Today I would just like to dig into what I wrote here a couple of days ago with regard to the notion of race. We’re probably all familiar with the idea of course, but when you start to think about it, race – as in a biological, cultural or social subdivision of humanity – isn’t as straightforward as it might at first seem. Of course, I’m a blogger, not a biologist, so I’m no expert in this, but I can’t help recalling A Level Film Studies and the debates around genre. That is to say, there was a lot of academic writing about how each genre was defined and how a film could be classified as belonging to a genre. Broadly speaking, it boiled down to the iconography of a film and to what extent it fitted in with each category. A film featuring starships flying through space probably isn’t going to be a high fantasy film – but then, how does Star Wars fit in with that?

Obviously living beings aren’t films, and categorising people isn’t going to be that straightforward. We are all essentially one species with the same biology and genetics; there is some variety in terms of skin colour, complexion and bone structure in people from across the globe, but such differences are ultimately minor. We are all ultimately human: the last non-human branch of our species, the neanderthals, died out about a hundred thousand years ago. There is nothing to prevent people from across the globe mating and mingling.

That is why I find the entire idea of race so problematic: like genres, when you begin to dig into it, it becomes a bit of a trap. Where does one group of people begin and another end? That is why I think we should abandon the concept entirely, and just see ourselves as one human civilisation. This is also why I dislike the fact that certain people or groups of people seem to want to position themselves as members of a different race, seemingly just to set themselves socioculturally apart. It means clinging to a form of sociobiological stratification which should be redundant. But then, of course, the issue of culture crops up: There are certainly cultural differences between groups of people, and such variety obviously needs to be relished and preserved. What relationship does that have on the notion of race? Does it mean the concept needs to be safeguarded?

Again, I find that extremely problematic, given that dividing humanity up along racial grounds has proven so harmful. Thus we need to weigh the necessity of outgrowing essentially arbitrary dividing lines against the need to preserve cultural diversity. The whole point of traveling is to experience other cultures; but we must never forget that, wherever we go, the people we meet and cultures we discover are just as valid and human as we are.