A series of articles on Race
Main topics
Race and genetics
Human genetic clustering
Human genetic variation
Health
Ancestry and health
Ethnicity and health
Population groups in biomedicine
Race and intelligence
Social
Historical definitions
Race in Brazil
Race in the United States
Social interpretations of race
The Race Question (1950)
Related
Ethnic group
Genetics
Human evolution
Racism topics
Category: Race
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The term race refers to the concept of dividing people into populations or groups on the basis of various sets of characteristics and beliefs about common ancestry.^[1] The most widely used human racial categories are based on visible traits (especially skin color, facial features and hair texture), and self-identification.^[2]

Conceptions of race, as well as specific ways of grouping races, vary by culture and over time, and are often controversial for scientific as well as social and political reasons. The controversy ultimately revolves around whether or not races are natural types or socially constructed, and the degree to which observed differences in ability and achievement, categorized on the basis of race, are a product of inherited (i.e. genetic) traits or environmental, social and cultural factors.

Some argue that although "race" is a valid taxonomic concept in other species, it cannot be applied to humans.^[3] Many scientists have argued that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom, have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of races delineated vary according to the culture making the racial distinctions; thus they reject the notion that any definition of race pertaining to humans can have taxonomic rigour and validity.^[4] Today most scientists study human genotypic and phenotypic variation using concepts such as "population" and "clinal gradation". Many anthropologists contend that while the features on which racial categorizations are made may be based on genetic factors, the idea of race itself, and actual divisions of persons into groups based on selected hereditary features, are social constructs.^{[5][6][7][8][9][10]}

Contents 1 History 2 Modern race debate 2.1 Current views across disciplines 2.2 Summary of different definitions of race 3 Races as a social construction 4 Social issues of race 4.1 Racism 4.2 Race and intelligence 4.3 Race in biomedicine 5 Race in law enforcement 5.1 Identification 5.2 Controversy 5.3 Use of race in forensics 6 Regional issues 6.1 Race in the United States 6.2 Race in Brazil 7 See also 8 Footnotes 9 Bibliography 10 External links 10.1 Official statements and standards 10.2 Popular press 10.3 Others

History Edit

The historical definition of race was an immutable and distinct type or species, sharing distinct racial characteristics such as constitution, temperament, and mental abilities. These races were not conceived as being related with each other, but formed a hierarchy of inherent value called the Great Chain of Being with Europeans usually at the top.

The word "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, were products of European imperialism and colonization during the age of exploration. (Smedley 1999)

Classical civilizations from Rome to China tended to invest much more importance in familial or tribal affiliation than with one's physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg 2003). Ancient Greek and Roman authors also attempted to explain and categorize visible biological differences among peoples known to them.

Medieval models of race mixed Classical ideas with the notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asian), Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (European) peoples.

During the Age of Discovery, a set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities. (Banton 1977) In various cultures, brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world, and racial prejudice against Africans also exists today in non-colonised countries such as China and Japan. The first scientific attempts to classify humans by categories of race date from the 17th century, along with the development of European imperialism and colonization around the world. The first post-Classical published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier's Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684.

As time progressed, Darwin's theory of evolution was applied to races. By this time, anthropologists considered humans to be related to each other. The word "race," interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza, which may have been derived from the Latin word generatio (a begetting). The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens (clan, stock, people) and genus (birth, descent, origin, race, stock, family) which in turn comes from the Greek γένος (race, stock, or family).

This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a very small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Columbus. Older concepts that were also at least partly based on common descent, such as nation and tribe, entail a much larger number of groupings.

In the 19th century a number of natural scientists wrote on race: Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Francis Galton, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering, and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. As the science of anthropology took shape in the 19th century, European and American scientists increasingly sought explanations for the behavioral and cultural differences they attributed to groups (Stanton 1960).

Modern race debateEdit

There is considerable discussion and controversy surrounding modern definitions of "race." There are various theories and models. Some models are based the evolution of humans and its potential relation to subspecies, while some relate race to genetics. Questions about the relevance of race in the biology of humans is an ongoing debate.

Current views across disciplines Edit

One result of debates over the meaning and validity of the concept "race" is that the current literature across different disciplines regarding human variation lacks consensus, though within some fields, such as biology, there is strong consensus. Some studies use the word race in its early essentialist taxonomic sense. Many others still use the term race, but use it to mean a population, clade, or haplogroup. Others eschew the concept of race altogether, and use the concept of population as a less problematical unit of analysis.

In the 19th century, race was a central concept of anthropology. In 1866, James Hunt, the founder of the Anthropological Society of London, declared that anthropology’s primary truth “is the existence of well-marked psychological and moral distinctions in the different races of men.” However, this view was largely rejected by the community of social sciences in the second half of the 20th century.

