Final answer:
Race is understood as a social construct rather than a biological fact, a perspective that has become more accepted following the acknowledgment of the role racial categorizations played in discrimination and civil rights movements. Anthropology organizations reject biological explanations for race, emphasizing its sociocultural implications. The human genome project further discredited race as a variable in genetic research.
Step-by-step explanation:
Race as a Cultural Construction
The concept of race as a social construction has become an important perspective in anthropology, recognizing that race is not a scientific fact but instead a societal invention. This view gained momentum after the horrors of World War II and the civil rights movement of the 1960s, as people began to understand that racial categorizations have been used to justify discrimination and inequality. Critical studies of race and racism once did not develop prominently in anthropology because many anthropologists focused on ethnicity instead, becoming "race avoidant." Yet, a shift occurred, and increasing awareness of racism pushed the field toward considering race more critically.
Changing Attitudes in Anthropology
In response to the realization that racial categories do not hold up scientifically, organizations such as the American Anthropological Association have rejected biological explanations for race. The typology that underpinned early racial science has been discredited, and race is now more widely understood within the context of social and cultural constructs rather than biological reality. Anthropologists now emphasize the profound effects that social categories of race have on discrimination and identity.
Understanding Human Variation
With advances in genetics, such as the sequencing of the human genome, scientists have argued that race is not a relevant or accurate variable in genetic research. There is greater genetic variation within so-called racial groups than between them, refuting the usefulness of race as a biological concept. Instead, focusing on ancestry rather than race could lead to a better understanding of human genetic diversity and help to avoid the medical misdiagnoses that have arisen from a racial focus.