Race

The term race describes populations or groups of people well-known by different sets of characteristics, and beliefs about common ancestry. The most broadly used human racial categories are based on visible traits, and self-identification. Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often contentious for scientific as well as social and political reasons. Many scientists contend that while the features on which a racial categorization are made may be based on genetic factors, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into groups based on selected hereditary features, are social constructs.
Since the 1940s, some evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race as a biologically meaningful impression. A majority of evolutionary scientists reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have any taxonomic rigour and validity. Mainstream scientists have argued that race definition are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races experimental vary according to the culture examined. They further preserve that race as such is best understood as a social construct.