| rdfs:comment | - A science fiction trope, most common in Literature wherein it's discussed that different races have essentially vanished, and everyone is pretty much within a limited range of color, usually a medium tan so to speak. Contrast with Humans Are White, which is basically the opposite idea, as well as the related Society Marches On. Essentially, as racism fades and travel becomes easier and easier, more and more multiracial children are born until the entire world's population shares one big gene pool. Bonus points if Everyone Is Bi and/or an Ambiguous Gender as well.
|
| abstract | - A science fiction trope, most common in Literature wherein it's discussed that different races have essentially vanished, and everyone is pretty much within a limited range of color, usually a medium tan so to speak. Contrast with Humans Are White, which is basically the opposite idea, as well as the related Society Marches On. Essentially, as racism fades and travel becomes easier and easier, more and more multiracial children are born until the entire world's population shares one big gene pool. Tends to imply something of a Utopia- given how much blood has been shed over race, a world where there has been much interracial coupling is likely to have solved at least that problem. Additionally, humans in this scenario tend to have formed The Federation or there is a lot of globalization (but framed in a positive way), as this type of future naturally implies a lot of interaction between different peoples. One particular version that's popular in anime won't have all races merge, but rather a prominent number of half-European, half-Asian people. This may relate to Japan Takes Over the World. This particular version is also popular with Cyberpunk, especially the part-Japanese version. Needless to say, this entire trope is the worst fear of ethnic supremacists/nationalists. When this doesn't happen in the future, often writers will address it via explaining that cultures or nations have settled their own planets, thus allowing them to maintain common day ethnicity in the far-flung future. Bonus points if Everyone Is Bi and/or an Ambiguous Gender as well. In actuality, this trope is unlikely to come to pass in the way we think of race; while closely-knit populations will often share traits for both genetic and cultural reasons, the color of one's skin is affected by multiple genes allowing for a range of shades and complexions. See the Pashtun or Brazillians for the actual result, which is wildly varied looks often within the same family. However, over a long enough time scale the trope can happen. Even without selection, neutral genetic drift will cause alleles in the population to tend towards fixation. If the light alleles for some genes fixate, and the dark alleles for others (or the intermediate alleles for all of them, if such alleles exist) then you would have a population with a consistently heritable intermediate skin tone. Of course, it's also possible that all of either the dark or light alleles will fixate, but an intermediate result is more likely. Another unfortunate problem with the Utopian ideal this implies is that race does not always mean 'skin colour' or 'face shape' - For instance, in South Africa, people who would be considered 'just black' in Western cultures, can be/have been split into the 'Black' and 'Brown' races, even though there is no physical way of differentiating between these two populations. A subtrope of All Genes Are Codominant. Examples of In the Future, Humans Will Be One Race include:
|
