Race (human categorization)

Race is a taxonomic principle of grouping people based on common heredity, physical appearance, culture, geography, religion, and/or nationality. Racial theory was initially considered a valid biological taxonomy. Most biological and social scientists, since the development of Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, and genetic theory, have rejected that notion. Historians, anthropologists and social scientists today consider it an important historical and social construct.

History of the term

The historical definition of race, before the development of evolutionary biology, was that of common lineage, a vague concept interchangeable with species, breed, cultural origin, or characteristic quality. ("The whole race of mankind." --Shakespeare; "Whence the long race of Alban fathers come" --Dryden

The 19th-century concept of race was based on morphological characteristics such as skin color, facial characteristics and amount and type of hair. Though such characteristics have since been shown to have a minimal relationship with any other heritable characteristics, it retains popularity because it is easy to immediately distinguish people based on physical appearance.

Because people of different races can interbreed, this method of classification is weak. (Compare with species.) In other words, racial purity does not have a clear biological meaning.

Some of the 19th-century naturalists who defined the field were Georges Cuvier, Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering (Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, 1848), and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz eight, and Pickering eleven. Blumenbach's classification was widely adopted:

1. the Caucasian, or white race, to which belong the greater part of the European nations and those of Western Asia
2. the Mongolian, or yellow race, occupying Tartary, China, Japan, etc.
3. the Ethiopian, or negro race, occupying most of Africa (except the north), Australia, Papua, and other Pacific Islands
4. the American, or red race, comprising the Indians of North and South America
5. the Malayan, or brown race, which occupies the islands of the Indian Archipelago

Writers in the decades following Blumenbach classified the Malay and American races as branches of the Mongolian, leaving only the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian races.

Politics of race

The concept of race was applied at the same time by such political theorists such as Johann Gottfried von Herder to nationalist theory to develop ethnic nationalism. They posited the historical existence of races such as the German and French race connected to races which have existed for millennia (such as the Aryan race), which should determine political institutions.

Anthropological Studies of Race

In the 19th Century many natural scientists made three claims about race: first, that races are objective, naturally occurring things; second, that there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human phenomena (such as social behavior and culture); third, that race is therefore a valid scientific category that can be used to explain individual and group behavior. In the 20th century anthropologists have rejected each of these claims.

This project was initiated by Franz Boas, the founder of American academic anthropology. In the first decades of the 20th century he studied the relationship between race and height in New York City. He discovered that the children of immigrants were taller than their parents. Although height is clearly a biological phenomena, he concluded that an individual's height was determined not only by inheritance but by environment as well (in this case, better pre- and neo-natal care, especially nutrition). Of course, height is still in some way determined by genetics, and many of Boas's students accepted the existence of race as a biological fact. But they concluded that there was no relationship between biological race and other human phenomena (such as social behavior and culture).

By the 1950s anthropologists had come to question the very existence of race as a biological phenomena. This rejection was based on three facts. First, they pointed out that the preponderance of evidence suggests that all human beings are descended from a common ancestor. Second, they observed that there are many biological differences between people that are not taken into account by race (for example, blood type). Finally, they pointed out that often times the genetic differences between members of the same race are greater than the average genetic difference between races. For example, the variation in blood types within specific groups is 85%, but the total variation between groups is only 15%. (see the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race [[1]]

This rejection of race as a biological phenomena had two important consequences. First, anthropologists (and other biological scientists) developed the notion of "population" to take the place of race. This substitution is not a matter of semantics. In the western tradition race referred to a group of people with similar physical features. "Population" refers to a group of creatures (for one may speak of populations of birds or bees as well) marked by a particular frequency of a particular gene. It is a statistical phenomena; as such it does not necessarily (and if fact often does not) have clear boundaries, and it changes over time.

