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Racism has had a profound effect on the individuals and institutions of this country. Today, we look back at pivotal events - the enslavement of Africans, the dispossession of Indian and Mexican lands, the exclusion of Asians from immigration and citizenship - as unfortunate chapters in American history. However, race and the legacy of discrimination continue to affect our lives - whether in our everyday interactions with others or in our life opportunities.

These personal perspectives on race reflect a broad spectrum of experiences. But what emerges repeatedly is the idea that white is normal and to "have a race" is to be nonwhite. The advantages of being white are invisible unless they are compared to a nonwhite person's disadvantages - to be white is to be unquestioned, accepted, and unburdened by a racial identity. Against the default category of whiteness, people of color struggle with the weight of their difference.

Rarely confronted with matters of race, many of the white people we interviewed argued race is no longer an issue. However, other interviewees acknowledged that white identity was really about enjoying an advantage over nonwhites in society. The question is what to do with this knowledge of their advantage - many expressed feelings of guilt, anger, and resentment at being blamed for the actions of their ancestors, or fear of losing their privileges. The fear of losing something in order to make racial inequalities disappear may be one of the biggest obstacles in addressing these problems. However, much of what we see as white "privileges" - adequate education, employment opportunities, housing - are really basic rights and entitlements that no one should give up but everyone should share.

How can it be that so many well-meaning white people have never thought about race when so few blacks pass a single day without being reminded of it? -Patricia Williams, Seeing a Color-Blind Future: The Paradox of Race

In interviews with white men and women of various socioeconomic classes in three different areas of the country, sociologist Nancy DiTomaso found that they rarely thought about race and never even thought of themselves as "white" unless the issue was brought to their attention. In contrast, minorities are confronted regularly with race. Legal scholar john a. powell sums up the difference: "The Blacks have race, Latinos have race, Asians have race. They're just white. They're just people. That's part of being white."

Feeling the extra weight of a racial identity doesn't necessarily mean experiencing direct racism every day. It can also be experienced in subtler forms - feeling underrepresented, misrepresented, or tolerating an innocent comment loaded with racial assumptions. Unburdened by daily reminders of one's difference - that is the weightlessness of being white. It is difficult to notice things when they do not happen to you or those around you.

Part of the problem lies in the lack of interaction between whites and other races. Psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum points out that for many white people who live in predominantly white communities, there are no racial issues because there are no other races. Furthermore, all of their information about minorities may be coming from second-hand sources such as television, movies, an ethnic joke, or a casual comment made by a relative. Therefore the information is coming in "stereotyped packages."

Questioning these assumptions - however great or small - is critical to ridding ourselves of the social and personal constraints placed on us by racial stereotypes. At their least harmful, they are daily annoyances that build resentment and misunderstanding among racial groups; at their most harmful, they can damage someone's self-image and place limitations on his or her perceived potential.

The thing that's really slick about whiteness is that most of the benefits can be obtained without ever doing anything personally…Whites are given the spoils of a racist system, even if they're not personally racist. -john a. powell, legal scholar

Racism is not just about personal slurs and animosity. While individual acts of racism take their toll on society, the greatest social and economic inequalities have risen from institutional structures that have given benefits and advantages to one race at the expense of others. So while we may be witnessing fewer acts of blatant racism and discrimination on an individual level, we are all still part of a system of advantage based on race.

The power of the individual has always been a prominent American value - we believe the things we have are a result of hard work, talent and determination. It is easy to miss the invisible hands that have helped us along the way. According to Dalton Conley, economists have estimate that 50-80% of one's lifetime wealth depends on opportunities created by past generations - gifts, informal loans, a good education, or job connections. What does this mean in an economy where the wealth accumulation of millions of white Americans was made possible by federal programs and policies that excluded nonwhites? What gets passed down in families that have been excluded from such benefits?

"If we could all put on blinders, then we wouldn't have any problems," one white interviewee expressed, echoing the sentiment of others that also wished for a colorblind society. They want to wipe the slate clean and stop paying attention to race. But will ignoring race give us an equal playing field when social and economic inequalities are so deeply entrenched in our institutions, and opportunities and resources have been divided along racial lines for generations?

According to George Lipsitz in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness, "In the U.S. economy, 86 percent of available jobs do not appear in the classified ads and personal connections prove the most important fact in securing employment." As long as business owners and managers are predominantly white and people continue to live in homogeneous communities, the job market will perpetuate existing inequalities along racial lines. Opponents to affirmative action believe that everyone should be judged on merit - yet current business practices essentially guarantee that "whites will be rewarded for their historical advantage in the labor market rather than for their individual abilities and efforts."

