Will all mankind be one color someday?

A few years ago National Geographic created a picture of what people would look like in the future. It hypothesized that skin would run on a “mocha” spectrum, eye color would still vary, and eyes would be more slanted. Sounds feasible to me.

yeah i used to wonder that all the time. that’d be crazy.

Although we all came from one man, we have evolved so much that there is no way to backtrack the changes in physiognomy we have gone through. Unless we become humanoids then I can understand that we can be cloned to look the same and incinerate all the others that don’t match the expectations of the day. Hey, Is this good material for a movie? We can call it “Fluther clones invade earth” will that fly for a best movie of the year?

Some day we will all be charred remnants of what was once an interesting and promising species which sadly did not have any sense of community.

@edmartin, you are just so sassy. We certainly did not come from one man.
That would be very silly.
We came from one woman, of course, and so far I think they call her Lucy.

You’re both wrong, we came from the Midgit, who was created at the hand of his noodly appendage!

@edmartin – Wait a minute…. Your claiming we came from one man then evolved? What’s your source for this?
Yes, I believe through interracial couples we could be one race. But, I’m thinking genetic engineering will possibly find new ways to make groups stand out from each other.

purely hypothetically its possible but a large part of me doubts the human species will survive that long considering the state of things and all…

@delirium – you’re right, we most likely won’t make it long enough to totally become one race. But just maybe god will come down and do a Noah job on the world and wipeout all the right wing oil pushers….

sorry I should have said from Eve not from the man directly, but….well whatever.
So her name is Lucy, hmmmm! interesting susanc

I think susanc is refering to Australolopithecus Africanus, also known as “Lucy” after the skeleton found in the 1960s.

Susanc was indeed referring to Aust. Afr. “Lucy” found in the Olduvai Gorge by the Leakeys. Thank you once again AC.
Ed would love learning more about Lucy under her longer name. I know he would. She was cooler than the rest of us.
Though short and bent over.

phoenyx notices that susanc refers to herself in third-person.

As does eambos.

Addressing another part of my question, if we were all one homogenized color do you think we would just find other differences in each other to exploit? Is this just the nature of mankind to hate people who are different from.them?

Of course we would find a new difference to exploit. There is always going to be at least one group who believes they are better than the rest.

This question reminds me of the story of the starbellied sneeches.

I hope that we can eventually learn what they did: that our similarities are more important than our differences and our differences are not something to be hated.

Yes achuck. Unless we have a radical shift in thinking between now and then. If there is a then.

All I know is I want to be purple.

This is a really hard question and the answer is extremely complicated. But this is definitely a good question to be answered by a physical anthropologist. This is not a complete answer, but should give you some idea of how this might or might not be possible. First the issue of “race”. “There are no races, only clines” (see Livingstone 1962). The generally accepted explanation for skin color variation in humans is that skin pigmentation (as anyone who has gotten a sunburn and then a tan will know) is an important adaptation to diverse climates that modern humans came to inhabit during our time of global dispersal. Melanization (or an increase in the density of melanocytes in your skin [tan!]) protects skin from harmful UV ray damage. Thus, in tropical areas near the equator where there is no problem receiving enough sun necessary to synthesize important vitamins (mainly D), natural selection likely favored darker skin, whereas in more northern climates, natural selection likely favored lighter skin because limited sun exposure means needing to ensure enough UV penetration can occur. There’s a lot more to it than this, and this isn’t the only accepted theory. But it’s a brief lesson in Anthro101. So now the issue of whether we can breed into “one color”. I’m inclined to say no. While this example of phenotypic diversity (external characteristic, also eye color, etc) is an example of a cline, and geographic clusters can’t necessarily be delimited, I think there is still a lack of flow among populations that would inhibit this from ever happening. As for whether we as humans can overcome discrimination, this is again complicated. My simple response is this: While we are neurologically wired to “categorize” what we see because it allows us mentally process things more easily, and may have helped us in life or death situations evolutionarily, what those categories mean to us socio-culturally are constructed. Regardless of whether we all become “one color”, we should know that the diversity we see among human populations is relatively small compared to actual genetic diversity (something like less than 1%). And that there is more genetic diversity between two gray squirrels than any two humans on earth. One love.

