| Hopefully, in the future, this admiration and acceptance of those with multicultural heritages will deepen, and people will appreciate others, and themselves, regardless of their ethnic background. 但愿对多元文化的赞赏与接纳，在未来可望与日俱增，人们会欣赏别人，也会欣赏自己，无论源于哪一个种族，哪一种背景。 Race has always had a huge impact on history, society, and culture. But according to many scientists, the concept of race has no biological basis; it is merely a social construct. 种族问题一直对历史、社会和文化有巨大影响。但是根据许多科学家的观点，种族概念没有生物学上的立论根据，纯粹仅是社会建构出来的产物。 The American Anthropological Association has stated that race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically. 美国人类学协会指出，种族基本上无法用科学方法加以测试及验证。 Because humans have been around for a relatively short time by evolutionary standards, scientists say that there is not enough genetic diversity in humans to allow us to be divided into neat, racial cubbyholes or subspecies. 因为就进化的标准来说，人类的存在相对较短，因此科学家认为，人类的基因不够的多样化，还不足以划为纯粹的种族分支或亚种。 It is generally believed that humans originated in Africa about two hundred thousand years ago and migrated to other continents one hundred thousand years later. 一般认为，人类在二十万年前源于非洲，十万年后陆续迁徙到其它大陆。 Although environmental variations have produced the physical differences in hair and skin we see today, underneath the surface there has been little change. 虽然各地的环境差异使人们在外观如肤色、发色上大相迳庭，但是骨子里不同之处极少。 Systems of racial categorization, first developed in the eighteenth century, have divided people into three, nine, twenty-six, and as many as three hundred races. 首先在18世纪发展起来的种族分类体系，将人分为3支、9支、26支，甚至多达300个支系种族。 Scientists reject such thinking as myth. They say that geographic patterns of sets of genes show that people have been migrating and merging from the start; 科学家斥之为神话。他们认为，各地域基因组合的规律显示，人类从一开始 就在迁栖、在结合； race may be heavily tied to culture and how people see one another, but it is something we have created. 种族可能与文化及人们怎样相互看待有紧密的联系，但这些不过是我们自行建构出来的产物而已。 Scientists know this may be difficult for some people to accept. 科学家也知道这种理论很难为一些人所接受。 As summed up by Jonathan Marks, a University of California at Berkeley anthropologist, "Teaching that racial categories lack biological validity can be as much of a challenge as teaching in the seventeenth century that the earth goes around the sun." 正如加州大学伯克利分校的人类学家乔纳森·马克斯所概括的，“宣扬种族分类缺乏生物学依据所具有的挑战性，绝不逊于在17 世纪宣扬地球是绕着太阳运行的”。 |