Conley describes this phenomenon as being "stuck with this paradoxical idea of a colorblind society in a society that is totally unequal by color." Even if all the resentment and misunderstandings among racial groups were to disappear, this would not be enough to remedy the imbalance of opportunities.

"We need to be uncomfortable with the present racial arrangement," john a. powell says. Disavowing personal prejudice is an important first step. But it must be followed by a recognition of the institutions and processes that have advantaged whites, and assuming collective responsibility in the solution.

Today, the multicultural differences that are inherent in American culture are seen as cause for celebration. Appreciation, respect, and awareness of cultural differences are undoubtedly valuable teachings. But does celebrating diversity also promote an equal society?

One of the most famous symbols of American culture is the melting pot. But as sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva points out, historically European ethnics were the only ones allowed to "melt into the pot." As different groups tried to find their place in American society, many found that that there was already a built-in social hierarchy.

Immigration and naturalization laws essentially defined who was welcome in this country and who was not. The 1790 Naturalization Act stated that only "free white persons shall be entitled to the rights of citizenship." So early on in the United States, American identity - and the privileges that came with it - was conflated with whiteness. The Irish, Jews and immigrants from southern Europe faced their own battles for acceptance - but eventually all gained the benefits of whiteness. The process was much harder for non-Europeans. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Asians and other minority groups who were banned from the full benefits of American citizenship fought tirelessly for inclusion. The Chinese alone brought 170 cases to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Americans share more than a journey from different places of origin. They share the controversial history of a nation founded on principles of equality that also built a social and economic hierarchy based on race. As psychologist Bevery Tatum says: "We have to be clear that it's not just understanding that he eats beans and rice, and she eats egg rolls and this person celebrates Kwaanza. It is also about understanding the history of the way different groups have been treated in our society, and what we need to do to in terms of making sure that everybody has equal access."

Race is a modern idea - it hasn't always been with us. In ancient times, language, religion, status, and class distinctions were more important than physical appearance. In America, a set of specific historical circumstances led to the world's first race-based slave system.

The concept of race did not originate with science. On the contrary, science emerged in the late 18th century and helped validate existing racial ideas and "prove" a natural hierarchy of groups. Throughout our history, the search for racial differences has been fueled by preconceived notions of inferiority and superiority. Even today, scientists are influenced by their social context.

Ideas and definitions of race have changed over time, depending on social and political climate. Historically, racial categories were not neutral or objective. Groups were differentiated so they could be excluded or disadvantaged, often in explicit ways. For example, in the early 20th century, U.S. courts had to decide who was legally white and who wasn't for the purposes of naturalized citizenship. This was done in arbitrary and sometimes contradictory ways.

Groups such as African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos and Asian Americans have played a significant role in shaping American society. Many of the freedoms we take for granted were fought for and won by those who were originally excluded by discriminatory laws and practices. In struggling for their own inclusion, nonwhites have guaranteed fair treatment and equal rights for everyone.

Throughout human history, societies have enslaved others due to conquest, war or debt, but not based on physical difference. The word "slave" in fact comes from "Slav": prisoners of Slavonic tribes captured by Germans and sold to Arabs during the Middle Ages. Prior to the Enlightenment, slavery was simply a fact of life, unquestioned. Race, on the other hand, is a much more recent idea, tied up with the founding of the U.S.

In colonial America, our early economy was based largely on slavery. When the new concept of freedom was introduced during the American Revolution, it created a moral contradiction: how could a nation that proclaimed equality and the natural rights of man hold slaves? The idea of race helped resolve the contradiction by setting Africans apart. The notion of natural Black inferiority helped our founding fathers justify denying slaves the rights and entitlements that others took for granted.

Later, as the abolitionist movement gained popularity and attacks on slavery grew, so did arguments in its defense. Slavery was no longer explained as a necessary evil, but justified as a positive good. The rationale for slavery was so strong that after emancipation, ideas of innate inferiority and superiority not only persisted but were intensified.

In colonial America, Africans weren't enslaved because they were thought to be inferior. On the contrary, they were valued for their skill as farmers and desired for their labor. Planters had previously tried enslaving Native Americans, but many escaped and hid among neighboring tribes or were stricken by diseases brought to the New World by Europeans.

