For my reading, I chose to read the interview with Jonathan Marks, a physical anthropologist. I’ve very intrigued by the intersection of science and anthropology, and find that the two fields complement each other well. In the interview, Marks begins by comparing the current social definition and ideas of race to what heredity really has to say about it– and just as we learned in the film, race does not divide us genetically. The divisions of race that society has created are just that– societally created. Marks continues to discuss migration patterns, and how race is an example of non-concordance, meaning that individual traits in the human species don’t share the same patterns of variation across geographic space, so skin color and eye color don’t vary geographically in the same way. I thought the term “cline” was an excellent definition to use in this conversation surrounding race and genetics: it means the gradient that certain traits form. This was discussed in the film, saying if we walked from Northern Europe to South Africa, we would see a whole gradient of skin colors– but where would we draw the line? Marks finishes the interview by discussing Social Darwinism and false claims that our “natures” are determined by our genes. Reading about how the “Darwin” in Social Darwinism was included simply to come across as having some sort of scientific basis for racism and eugenics was so frustrating, and not to mention so dangerous. It made me think a lot about the anti-vax movement (if you can even call it a movement) and people who claim that vaccines have caused health issues within our species, turning a innovation backed by scientific research and discovery into a political debate. This interview left me wondering how many controversial issues in the past, present, and future can be answered by science, and maybe aren’t so controversial after all?