[NOTE: This is the fifth of a 6-part essay titled, On Loving With Love, Not Fear. To read the fourth part, click here.]
‘Missing Link’ Still Missing
Racial thinking is insidious because the idea itself has been proven to be founded in intellectual quicksand. Human beings come in a wide range of colors, languages, traditions, physiological characteristics, and even genetic possibilities. Yet, no gene has been found that “defines” an individuals’s race, nationality, culture, or ethnicity. Make no mistake that scientists have been searching, not for a race gene specifically, but for understanding. Yet, if such a race gene had been isolated and proven conclusively, it would make major headlines.
The Human Genome Project was science’s most advanced attempt yet to understand the human genetic code. Understand it, and many people surmised that we’d come to conclusive understandings about race. However, when the “mapping” project was completed, we only had more questions.
For example, out of the total of between 30-something thousand human genes that were identified, only six genes were discovered that determine the shading of an individual’s skin, which has often been used as one of the main litmus tests of racial identity. Yet, researchers saw a wider genetic variation between members of the same traditional racial group, than they sometimes saw between people who were considered to be of another “race.”
The true litmus test of humanity, has always been defined by Nature. Only human beings can conceive and give birth to other human beings. The only fervent caveat to remember is that, for best results, love must be an integral part of the union, as well as part of the upbringing. Given that love has taken a proverbial “back seat” for so long to such more pressing factors as war, ethnic and religious rivalries, tradition, class, elitism, and oppression, it is remarkable that the world is in as good a shape as it is. Nonetheless, it is a fact that “diversity” in the gene pool tends to yield stronger, brighter, healthier offspring.
Let us hence forth agree that any great deed that any human has done is evidence of what any other human being, who is properly nurtured, educated, prepared with requisite knowledge and skills, and motivated, may rightfully aspire to.
NEXT: Ultimate Question is Still a Question
