Science and The Human Race, not Racial Divide...

Last night (November 5, 2024), I watched the numbers change on '270 to win.  From state to state, the colors on the U.S. map changed to blue or red.  The color red meant the electoral votes would go to the Republicans, and if the state turned blue, the votes went to the Democrats. 

It appeared to be an even divide; half the country voted for the Republican presidential candidate and the other half for the Democrat.  Some say the national divide is also a divide based on race, that the Republicans voted for the white candidate and the Democrats for the person of color.  A racial divide.

Science has always seen race in terms of 'the human race.'  In science, all humans belong to the group Homo Sapiens.  This classification system was created by the Swedish biologist Carolus Linnaeus and has been used since 1758. Linnaeus gave each species two names, one identifying the species itself and the other the genus to which it belongs.  The kingdom Animalia, to which humans belong, comprises over one million species, including elephants, birds, and starfish.  

The hierarchy in the Linnaean System starts with kingdom and ends with species; thus, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species.  This system allows us to infer relationships among organisms.  We can then group them into categories based on shared traits. Classification systems are also useful as predictors.

~Niyati