Scientific support for the Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid terminology of racial classification has diminished over the past century. These terms originally denoted skull types and sprang from the technique known as craniofacial anthropometry, but these disciplines have been abandoned by the mainstream scientific community. Today they have only two common uses. They are used in forensic anthropology as an indicator of ethnicity of skeletal remains. And they can be used as euphemisms for making racially based distinctions that are now regarded as being racist and baseless by mainstream culture.

Since 1932, some college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have increasingly come to reject race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. According to one academic journal entry, where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996.^[11] The American Anthropological Association, drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of race is a social and cultural construction. . . . Race simply cannot be tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity . . . in the human species".^[6]

In an ongoing debate, some geneticists argue that race is neither a meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device,^[12] and even that genetic differences among groups are biologically meaningless,^[13] on the grounds that more genetic variation exists within such races than among them, and that racial traits overlap without discrete boundaries.^[14] Other geneticists, in contrast, argue that categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful,^[15] that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data,^[16] and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.^[17]

In February, 2001, the editors of the medical journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine asked authors to no longer use "race" as an explanatory variable and not to use obsolescent terms. Some other peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, have made similar endeavours.^[18] Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health recently issued a program announcement for grant applications through February 1, 2006, specifically seeking researchers who can investigate and publicize among primary care physicians the detrimental effects on the nation's health of the practice of medical racial profiling using such terms. The program announcement quoted the editors of one journal as saying that, "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex."^[19]

A survey, taken in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992), asked 1,200 American anthropologists how many disagree with the following proposition: "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses were:

• physical anthropologists 41%
• cultural anthropologists 53%^[20]

The figure for physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments was slightly higher, rising from 41% to 42%, with 50% agreeing. This survey, however, did not specify any particular definition of race (although it did clearly specify biological race within the species Homo Sapiens); it is difficult to say whether those who supported the statement thought of race in taxonomic or population terms.

The same survey, taken in 1999 ^[21], showed the following changing results for anthropologists:

• physical anthropologists 69%
• cultural anthropologists 80%

In Poland the race concept was rejected by only 25 percent of anthropologists in 2001, although: "Unlike the U.S. anthropologists, Polish anthropologists tend to regard race as a term without taxonomic value, often as a substitute for population."^[22]

Summary of different definitions of raceEdit

Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles, 2003) et al.

Concept	Reference	Definition
Essentialist	Hooton (1926)	"A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture."
Taxonomic	Mayr (1969)	"An aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species."
Clade	Levin (2002)	Race "connotes geographic ancestry, by continent or large continental subregion" and "is used to denote continental or subcontinental clades". In "Cladistic taxonomy ... the basic taxon [is] the genealogical unit, ancestors-plus-line- (or tree) -of-descent, what according to the present analysis races are."
Population	Dobzhansky (1970)	"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."
Lineage	Templeton (1998)	"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation."

Races as a social constructionEdit

Even as the idea of "race" was becoming a powerful organizing principle in many societies, the shortcomings of the concept were apparent. In the Old World, the gradual transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups emphasized that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them," as Blumenbach observed in his writings on human variation (Marks 1995, p. 54). As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term population to talk about genetic differences, Historians, anthropologists and social scientists have re-conceptualized the term "race" as a cultural category or social construct, in other words, as a particular way that some people have of talking about themselves and others. As Stephan Palmie has recently summarized, race "is not a thing but a social relation";^[7] or, in the words of Katya Gibel Mevorach, "a metonym," "a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference."^[8] As such it cannot be a useful analytical concept; rather, the use of the term "race" itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race: history and social relationships will. For example, the fact that in many parts of the United States, categories such as Hispanic or Latino are viewed to constitute a race, while others view "Hispanic" as referring to an ethnic group, has more to do with the changing position of Hispanics in U.S. society, especially in the context of the civil rights movement and the debate over immigration.

Social issues of race Edit

RacismEdit

Racism has many definitions, the most common and widely accepted being the belief that members of one race are intrinsically superior or inferior to members of other races.

As racism carries references to race-based bigotry, prejudice, violence, oppression, stereotyping or discrimination, the term has varying and often hotly contested definitions. Racialism is a related term intended to avoid these negative meanings. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, racism is a belief or ideology that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially to distinguish it as being either superior or inferior to another race or races. The Merriam-Webster's Webster's Dictionary defines racism as a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race, and that it is also the prejudice based on such a belief.^[23] The Macquarie Dictionary defines racism thus: the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one's own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others.