In the early years of the colonies, the majority of workers were poor indentured servants from England. In fact, during Virginia's first century, 100,000 of the 130,000 Englishmen who crossed the Atlantic were indentured servants. Conditions of servitude were miserable, and nearly two thirds died before their term of indenture ended. After several decades, African slaves began arriving in the U.S. and worked side by side with indentured servants. Many played together, intermarried, and ran away together. Racial categories were fluid, and slavery was not yet codified into law.

In the mid-17th century, a crisis arose in the colonies. As economic conditions in Mother England improved, the number of volunteers willing to journey across the Atlantic to endure such harsh treatment dropped dramatically, causing a labor shortage. At the same time, tension and hostilities were mounting domestically, as more servants were surviving their indenture and demanding land from the planter elite. The entire plantation labor system and colonial social hierarchy was threatened; the situation came to a head when poor servants and slaves allied and attacked the elite classes during Bacon's Rebellion.

After the system of indentured servitude proved unstable, planters turned increasingly to African slavery and began writing laws to divide Blacks from whites. Coincidentally, African slaves became more available at this time. Poor whites were given new entitlements and opportunities, including as overseers to police the slave population. Over time, they began to identify more with wealthy whites, and the degradation of slavery became identified more and more with Blackness.

Imbued with a new validity by scientists, race evolved into the "common-sense" wisdom of white America by the middle of the 19th century. It was invoked not only to justify the enslavement of Africans, but also the taking of Mexican and Indian lands, the exclusion of Asian immigrants, and eventually, the acquisition of overseas territories such as the Philippine Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico. Racial superiority was seen not only as "natural" and inevitable but a moral responsibility for whites. The notions of Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden best capture this ideology of "civilization" and racial difference.

Ideas of racial inferiority have been institutionalized - both explicitly and implicitly - within our laws, government, and public policies. Not surprisingly, racial definitions have also changed over time, depending on the political context. They have also been arbitrary and inconsistent from group to group.

Mexicans, for example, were classified as white until 1930, when nativists lobbied successfully for them to be classified separately in order to target them for discrimination and emphasize their distinctness from whites. Historically, African Americans in the Jim Crow South were classified according to "blood" ancestry, but the amount (one quarter, one sixteenth, one drop) varied from state to state, which meant that, as historian James Horton points out, "you could cross a state line and literally, legally change race."

Since the 19th century, Native Americans have been defined in terms opposite those defining African Americans. Rather than the "one-drop" rule, a minimum "blood quantum" requirement has been the standard for tribal membership and racial classification. Historically, membership in many Native American tribes was based on acceptance of tribal language, customs, and authority, not "blood" degree. Escaped slaves, whites and other Indians were able to join tribes and be accepted as full members. However, in the 1930s, tribes wanting federal recognition were forced to follow government guidelines, including membership based upon "blood" degree. A 1991 Bureau of Indian Affairs inventory of 155 federally recognized tribes in 48 states showed that 4 out of 5 condition membership on proof of blood, ranging in amount from 1/2 to 1/64th.

1776 Birth of "Caucasian": Johann Blumenbach, one of many classifiers in the 18th century, lays out the scientific template for contemporary race categories in On the Natural Varieties of Mankind. Blumenbach strongly opposes slavery and believes in the potential equality of all people. Nevertheless, he maps a hierarchical pyramid of five human types, placing "Caucasians" at the top because he believes a skull found in the Caucasus Mountains is the "most beautiful form of the skull, from which...the others diverge." This model is widely embraced, and Blumenbach inadvertently paves the way for scientific claims about white superiority.

1781 Jefferson suggests innate Black inferiority: With Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson becomes the first prominent American to suggest innate Black inferiority: "I advance it therefore, as a suspicion only, that blacks ...are inferior to the whites in the endowments of body and mind." Published in the U.S. after the American Revolution, his writings help rationalize slavery in a nation otherwise dedicated to liberty and equality, calling on emerging science to provide proof. As historian Barbara Fields and others note, the idea of Black inferiority makes it possible to deny Africans the equal rights that others take for granted.