The "populationist" view does not deny that there are physical differences among people; it simply insists that "race" is not useful in analyze these differences scientifically. Take one of the most obvious physical markers of race, for example – skin color. It is true that the color of people's skin varies. It does not vary according to culture. All people who live in the tropics -- whether in South America, Africa, or Asia, have dark skin. This is because the tropics receive a lot of sunlight, and people with light skin would suffer from hypervitaminosis; they can sunburn too easily, are more susceptible to disease, and less efficient at sweating. Dark skin is more advantageous. Light skin is found in temparate ones, where it prevented rickets. But skin is only one phenotypic trait. Many things play a role in skin color -- exposure to sunlight, ultraviolet radiation, suntanning lotions, and the amount of clothing. Many traits are determined by non-genetic factors (as Boas' study of height showed). Moreover, specific traits are not necessarily connected to one another – biological traits such as skin color, hair type, and facial features do not vary together. Finally, the natural distribution of human phenotypes exhibits gradual trends of difference across geographic zones, not the categorical differences of race. Consequently, there are many peoples (like the San of S. W. Africa, or the people of northern India) who have phenotypes that do not neatly fit into the standard race categories. In short, attempts to construct biological racial classifications have been unsuccessful because genetic and phenotypic traits do not vary together over time. Races were often based on a limited number of arbitrarily selected phenotypic traits. Thus, races have not explained phenotypic variation between populations. Rather than attempt to classify humans into racial categories, anthropologists and biologists instead use the notion of population to try to understand why and how biological variation occurs.

Second, anthropologists reconceived "race" as a cultural category, in other words, as a particular way some people have of talking about themselves and others. As such it cannot be a useful analytical concept; rather, "race" itself must be analyzed. Moreover, biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race; history and social relationships will.

Two examples, one from the United States and one from Brazil, will illustrate this. In the United States in the 19th century, African-Americans, Native Americans, and European-Americans were each classified as different races. But the criteria for membership in these races were radically different. The government considered anyone with "one drop" of Black blood to be Black. In contrast, Indians were defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood." And to be White one had to have "pure" White ancestry. These differing criteria for membership in particular races has nothing to do with biology and everything to do with political relations between Blacks and Indians on the one hand, and Whites on the other. By these criteria, it was very easy for a child to be categorized as Black. This likely reflects the requirements of the slave-economy of the U.S. South, for the vast majority of slaves were classified as Black. Even the child of an enslaved African woman and a White master was considered Black, or "of African descent." More importantly, such a child would be a slave. In comparison, it was harder for a child to be classified as Indian. After a few generations of inter-racial marriages, a child might not be considered Indian at all. This likely reflects the requirements of the U.S. economy during the period of westward expansion. Indians had treaty rights to land, but if an individual with one Indian great-grandparent were no longer classified as Indian, they would lose special rights to land. At a time when Whites ruled both Blacks and Indians, it is no coincidence that the hardest race to prove membership in was White.

Compared to 19th century United States, 20th century Brazil was characterized by a relative absence of sharply defined racial groups. This pattern reflects a different history and different social relations. Basically, race in Brazil was biologized, but in a way that recognized the difference between ancestry (which determines genotype) and phenotypic differences. There, racial identity was not governed by a rigid descent rule. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only two categories to chose from. Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in conformity with the combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred to appearance, not heredity.

One of the most striking consequences of the Brazilian system of racial identification was that parents and children and even brothers and sisters were frequently accepted as representatives of opposite racial types. In a fishing village in the state of Bahia an investigator showed 100 people pictures of three sisters and were asked to identify the races of each. In only six responses were the sisters identified by the same racial term. Fourteen responses used a different term for each sister. In another experiment nine portraits were shown to a hundred people. Forty different racial types were elicited. It was found, in addition, that a given Brazilian might be called by as many as thirteen different terms by other members of the community. These terms are spread out across practically the entire spectrum of theoretical racial types. A further consequence of the absence of a descent rule was that Brazilians apparently not only disagreed about the racial identity of specific individuals, but they also seemed to be in disagreement about the abstract meaning of the racial terms as defined by words and phrases. For example, 40% of a sample ranked moreno claro as a lighter type than mulato claro, while 60% reversed this order. A further note of confusion is that one person might employ different racial terms for another person over a short time. The use of term varies with the personal relationship and mood. Consequently, people change their racial identity over their lifetimes. This is not the same as passing in the USA. It does not require secrecy and the agonizing withdrawal from friends and family that are necessary in this country and among Indians of highland Latin America. In Brazil passing from one race to another occurs with changes in education and economic status. A light skinned person of low status is considered darker than a dark skinned person of high status.

