"None of the observable traits that people associate with race are simple genetic traits. Complex traits are influenced by several genes as well as environment."
(Jeffrey C. Long, Geneticist)

What is race, really? Try this quiz, offered by the American Anthropological Association:
http://www.understandingrace.o rg/humvar/quiz.html

The answers may surprise you.

Many of us grew with an essentialist view of race. The human population is divided into a number of distinctive groups, which will remain distinctive despite any mixing that may occur with other groups. If you go back in history far enough, you will find the original pure strains of these groups. This view was opposed by Darwin in The Descent of Man in 1871. He postulated that the entire human population, with all its diversity, came from a common gene pool. The essentialist view prevailed because it was a convenient justification for oppressing races deemed inferior, and for practising eugenics, selective breeding to improve the population.

Contemporary anthropologists view race as a cultural invention. Janis Hutchinson, a biological anthropologist, explains: "When you begin to understand the biology of human variation, you have to ask yourself is race is a good way to describe that." Variations in skin color, height, susceptibility to disease and other characteristics are generated by a complex dance of genes, environment, and cultural experiences. All these factors are under the anthropological umbrella.

Modern anthropologists favor the population concept for describing diverse groups. A race is defined as a cluster of local populations which differ genetically from other clusters. Each member of the population is an individual, but yet shares many characteristics of his or her group. Except in isolated populations, which are becoming more and more rare (perhaps because anthropologists keep studying them, bringing in new influences), the division between members and non-members is arbitrary. Human diversity is a constantly evolving continuum.

Skin color, one of the most visible ways of classifying people, is probably an adaptive trait rather than a racial one. Populations which lived in hot climates replaced their body hair with additional sweat glands. This made them more susceptible to UV radiation. UVR is useful because it helps Vitamin D facilitate the absorption of calcium, but too much of it will strip

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