Race, color, and creed. Do they matter when it comes to intelligence, temperament? This has always been an underlying bias for those who privilege their race, and argue against affirmative action. For some this hate becomes a way of life, the David Duke's of the world somehow believe that Jews or Blacks or others are different from him in some fundamental way. The human genome project has allowed insight into these questions in ways we have never known before, and they are showing that we really are all the same.
First, there has been a search for genetic "Eve" of our race. Since the genes in your mitochondria are passed from mother to offspring they change less over time, and when you look from female to female back over time you can use the differences and similarities in the genome to find the human woman who is the mother of all. Who was she? She was African meaning we are all Africans, the only question is when our direct ancestors left Africa (on slave ships 300 years ago, or via Western Europe or Asia thousands of years ago), and different methods place that migration out of Africa for the first to leave of around 60,000 to 70,000 years ago.
"Furthermore, we can say with some confidence that the estimate of humanity's 'out of Africa' migration was around 60-70,000 years ago – some 10-20,000 years earlier than previously thought."
Link to article, scientific article at bottom of link
It seems that more men than women left Africa for this great migration.
Modern humans left Africa over 60,000 years ago in a migration that many believe was responsible for nearly all of the human population that exist outside Africa today.
Now, researchers have revealed that men and women weren't equal partners in that exodus. By tracing variations in the X chromosome and in the non-sex chromosomes, the researchers found evidence that men probably outnumbered women in that migration.
Link to article on men leaving Africa
There is also strong archeological evidence that the oldest humans were Africans.
Reliably dated fossils are critical to understanding the course of human evolution. A human skull discovered over fifty years ago near the town of Hofmeyr, in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, is one such fossil. A study by an international team of scientists led by Frederick Grine of the Departments of Anthropology and Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University in New York published in Science magazine has dated the skull to 36,000 years ago. This skull provides critical corroboration of genetic evidence indicating that modern humans originated in sub-Saharan Africa and migrated about this time to colonize the Old World.
Out of Africa skull
Thus, have we evolved in great ways since then to create giant genetic differences? Did Europeans or Asians change in Europe or Asia to be different from Africans? NO! We are all still the same. Genetic drift, and mixing between groups of humans via migration has meant we are all still the same.
New research indicates that natural selection may shape the human genome much more slowly than previously thought. Other factors -- the movements of humans within and among continents, the expansions and contractions of populations, and the vagaries of genetic chance – have heavily influenced the distribution of genetic variations in populations around the world.
No selection does not matter in humans
This means that we are all really the same, and we all really should get over the historic and religious differences and do what Obama told us to do in Cairo this week, and start to get along with each other.