1839 skulls measured to "prove" racial hierarchy: Samuel Morton, the first famous American scientist, possesses the largest skull collection in the world. He claims to measure brain capacity through skull size, but makes systematic errors in favor of his assumptions, concluding: "[Their larger skulls gives Caucasians] decided and unquestioned superiority over all the nations of the earth." Morton's findings are later seized upon and popularized by pro-slavery scientists like Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz. In just 60-70 years, Jefferson's tentative suggestion of racial difference becomes scientific "fact": "Nations and races, like individuals, have each an especial destiny: some are born to rule, and others to be ruled....No two distinctly-marked races can dwell together on equal terms." -Josiah Nott (1854)

1859 Evolution shapes debate: When Darwin uncovers the mechanism for evolution, it dramatically alters public debate. "Racial" differences, previously explained by some as the result of separate, divine origins, are now seen as the result of historical change and divergence over time. Evolution provides a new paradigm for comparing group "progress" but it also introduces the image of competition and possible extinction. Herbert Spencer captures the public's excitement and anxiety when he coins the phrase "survival of the fittest" in applying Darwin's ideas to the social realm. Advocates of Spencer's "social darwinism" view the hierarchy of races as the product of "nature," not specific institutions and policies. Consequently, social reform or improvement is pointless.

1883 Birth of eugenics: Francis Galton, Charles Darwin's cousin, coins the term eugenics, meaning "good genes," to emphasize heredity as the cause of all human behavioral and cultural differences. Eugenicists advocate selective breeding to engineer the "ideal" society. Theirwritings find a receptive audience among white intellectuals in the early 20thcentury and profoundly influence many aspects of American life, including immigration policy, anti-miscegenation laws, involuntary sterilization, and schooling. Although the American eugenics movement collapses by World War II, its effect on institutions and social policy is longlasting, finding its fruition in Nazi Germany.

1904 Race on parade at world's fair: St. Louis, MO stages a World's Fair to showcase American achievements and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase. Nearly 20 million visitors attend. The fair reflects the culmination of 19th-century racial ideas in science, politics, and culture. Across from the technology exhibits are groups of indigenous peoples from around the world displayed in their "natural" habitats - a "living illustration" of man's hierarchical development on the earth. By the mid-19th century, race is invoked to explain everything: individual character, the cause of criminality, and the natural superiority of "higher" races.

1911 Universal Races Congress held: A thousand people from 50 nations convene at the University of London to counter the work of the budding eugenics movement. Among the prominent scientists and scholars in attendance are Americans W.E.B. DuBois and anthropologist Franz Boas. Lead organizer Gustav Spiller sums up the group's findings as follows: "We are then under the necessity of concluding that an impartial investigator would be inclined to look upon the various important peoples of the world as, to all intents and purposes, essentially equal in intellect, enterprise, morality and physique." However, their work falls on deaf ears and has little impact.

1950 UNESCO issues statement on race: Only when claims of inherent racial inferiority are taken to a horrifying extreme by the Nazis is race science finally discredited. After the Holocaust, the United Nations issues an official statement declaring that "race" has no scientific basis and calling for an end to racial thinking in scientific and political thought. The statement's principal author is Ashley Montagu, a student of Franz Boas. Although important, this shift in scientific thinking has little impact on social policy and ingrained public attitudes about race.

1962 Sickle cell proven not "racial": In the 1960s, several key scientific discoveries pave the way for a new understanding of human variation. Among them is the work of Frank Livingstone and A.C. Allison, who unlock the origins of sickle cell, often considered a "racial" disease afflicting Africans. Their research shows that the sickling gene is linked to protection from malaria, not skin color, and the trait is found in areas where malaria was once common, such as the Mediterranean, Arabia, India, and central and western (but not southern) Africa. Livingstone and many others also show that most traits vary independently from one another and don't come packaged together into what we think of as races.

1972 Human diversity is mapped: In the early 1970s, geneticist Richard Lewontin decides to find out just how much genetic variation falls within, versus between, the groups we call races. He discovers that 85% of all human variation can be found within any local population; about 94% within any continent. This means local groups are much more diverse than they appear, and our species as a whole is much more similar than we appear. Lewontin's work, confirmed over and over again by others, remains an important milestone in our understanding of race and biology today.

Following are the U.S. federal government's current definitions of racial and ethnic groups.

American Indian or Alaskan Native.
A person having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America (including Central America), and who maintains tribal affiliation or community recognition.

Asian.
A person having origins in any of the original peoples of the Far East, Southeast Asia, the Indian subcontinent including, for example, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippine Islands, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Black or African American.
A person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa. Terms such as "Haitian" or "Negro" can be used in addition to "Black or African American."

Hispanic or Latino.
A person of Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture of origin, regardless of race. The term "Spanish origin" can be used in addition to "Hispanic or Latino."

Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander.
A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Hawaii, Guam, Samoa, or other Pacific Islands.

White.
A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

Most of these categories were introduced in 1977, in response to new civil rights laws designed to remedy discrimination. Look closely at these definitions. Is everybody defined in the same way?

