When you first see these girls, you probably wouldn’t assume they’re related. One girl looks ‘Black’ by the standards we use to judge people, while the other looks ‘white.’ So most people who came across them on the street would assume they belong to different families, and come from very different groups. Some might even be inclined to treat them differently or think of them differently because of it.
But not only are these girls sisters, they’re twins! They’re not identical twins, of course, but they’re otherwise as similar as two people can get. These girls show us just how shallow and meaningless ideas about racial differences truly are.
Our world often judges people based on their skin color. There are many who use this meaningless distinction to divide people into groups of “us,” those who are assumed to be more similar, and “others,” who are presumed to be different, and therefore not as good.
But as far as science is concerned, there are no separate races. There’s just one big and wonderfully diverse human family. The notion that people belong to different races is just a terrible idea dreamed up millennia ago that stubbornly refuses to go away.
The truth is that there are no distinctions that could reasonably separate people into different races. Society judges people based on the color of their skin, but this is folly; it would make just as much sense to divide people into separate groups based on their hair color, eye color, or blood type.
After all, there’s blonde hair, brown hair, red hair, black hair, blue and pink hair? I’m not entirely sure what’s going on there.
The genes that determine hair color consume just as much of the human genome as those that determine skin color, (neither of which amount to very much), yet if we judged people differently based on their hair color, people within the same family would have to be labeled a separate race.
What about the eyes you have? There are blue eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, hazel eyes…black and red eyes? Those are pretty gnarly looking contact lenses.
Would you assume that your parents or siblings aren’t part of your group because their eyes are colored differently? Of course you wouldn’t.
And when it comes to skin color, there is no true black or white but just different shades between peachy and and dark olive brown. These differences are based on nothing more than the amount of melatonin in someone’s skin; a molecule that helps protect skin from the sun. Your own skin can even change colors and grow darker when you spend more time out in the sun.
Once upon a time, all people had darker skin. Then some families started migrating away from the equator to places like Europe, where there’s less intense sunlight. Their skin didn’t need as much melatonin, and it also needed a way to absorb more vitamin D, so skin color progressively got lighter.
None of these differences mean a thing in terms of what truly matters. When it comes to humans, there’s really only one group: The human family. So don’t be one of those silly people who treat others differently based on the color of their skin.
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Picture credits:
- National Geographic
- Craig Melvin family
- PinkyPaeadice.com