Agustin Fuentes, a professor and anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, explored the logic behind how race is defined today.

Fuentes, whose presentation was entitled “What Race Is and What It Is Not,” addressed a crowd of approximately 200 while visiting St. Edward’s University Jan. 28.

“Race is real, it is important, and we need to talk about it,” Fuentes said, as he explained that discussion of race is still considered to be taboo by many.

A bulk of the presentation was focused on the argument over whether race is biological or social in nature. Even today, many consider race to be a biologically-based construct. Fuentes’ presentation, however, sought to refute this assertion.

The assumption that, for example, a white man is genetically different from a black man, can be rebuked quickly by the fact that not only do all human beings possess the exact same genes, but the variance within those genes is so relatively tiny, said Fuentes.

“A deer from North Carolina and a deer from Nebraska are nearly 20 percent more genetically diverse than it is physically possible for any two humans on this planet,” said Fuentes. “Humans are stunningly alike.”

However, in terms of appearance, the fact that human beings are remarkably distinctive is indisputable, Fuentes said.

“It is almost ingrained in our subconscious to make assumptions on what someone’s ethnicity may be based on their looks,” Fuentes said.

Fuentes also said that, historically, there were three defined groups of race—black, white and Asian. Being Hispanic wasn’t considered being of a different race, but of another ethnicity.  Even today, this vague method of categorizing people is common, Fuentes said.Fuentes said assumptions made upon our preconceived notions of these three seemingly distinct groups are often proven to be far off base.

“Skin color, for instance, is undoubtedly one of the most critical facets of race,” Fuentes said. “But one’s skin color isn’t necessarily a telling point of where exactly they can draw their lineage to—rather, it only gives a hint as to its proximity to the equator.”

As humans evolved and migrated over the years, the way melanin was distributed in their skin changed in correlation to their exposure to harmful UV rays. The more exposure the population withstood, Fuentes explained, the more even the layer of melanin would be; hence, the emergence of dark skin. The melanin in those with comparatively less exposure to the sun’s rays would cluster differently, making skin appear lighter.

“All humans have the exact same amount of melanin in their body; the only variance from one person to the next is the pattern in which it is clustered in their skin,” said Fuentes. “So, someone who may appear to be of African descent in terms of skin color could actually be, for instance, Asian—so long as their ancestors’ populations had evolved within a relatively close proximity to the equator.”

This fact, along with an extensive global history of people migrating, intermarrying people from those areas and migrating again makes the idea of being able to easily categorize people into three clearly defined divisions seem utterly out of the question.

Despite these facts, Fuentes doesn’t deny the impact that race has had on our society. Biologically speaking, the idea of race is seemingly obsolete. But as a social construct, it is absolutely real.

“We are a very racial society,” Fuentes said. “Biologically, we’re one race—the human race—but socially, we’re many races.”

Fuentes brought up the assumed race of President Obama as a prime example of race being socially based. Despite Obama’s father being of African descent and his mother of European descent, when the subject of his race comes up, Obama is, by and large, referred to as being black.

Fuentes said that this sort of social assumption is being even a fraction of African heritage, or even possessing some physical characteristics, are enough to make someone be considered black in the eyes of our society.

The reasoning behind this perplexity is debatable; however, this phenomenon is certainlyrooted in society rather than biology, and it is fully subjective. Fuentes said that, in Indonesia, the direct translation for “race” is “bangsa,” and instead of categorizing people into black, white or Asian races, “bangsa” classifies people by their religion, be they Muslim, Christian or Hindu.

Race is still undeniably a worldwide dilemma, and Fuentes’ presentation aimed to help its audience understand the construct’s origins and work to resolve the issues surrounding it.”It’s important to talk about race to understand it,” Fuentes said.

The American Anthropologist Association, an organization with which Fuentes is affiliated, has been working on a considerable project involving the same subject matter that Fuentes’ presentation covered.

The organization presented their research to the U.S. Congress in October 2009, and its findings are currently on a museum tour around the country. Although the tour will not be coming to Austin, its findings will be presented in Houston’s Health Museum in October 2011 through January 2012.

More information on the project can be found at http://understandingrace.org.