To be categorized as Native American, for example, requires "tribal affiliation or community recognition" - a condition of no other category. The definition for African American includes a reference to "black racial groups" while none of the other categories mention race. In fact, Hispanic or Latino is defined as a "Spanish culture of origin, regardless of race." The category Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander was only introduced in 1996 - previously, it was lumped together with Asians.

In our film, anthropologist Alan Goodman says that we are all mongrels, that humans have been mixing for centuries. According to evolutionary biologists, we're all descended from the original peoples of Africa. Depending on how you look at it, you could say that we're all mixed race or we're all Africans. How do these ideas affect the way you think about yourself?

The 2000 U.S. Census tried to accommodate changing ideas of race by allowing people to check more than one box. However, statisticians who use Census data have a hard time matching this to information collected in previous years.

Multiracialism has the potential to challenge our assumptions about race, but it can also reinforce the wrong ideas. For example, we often say that someone is part white and half Asian or Latino – but which part? What makes somebody part white, and how do we measure that? Geneticists tell us there’s not a single trait that separates one race from another. What are other pitfalls of quantifying race through percentages?

In the past, African Americans were defined by different percentages of African ancestry – at its extreme, the “one-drop rule” declared that persons with any known African ancestry were defined as Black. Today, Native Americans are still defined by “blood quantum” – to be classified as American Indian requires proof of at least some (usually "one quarter" or more) of Indian ancestry. Can you think of any historical reasons why we might classify these two groups in opposite ways – essentially maximizing the number of African Americans and minimizing the number of American Indians?

Although the government's definitions aren't perfect, we need racial classification because our society is still unequal in terms of race. For example, does being white have the same meaning as being Black, Latino, or Native American?

Sociologist Andrew Hacker conducted an experiment in which he asked a group of white college students if they would consider changing their race and living the rest of their lives as Black, and if so, how much compensation they thought was fair for making the change. The amount the students agreed upon was $50 million - $1 million per year for the next 50 years. If all races are the same, why is compensation necessary?

Race is a double-edged sword, but we must overcome centuries of inequality before we can unmake it. As former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once wrote, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."

For example, if we didn't track race data, we would never know that schools today are more segregated than they were in 1960. We wouldn't know there's an enormous wealth gap between African Americans and whites. We wouldn't know that Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes, that one out of every four Latinos lives below the poverty line or that the number of hate crimes against South Asians and Arab Americans has increased exponentially since September 11, 2001.

We all want to live in a society where people are valued for who they are, not what they look like. But pretending that race doesn’t exist or matter is not the same as treating people equally. Without data on different racial groups, how will we know if we're equal? Until race doesn't matter, we can't overlook its consequences.

1. Approximately how old are modern humans?
A. 170,000 years
B. 40,000 years
C. 70,000 years
D. 1.2 million years
E. 5 million years

2. Which group has the most genetic variation?
A. Humans
B. Chimpanzees
C. Penguins
D. Fruit flies
E. Elephants

3. What is the source of genetic variation in humans?
A. mutation
B. genetic drift
C. natural selection
D. sexual selection
E. environment

4. Which two present-day populations are most likely to be genetically similar?
A. Italians and Ethiopians
B. Senegalese and Kenyans
C. Italians and Swedes
D. Chinese and Lakota (Sioux)
E. Saudi Arabians and Ethiopians

5. What caused differences in skin color to evolve?
A. The environment
B. Natural selection
C. Sexual selection
D. Tanning oil
E. We don't know

6. If you know a person's skin color, what can you predict about them?
A. their blood type
B. their height
C. the likelihood they will get certain inherited diseases
D. whether or not they have musical talent
E. none of the above

7. An individual from which country is most likely to carry the sickle cell trait?
A. Ireland
B. Greece
C. South Africa
D. Samoa
E. Mexico

8. Your ancestors are likely to include:
A. Nefertiti
B. Julius Caesar
C. Qin Shi Huang - first emperor of China
D. All of the above
E. None of the above

9. Which continent has the greatest human genetic diversity?
A. Europe
B. Asia
C. North America
D. South America
E. Africa

10. If a catastrophe wiped out everyone except people in Europe, how much of the total genetic variation in our species would be left?
A. 50%
B. 38%
C. 94%
D. 21%
E. 74%

1. A. 170,000 years
The earliest hominids evolved from apes about 5 million years ago, but modern humans (Homo sapien sapiens) didn't emerge until about 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in eastern Africa. Our species first left Africa only around 70,000 years ago and quickly spread across the entire world. All of us are descended from these African ancestors.

