In a speech given by Nina Jablonski PhD, Head of the Department of Anthropology at Penn State, on Nov. 8 at Skyline College topics were covered from her book, Skin: A Natural History.The topics ranged from the evolution of human skin from animals to humans, racism, the dangers of the sun to ones skin and every other possible subject concerning human skin.”[I am] Fascinated with human skin and skin color” said Jablonski, “Skin color is something that everyone notices and nobody talks about.”According to Jablonski, skin color is related to latitude, temperature, and rainfall; or basically the environment and how much ultraviolet rays are present. The amount of ultraviolet rays is a major contributor to skin coloration. Dark skin helps protect the skin from ultraviolet rays, so naturally in areas with increased amounts of ultraviolet rays the skin color has evolved through mutation and natural selection to be darker in order to provide a natural protection from the suns natural dangers.In environments near the equator like Africa, the amount of ultraviolet rays is much higher than in places away from the equator, like Europe.All the assortment of skin colors that can be found in the world today can be attributed to the lengths and times that people migrated away from the equator and the different environments that they situated themselves in.”Skin color does not equal race,” Jablonski said.She engaged the audience with her views on racism saying that human races are arbitrary constructs made over history for very bad reasons and have no real biological differences.What is race? Is it defined by ancestry, or by biological appearance, or both? “Races [are] socially constructed entities,” Jablonski said, “And have no real meaning except the ones that we, as humans, assign to them.”Jablonski said that in order to eradicate race we must understand how it started, which is exactly what she was doing in her speech, informing the world on the meaning and significance of human skin. “[Let us] abolish race!” And in the words of Nina Jablonski, “Call people ‘human’. That’s what I like to call them!”