Why are people classified into racial categories instead of ancestry categories? The majority of the worlds people can be separated into four major “race” groups which include white, black, Asian and American Indian. People of white ancestry can be of German descent, Irish descent, or even of unmixed Spanish blood. The Asian ancestry is much larger than white, including individuals from Polynesia, Hawaii and Chinese descent. What about those individuals that are mixed white and black but consider themselves as

Forensic anthropologists are good at identifying individual “races” because of the requirement of the professional community. Several different individuals that want a determination of what the ancestry of a person is, based on general characteristics of skeletal parts. Several different traits are taken into account prior to a conclusion being made. Some of these traits include cranial form, cranial outline, suture complexity, nose form, incisor form, orbital form, and mastoid form. There are many other considerations in determining “race”, but these are the main and largest identifiers. The trait variations common to all the different geographical “races” often overlap into the different regions. Complex cranial sutures are common amongst East Asians, American Indians and Polynesians, thereby ruling out this as the single point as a race identifier.

In conclusion, when it comes identifying the remains of persons into “races”, it is done only for the public of professionals. Sauer said, “Perhaps we could avoid the term “race” in our communications about cases, substituting ‘ancestry’ or s

Some topics in this essay:
Professor Kennedy, Hawaii Chinese, Race Ancestry, Indians Polynesians, United Teaching, Indian People, forensic anthropologists, white black, teaching race identification, white black asian, forensic anthropologists identifying, anthropologists identifying, race identification, identifying “races”, teaching race, ancestry person, racial categories, black asian, remains persons,