Q: What is the human race/races? - Layperson

A: There is only one human race with 5 generally accepted subclassifications-Black, Brown, Red, White, Yellow, and an infinite number of admixtures. The human race is classified under the following scientific classification:

Human Fossil range: {{{fossil_range}}}
Scientific classification
Domain: {{{domain}}} Superkingdom: {{{superregnum}}} Kingdom: Animalia Subkingdom: {{{subregnum}}} Superdivision: {{{superdivisio}}} Superphylum: {{{superphylum}}} Division: {{{divisio}}} Phylum: Chordata Subdivision: {{{subdivisio}}} Subphylum: {{{subphylum}}} Infraphylum: {{{infraphylum}}} Microphylum: {{{microphylum}}} Nanophylum: {{{nanophylum}}} Superclass: {{{superclassis}}} Class: Mammalia Sublass: {{{subclassis}}} Infraclass: {{{infraclassis}}} Superorder: {{{superordo}}} Order: Primates Suborder: {{{subordo}}} Infraorder: {{{infraordo}}} Superfamily: Hominoidea Family: Hominidae Subfamily: Homininae Supertribe: {{{supertribus}}} Tribe: Hominini Subtribe: {{{subtribus}}} Genus: Homo Subgenus: {{{subgenus}}} Section: {{{sectio}}} Series: {{{series}}} Species: H. sapiens Supspecies: {{{subspecies}}}
[[{{{diversity_link}}}|Diversity]]
{{{diversity}}}
Binomial name
Homo sapiens Linnaeus, 1758
Trinomial name
{{{trinomial}}}
Type Species
{{{type_species}}}
Subspecies
Homo sapiens idaltu (extinct) Homo sapiens sapiens

A race is a population of humans distinguished from other populations. The most widely used racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color and facial features). Conceptions of race, as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and time and are often controversial due to their impact on social identity and hence identity politics.

With the advent of the modern synthesis in the early 20th century, biologists developed a new, more rigorous model of race as subspecies. For these biologists, a race is a recognizable group forming all or part of a species. A monotypic species has no races, or rather one race comprising the whole species. Monotypic species can occur in several ways:

• All members of the species are very similar and cannot be sensibly divided into biologically significant subcategories.
• The individuals vary considerably but the variation is essentially random and largely meaningless so far as genetic transmission of these variations is concerned (many plant species fit into this category, which is why horticulturists interested in preserving, say, a particular flower color avoid propagation from seed, and instead use vegetative methods like propagation from cuttings).
• The variation between individuals is noticeable and follows a pattern, but there are no clear dividing lines between separate groups: they fade imperceptibly into one another. Such clinal variation always indicates substantial gene flow between the apparently separate groups that make up the population(s). Populations that have a steady, substantial gene flow between them are likely to represent a monotypic species even when a fair degree of genetic variation is obvious.

A polytypic species has two or more races (or, in current parlance, two or more sub-types). This classification reflects separate groups that are clearly distinct from one another and do not generally interbreed (although there may be a relatively narrow hybridization zone), but which would interbreed freely if given the chance to do so. Although different species can sometimes interbreed to a limited extent, the converse is not true. Groups incapable of producing fertile offspring with each other are universally considered distinct species, and not merely different "races" of the same species.

Although this attempt at conceptual precision gained currency with many biologists, especially zoologists, evolutionary scientists have criticized it on a number of fronts.

The different raceial subclassifications are often popularly defined and named (often very inaccurately) by skin color, but as this system is based on only one genetic difference, when thousands are involved, it tends to distort the reality of race and racial subclassification differences. In the system of racial subclassification outlined below the names assigned to the various subspecies and races are, with a few exceptions, based on geographical regions that are, or presumably were, at or near the center of their area of evolutionary development and origin.

A. Northeast Asian race (various subraces in China, Manchuria, Korea and Japan)

B. Southeast Asian race (various subraces in Indochina, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, some partly hybridized with Australoids)

C. Micronesian-Polynesian race (hybridized with Australoids)

D. Ainuid race (remnants of aboriginal population in northern Japan)

E. Tungid race (Mongolia and Siberia, Eskimos)

F. Amerindian race (American Indians; various subraces)