The Power of Natural Selection
by Noemielongpre on September 14, 2016 - 9:08am
During the last two weeks of class, I learned that human beings should not be classified into "race" since it is not biological, meaning that it is society that decides whether races exist or not. However we discusses in clss and wondered why people always want to know where other people with different origins come from. For example, I have a Black friend that was born in Africa, nut now lves here in Québec. when we are togetherhe often gets asked where he is from and people always skip me due to my skin color which they assume I come from Canada since I am white. What these people do not understand is that my friend's skin color is not only due to genetic, but mostly because of natural selection. this process is described as an adaptation of the human beings in consequence to their environment, meaning that my friend's skin color is black since in Africa the days are warmer and the sun can really burn your skin which is one of the reasons why most Africain are black, since having dark skin protects you from the sunbeam. According to Jared Diamond's article, secual selection is also "evolved geographically" when it comes to human traits (Diamond, 1994, 22). In fact, sexual selection plays a role on the human's physic, which varies in different parts of the world, however these traits are "arbitrary" (Diamond, 1994, 13) since they do not help for "aid survival" (Diamond, 1994, 25). these two concepts discusses in class were new to me and I was really amazed to see how human beings and other living species can adapt so easily to their environment. For example, in the article "Race Without Color", it explains the role played by sexual selection whe it comes to the body hair on men. In Europe, men are "rather hsiry by world stands, while Southeast Asian men thend to have very sparse beards and body hair" (Diamond, 1994, 23). We say these traits are arbitrary simply because they do not affect our health and well-being. To conclude, why do individuals keep asking other people their race and nationality, when the answer is dependent to natural selection?