2. D. Fruit flies
Fruit flies have existed for a very long time and they also have a short life span, so lots of genetic mutations have accumulated over many generations. Modern humans are a relatively young species, and we have always moved, mixed and mated, so we are one of the most genetically similar of all species.

3. A. Mutation
Genetic drift, natural selection and sexual selection act to distribute traits, but new genetic variants arise only through mutation - copying errors during reproduction. We all have the same 35,000 or so genes, but some genes come in different forms, called alleles. For instance, the gene that governs blood group proteins comes in three variants, resulting in A, B or O blood type. Some mutations are harmful, leading to stillbirth or deadly diseases like spinal bifida. Those that are neutral or create an evolutionary advantage are passed on and spread through successive generations.

4. E. Saudi Arabians and Ethiopians
Populations that live near each other geographically tend to be more alike than populations that live far apart. We tend to think of Saudi Arabians and Ethiopians as different races, but they are most similar because there has been more recent "gene flow" - intermixing between these two groups. Often when variation seems to follow "racial" lines, it is more accurately explained by geographic proximity.

5. E. We don't know
People in tropical areas tend to be darker, while northern and southern populations tend to be lighter. Some scientists attribute this to natural selection in response to ultraviolet (UV) light. Dark skin blocks some UV radiation. Other scientists believe that superficial physical differences arose from cultural preferences, an evolutionary force known as sexual selection.

6. E. None of the above
Most traits are governed by different genes, so they are inherited independently. The presence of one trait doesn't necessarily signal the presence of another trait. We think people come packaged into groups, even - as anthropologist Jon Marks jokes, "color-coded for our convenience" - but it turns out they don't. Visual traits - skin color, for example - tell us nothing about deeper internal differences or abilities.

7. B. Greece
We often think of sickle cell as a "racial" disease that affects people of African descent, but it evolved as a trait that confers resistance to malaria. It occurs in people whose ancestors came from regions where malaria was once common, like the Mediterranean, Arabia, Turkey, southern Asia and western and central Africa, but not in areas such as southern Africa. Ancestry, not race, is a better indicator of whether or not one carries the markers for sickle cell, Tay Sachs, porphyria and other genetic diseases.

8. D. All of the above
We each have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents. Steve Olson and Joseph Chang point out that if we go far enough back in time, only about 30 generations, we each have a billion potential ancestors, more than the population of the earth at the time. This means that any historical person living 1,600 years ago whose children had children is likely to be among our ancestors. Olson writes that because of human migrations and mating, "the DNA now in our cells consists of bits and pieces of the DNA that was in thousands of people's cells a millennia ago."

9. E. Africa
All modern humans originated in Africa, and we spent most of our evolution as a species together there. All the other populations of the world can be seen as a subset of Africans. Every human trait found elsewhere can also be found in Africa, with the exception of a few recent variations favored by the environment, sexual selection, or drift - such as light skin.

10. C. About 94% of our total human genetic variation would remain
If only the Swedes or Poles survived, we would still retain about 85% of our genetic variation. This is because most variation is within, rather than between, races. On average, any local population contains 85% of all human genetic variation, and any continent contains 94%. This is because humans have always migrated and mixed their genes. Two random Swedes, for example, are likely to be as different as a Swede and a Senegalese.

Read through this list and give yourself 4 points for each item that is true for you:

1. My parents and grandparents were able to purchase or rent housing in any neighborhood they could afford.
2. I can take a job with an employer who believes in affirmative action without having co-workers suspect that I got it because of my race.
3. I grew up in a house that was owned by my parents.
4. I can look in mainstream media and see wide, fair representation of people who look like me.
5. I live in a safe neighborhood with good schools.
6. I can go shopping most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
7. If my car breaks down on a deserted stretch of road, I can trust that the law enforcement officer who shows up will be helpful.
8. I don't have to worry about helping my parents out when they retire.
9. I never think twice about calling the police when trouble occurs.
10. Schools in my community teach about my race and heritage and present it in positive ways.
11. I can be pretty sure that if I go into a business and ask to speak to the "person in charge" that I will be facing a person of my race.
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12. Whenever I fall sick I have access to appropriate medical care without any difficulty.
13. When my parents die I (and my siblings) will inherit the house they live in.
14. If go to a bar or restaurant I can almost always expect to be served with no or minimum hassles.
15. I can expect to enter a public space without being made uncomfortable by being stared at.