Xenophobia - Racism
Xenophobia is the fear of the alien. Any person or persons different to oneself, withdifferent cultural background, dissimilar behaviour to oneself and differing opinions is a threat to the fainthearted. It is this insecurity and ignorance which makes the xenophobic reject the otherwise inclined, in word or in deed. This fear is distinctly different from racism, which is solely based on race.
Racism is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and those racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. People with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their racial groups. In the case of institutional racism, certain racial groups may be denied rights or benefits, or get preferential treatment. Racial discrimination typically points out taxonomic differences between different groups of people, even though anybody can be racist, independently of their somatic differences. According to the United Nations conventions, there is no distinction between the term ‘racial discrimination’ and ‘ethnic discrimination’.
While the term racism usually denotes race-based prejudice, violence, discrimination, or oppression, the term can also have varying and hotly contested definitions.
Racialism is a related term, sometimes intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each racial group possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another racial group or racial groups.The Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular racial group, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief. The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism as: "the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.
The colour of the skin is probably the starkest and most obvious trait of racial differences. Be it in Europe or America, a black man is a black man. Likewise in Africa a white man is a white man. This distinction overlooks racial differences within people of the same colour of the skin. Why does the colour of the skin of people come about?
Human skin colour can range from almost blue (due to very high concentrations of the dark brown pigment melanin) to nearly colourless (appearing reddish white due to the blood in the skin) in different people. Skin colour is determined by the amount and type of melanin, the pigment in the skin. Variation in skin colour is largely due to genetics. As a general pattern people with ancestors from tropical regions (hence greater sunlight exposure) have darker skin than people with ancestors from subtropical regions. This is far from a hard and fast rule however, because many light skinned groups have managed to survive at the equator by way of social adaptation. The same can be said of dark skinned groups living at subtropical latitudes.
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Melanin comes in two types: pheomelanin (red) and eumelanin (very dark brown). Both amount and type are determined by four to six genes which operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of those genes is inherited from each parent.
Each gene comes in several alleles, resulting in a great variety of different skin tones.
The evolution of the different skin tones is thought to have occurred as follows: the haired primate ancestors of humans, like modern great apes, had light skin under their hair. When Hominids evolved relative hairlessness (the most likely function of which was to facilitate perspiration), they evolved dark skin, needed to prevent low folate levels since they lived in sun-rich Africa. (The skin cancer connection is probably of secondary importance, since skin cancer usually kills only after the reproductive age and therefore does not exert much evolutionary selection pressure.) When humans migrated to less sun-intensive regions in the north, low vitamin D3 levels became a problem and light skin colour re-emerged. (sexual selection and diet may well have played a part in the evolution of skin tone diversity, as well)
The Inuit and Yupik (Eskimos) are special cases: even though they live in an extremely sun-poor environment, they have retained their relatively dark skin. This can be explained by the fact that their traditional fish-based diet provides plenty of vitamin D.Human evolution, or anthropogenesis, is the part of biological evolution concerning the emergence of Homo sapiens as a distinct species from other hominans, great apes and placental mammals. It is the subject of a broad scientific inquiry that seeks to understand and describe how this change occurred. The study of human evolution encompasses many scientific disciplines, most notably physical anthropology, linguistics and genetics.
The term "human", in the context of human evolution, refers to the genus Homo, but studies of human evolution usually include other hominins, such as the australopithecines. The Homo genus diverged from the australopithecines about 2 million years ago in Africa. Several typological species of Homo, now extinct, evolved. These include Homo erectus, which inhabited Asia, and Homo neanderthalensis, which inhabited Europe.
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| Out of Africa |
Archaic Homo sapiens evolved between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. Many scientists favor the view that H. sapiens evolved in Africa and spread across the globe, replacing populations of H. erectus and H. neanderthalensis. Others view modern humans as having evolved as a single, widespread population from existing Homo species, particularly H. erectus. The fossil evidence so far is insufficient to resolve this vigorous debate.
Starting with H. habilis, humans began using stone tools of increasing sophistication. About 50,000 years ago, human technology and culture began to change more rapidly.
According to the Out of Africa Model, developed by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews, modern H. sapiens evolved in Africa 200,000 years ago. Homo sapiens began migrating from Africa between 70,000 – 50,000 years ago and would eventually replace existing hominid species in Europe and Asia. The Out of Africa Model has gained support by recent research using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). After analyzing genealogy trees constructed using 133 types of mtDNA, they concluded that all were descended from a woman from Africa, dubbed Mitochondrial Eve
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