Talk:Race (human categorization)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aubreydosky (article contribs). Template:Vital article

Discussion at Talk:Race and intelligence#Requested move 4 March 2020

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Race and intelligence#Requested move 4 March 2020. Levivich ^{[dubious – discuss]} 04:37, 7 March 2020 (UTC)Template:Z48

Remove the term 'miscegenation'

I removed the term miscegenation from the article, and I substituted neutral language. There were two instances in the Brazil section. See discussion here about a similar issue with the Race and ethnicity in Brazil article. LaTeeDa (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Move/merge discussion at Talk:Miscegenation

You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Miscegenation regarding moving content from that article to several new articles, and merging out some of the rest. The current article has >150 kB prose. - LaTeeDa (talk) 16:48, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

The specific case of the US relativized

Maybe only my perception, but the introduction of the article relativizes the peculiarity of the understanding of "race" in the United States. For instance, the introduction contains: "scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications." The statement is vague, there is no reference to back it, and it implies that even in modern science, the idea of "race" is accepted as valid everywhere (in different "ways"). It seems to me to pull the article towards a US-centric view, especially as the body of the article does not correct it. Granted there is a section on the United States, but it fails to explain the very specific US situation.

Let me give some evidence. If you read Encyclopedia Britannica on "human race", for instance [1], it insists on the specific case of the United States, apart from any views in other parts of the world (yes, South Africa too, but not as a scientific concept).

In all the countries that I know and where I have lived, except the US, using the word "race" as a human taxonomy is considered racist. And not just in science. Where is all this in the article? In short it seems to suffer from US-oriented WP:POV.

At the very least, instead of the vague-kind-of-dismissive (and wrong) sentence above, I would have expected in the introduction something like: "During the 20th century, the concept of race has been used to justify the organization of the Holocaust by the Nazis, the Apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States. In most countries in the world, except notably in the USA, it is no longer used in the description of the living world except to refer to species and subspecies of the animal world in general." We cannot get away without mentioning this in my opinion.

Vincent Lextrait (talk) 14:37, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Find some sources to support your suggested text, then. We can't rely on your personal experience. Dimadick (talk) 17:48, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

I know, I've been around long enough. Yet, the snippet I quote from the introduction made its way without any supporting reference. And the first sentence I suggested: "During the 20th century, the concept of race has been used to justify the organization of the Holocaust by the Nazis, the Apartheid in South Africa and segregation in the United States." is both missing and not controversial enough to require much backing, I guess? Vincent Lextrait (talk) 20:55, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

Distinction Between Race and Ethnicity

Howdy y'all.

I was just wondering what the consensus was on race including social qualities in addition to physical ones. Everything I've read suggests that race includes physical characteristics and ethnicity covers cultural characteristics. I'm new to this, so I can't make the edit but I wanted to start the discussion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mcmuffin6o (talk • contribs) 14:18, 18 June 2020 (UTC)

Contradiction

At the start, the article says scholars believe race is a social construct. But later in the article, it's clear there is no consensus about this. Retired Farmer (talk) 09:28, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Defining Race

This will probably be a contentious point. I understand that in modern American academia it's fashionable to say that race was socially constructed to oppress people. However, if we look at the works of those most responsible for developing the concept, namely Kant, Blumenbach and Darwin, we can see that they simply applied theories of biology to humans, and produced a genealogical division. This piece is especially informative. Here also from Darwin. It's clear they simply applied standard taxonomic ancestry based divisions to humans, and weren't trying to "oppress" people. It's rather devastating to the accusatory narrative of modern American scholarship. But surely we must include all relevant sources, and not hide things that contradict a narrative? Retired Farmer (talk) 09:39, 11 July 2020 (UTC)