So although the identification of a person by race is far more fluid and flexible in Brazil than in the USA, there are racial stereotypes and prejudices. African features were considered less desirable; Blacks were considered inferior, and Whites are considered superior. These stereotypes are obvious relics of the slave-based plantation system, and say more about history than actual behavior. But the complexity of racial classification in Brazil bears testimony not only to the amount of intermarriage in the post-slavery period, but also to the possibilities of upward mobility. A Brazilian is never merely black or white or some other race; he is rich, well-educated, or poor and uneducated. It makes more sense to say that it is one's class and not one's appearance that determines who will be admitted to hotels, restaurants, and social clubs; who will get preferential treatment in stores, churches, and hotels; and who will have the best chance among a group of marriage suitors – and color is one of the criteria of class identity, but it is not the only one. (This case is taken from Marvin Harris' excellent short study, Pattens of Race in the Americas)

Lately people have tried to associate race and intelligence. This is not new. But, virtually all contemporary anthropologists argue, it has always been wrong. It is wrong not because all people are created equal – perhaps we should all have equal rights, but all people are created different, with different abilities and talents. It is wrong because these differences have nothing to do with race (they probably do have something to do with genetics, but the relationship between genotype, phenotype, and environment is too complex to be reduced to the notion of race; see Biology as Ideology by R.C. Lewontin). This is so not only because race is a cultural and not biological category. It is so because intelligence is also a cultural category – some cultures emphasize speed and competition more than others, for example. Tests based on word skills cannot accurately measure learning ability. And most IQ tests ask people to solve problems most often encountered in middle class settings. Low IQ scores are often the result of the subject speaking a different language or dialect than the test questions, or being given the test by someone from another ethnic group, or simply being tired, malnourished, or ill. IQ tests do not measure mental ability, they do measure enculturation. During WWI African-Americans from the north tested higher than those from the south. This is simply because African-Americans in the north had received more formal education (see Race: Science and Politics, written by Ruth Benedict in 1940). Thousands of ethnographic studies indicate that innate capacities for cultural evolution are equal among all human populations. See the American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race and Intelligence [[2]]

Related concepts

race and intelligence, racism, race relations, racial equality, racial purity, racial characteristics, racial discrimination, racial superiority.

Because individual geography, culture, religion, political association and, above all, heredity can change, racial purity, the concept that wholly distinct racial groupings exist, has little meaning from the perspective of evolutionary biology.

Ethnicity is the concept of race decoupled from national affiliation. For example, ethnic Germans are people who are not citizens of the nation of Germany but who may be considered racially German.

See also:

• anthropology
• taxonomy
• population genetics
• racism
• ethnicity
• white trash

External Links and References

1913 dictionary entry

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A race is a competition of speed. The competitors in any race try to complete a given task in the shortest amount of time. Typically, this involves traversing some distance most quickly, but can be just about any other task.

A race to cover a certain distance may be almost any length, and using any means stipulated by the rules of the race. Running a certain distance is the template of racing, but races are often conducted in vehicles, such as boats and cars.

Early records of races are evidient on ancient greek pottery, where running men are depicted vying for first place. There is a chariot race in the Iliad.

A race and its name are often associated with the place of origin, the means of transport and the distance of the race. As a couple of examples, see the Paris-Dakar rally or the Athens marathon.

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