison Grant. This led to the creation of the Nuremberg race laws of 1935 that led to superiority of the of the Aryan race and the
Racism is defined as “A doctrine of superiority by which one group justifies the dehumanization of others based on their destructive physical characteristics.” (Haviland, Prins, Walrath, McBride, 2014). This is a huge motivator to some who believe that they are better than the rest. This superiority complex is the reason that to this day we have strained race lines in the United States. Decades have gone by since some of the worlds darkest moments in our history had been recorded such as the being of the slavery trade industry, the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians during World War I, the genocide of 11 million Jews/Slavs and others in Europe during World War II, the slaughter of 1.7 million Cambodians in 1970s, and many more but even with all of these events that we all have studied at one time or another history seems to continue to repeat