Race identification

Determination of race is a very important question in cases of accidents in traveling by air, railway or sea when fatalities occur simultaneously in persons of different races traveling together

The main original races are:

• Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid.

• North Africans are part of the Mediterranean race which is a subdivision of the Caucasian race.

• The main identification characteristics regarding the Egyptians are between the Caucasian and the Negroid.

Mongolian race includes Chinese, Japanese, Indians and American Indians.

Race can be determined from:

a. Complexion (color of the skin).

• The skin is black in Negroes, yellow to brown in Indians and fair in the Europeans.

b. The color and characters of hair:

• Negroes: The hair is frizzy, spiral, stiff, black and cut section is flattened and elliptical.
• Europeans: The hair is fair, straight, smooth waxy and wavy.
• Asiatic: the hair is dark brown, straight, smooth & rounded cut surface.

c. Facial characters:

• Negroes are characterized by flattened nose, delayed union of the frontal suture, parallel alveolar ridges & prognathism (protrusion of the maxilla). Their lips are thick and slightly everted.

d. Bones (skull features) and body measurements & ratios: see before

e. Blood:

• By identification of abnormal Hb, some of which only occur in Negroid race

• Hbs: normal 10%, but in Negroid 30%.

• Fya-b- (lacking both antigens) of duffy system occurs in black peoples.

Category: Forensic Medicine Notes