Also, I’m on board with delirium: I’m pretty sure we’ll be long gone before we see the results anyhow.

That being said, light skinned African-Americans generally have it easier than darker skinned ones. We seem to obsess over skin color (I never mentioned race in my question). Maybe I should have asked if we survived long enough would be become the same.

No. And skin color isn’t the only thing by which we discriminate. I was only speaking from an evolutionary perspective, let’s not forget socio-economic status, gender, religion, etc. Unfortunately, I think people will always look for ways to distinguish themselves from beings around them, it’s the way we position ourselves in the world.

That’s not to say that all forms of “discrimination” have to be understood through a hegemonic model. My point was simply that we understand how to position ourselves in the world by identifying what we are and are not. I know, for example, to type on my computer and not on my toaster because I can discriminate between the two. Those basic methods of discrimination translate and can eventually become tools in social or cultural power struggles.

True. There are all kinds of ways we discriminate. But when I walk down the street you can’t tell what religion or sexual preference I have, but you sure can see the color of my skin. A lot of bigotry is lazy. If you can spot something easily it’s more likely going to catch your eye.

susanc discriminates against people who speak of themselves in the first person, even
before she can hear them doing so as they walk down the street.

I’m reminded of Warren Beatty’s rant in Bulworth:

“White people got more in common with colored people then they do with rich people…we just gotta eliminate them. White people, black people, brown people, yellow people, get rid of ‘em all! All we need is a voluntary, free spirited, open-ended program of procreative racial deconstruction!! Everybody just gotta keep fuckin’ everybody til they’re all the same color…”

Here’s to procreative racial deconstruction, a worthy cause.

@Knotmyday What’s your plan of action if there are language barriers?

you don’t need to talk to fuck. :d

Don’t need to talk when both of you know what you want

Approve gay marriage and ban same race marriages.
That way we’ll end up with fewer people and one race in a few generations.
OK, so that won’t work in the real world, but on paper it’s flawless.

Even if we got rid of all the major race markers, people will always find something to show how someone is differant than them. eye color, height, body hair placement, finger length…. Teaching tolerance for all life would be an easier route.

Ask any black family that has varying skin colors. The high yellow or light complexion individuals are often favored or discriminated against depending on the family dynamic. Did anyone see the Spike Lee movie, School Daze http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096054/ ?

There will always be a form of discrimination. Mine was red head. When I was a kid there was only one other red head in school with me at the time and she happened to have brighter hair than I. People treated me like the plague but they treated her worse! My family treated me differently too…

Some people who know more about biology and genes can contribute to this that there are some dominate genes that will take over and pop out at odd times.
Like Actor Victoria Rowell: (Y&R’s Drucilla Winters)

In 1989, Rowell married Tom Fahey, an airline pilot. Shortly before the birth of their daughter, Maya, Rowell and Fahey divorced. Their blonde, blue-eyed daughter—Fahey is white—has caused many an uncomfortable moment when strangers insist she cannot be Rowell’s daughter. The nurse in the hospital infuriated Rowell by not giving her the baby until she had checked and rechecked the wrist band identification. Being the daughter of a mixed couple herself, Rowell is careful to teach Maya about all of her heritage. When asked her color, Maya responds, “black and white.” That’s another problem with the foster care system, according to Rowell. At two and a half she was uprooted from the care of a white family because the system felt it would be better for her to grow up in a black family, even though she was just as much white as black.
http://www.answers.com/topic/victoria-rowell?cat=entertainment

Racism “color” is overrated we have so many prejudices. Hate for religion, sexuality, economic status, nationality, politics…...need I go on.

Eventually we will all be white.
Reason being, we will eventually be in our house 24/7 plugged into a mainframe. Only to get up and ingest some nourishment and take a dump.

Living a virtual reality.