Today is the International Day for the Elimination of Racism and Discrimination and here some news for you from the scientific community, biologically racism makes no sense whatsoever from whichever point you look at it. This is no news at all, we have known that since 200 years and studies on genetics and evolution. And yet talk of Race still has an influence on society, economy, politics and culture and even personal identity. Any DNA test can disprove any of those fields and show that we all are a mixed with one another. In other words, the concept of race has zero scientific and genetic grounds. As a matter of fact, our very first genes come from somewhere around Centre-North Africa and from there Homo Sapiens started to migrate across the globe, therefore the differences found among humans from different parts of the world as so small to allow a margin of “racial” difference that amounts to 0.5% tops. Try to do your maths, we have been around about 2 million years, those first humans appeared around 300.000 years ago, and started moving around the world just about 60.000 years ago. What little mutations human underwent in our migration were mere adaptations to the new environments were we settled and what diet it offered.
So what does that teach us? That racism is not based on any science, nor rational conclusion or evidence, it is a mere reflection of culture, stereotyping, branding, and developing prejudices (that is a judgement with an emotion attached) which is based on a false narrative dictated by a mixture of different looks plus observations that rather reflect social upstanding than actual racial differences. In classical times the Southern civilisations such as the Greek and Roman looked down on their northern neighbours branding them as barbarians, few centuries later the roles swapped while the rich and industrialised Northern Europe was the destination of migrants from the poorer southern countries. All that has changed was the social and economic status. Racism is yes fought with a promotion of an inclusive culture that sees in diversity an added value rather than a threat, eliminating those behaviour of fearing-the-different for the sake and protection of our own tribe, and to realising that now we are a global tribe, that if in the past our threat to survival was that the neighbouring tribe would steal our cattle and crops, today’s survival threats depend on mutual cooperation and unity, as a global tribe, to counter the climate emergency, viruses and the growing social disparities and inequalities which generate discrimination. That is why today more than ever it is important to set the grounds for this new culture, starting from education primarily, and secondarily to business practices, because by discriminating we are only making our societies and economies poorer. Racism and discrmination make no sense whatsoever, culturally, scientifically and economically.