Race and intelligence Edit

Researchers have reported differences in the average IQ test scores of various ethnic groups. The interpretation, causes, accuracy and reliability of these differences are highly controversial. Some researchers, such as Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and Richard Lynn have argued that such differences are at least partially genetic. Others, for example Thomas Sowell, argue that the differences largely owe to social and economic inequalities. Still others have such as Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin have argued that categories such as "race" and "intelligence" are cultural constructs that render any attempt to explain such differences (whether genetically or sociologically) meaningless.

The Flynn effect is the rise of average Intelligence Quotient (IQ) test scores, an effect seen in most parts of the world, although at varying rates. Scholars therefore believe that rapid increases in average IQ seen in many places are much too fast to be as a result of changes in brain physiology and more likely as a result of environmental changes. The fact that environment has a significant effect on IQ demolishes the case for the use of IQ data as a source of genetic information^[24][25].

Race in biomedicine Edit

There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. The primary impetus for considering race in biomedical research is the possibility of improving the prevention and treatment of diseases by predicting hard-to-ascertain factors on the basis of more easily ascertained characteristics. Some have argued that in the absence of cheap and widespread genetic tests, racial identification is the best way to predict for certain diseases, such as Cystic fibrosis, Lactose intolerance, Tay-Sachs Disease and sickle cell anemia, which are genetically linked and more prevalent in some populations than others. The most well-known examples of genetically-determined disorders that vary in incidence among populations would be sickle cell disease, thalassaemia, and Tay-Sachs disease.

There has been criticism of associating disorders with race. For example, in the United States sickle cell is typically associated with black people, but this trait is also found in people of Mediterranean, Middle Eastern or Indian ancestry.^[26] The sickle cell trait offers some resistance to malaria. In regions where malaria is present sickle cell has been positively selected and consequently the proportion of people with it is greater. Therefore, it has been argued that sickle cell should not be associated with a particular race, but rather with having ancestors who lived in a malaria-prone region. Africans living in areas where there is no malaria, such as the East African highlands, have prevalence of sickle cell as low as parts of Northern Europe.

Another example of the use of race in medicine is the recent U.S. FDA approval of BiDil, a medication for congestive heart failure targeted at black people in the United States.^[27] Several researchers have questioned the scientific basis for arguing the merits of a medication based on race, however. As Stephan Palmie has recently pointed out, black Americans were disproportionately affected by Hurricane Katrina, but for social and not climatological reasons; similarly, certain diseases may disproportionately affect different races, but not for biological reasons. Several researchers have suggested that BiDil was re-designated as a medicine for a race-specific illness because its manufacturer, Nitromed, needed to propose a new use for an existing medication in order to justify an extension of its patent and thus monopoly on the medication,^[28] not for pharmacological reasons.

Gene flow and intermixture also have an effect on predicting a relationship between race and "race linked disorders". Multiple sclerosis is typically associated with people of European descent and is of low risk to people of African descent. However due to gene flow between the populations, African Americans have elevated levels of MS relative to Africans.^[29] Notable African Americans affected by MS include Richard Pryor and Montel Williams. As populations continue to mix, the role of socially constructed races may diminish in identifying diseases.

Race in law enforcement Edit

IdentificationEdit

In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the job of law enforcement officers seeking to apprehend suspects, the United States FBI employs the term "race" to summarize the general appearance (skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend. From the perspective of law enforcement officers, it is generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily suggest the general appearance of an individual than to make a scientifically valid categorization by DNA or other such means. Thus in addition to assigning a wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will include: height, weight, eye color, scars and other distinguishing characteristics, etc.

Scotland Yard use a classification based in the ethnic background of British society: W1 (White-British), W2 (White-Irish), W9 (Any other white background); M1 (White and black Caribbean), M2 (White and black African), M3 (White and Asian), M9 (Any other mixed background); A1 (Asian-Indian), A2 (Asian-Pakistani), A3 (Asian-Bangladeshi), A9 (Any other Asian background); B1 (Black Caribbean), B2 (Black African), B3 (Any other black background); O1 (Chinese), O9 (Any other). Some of the characteristics that constitute these groupings are biological and some are learned (cultural, linguistic, etc.) traits that are easy to notice.

ControversyEdit

In many countries, such as France, the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race, which often makes the police issue wanted notices to the public that include labels like "dark skin complexion", etc. One of the factors that encourages this kind of circuitous wordings is that there is controversy over the actual relationship between crimes, their assigned punishments, and the division of people into the so called "races," leading officials to try to deemphasize the alleged race of suspects. In the United States, the practice of racial profiling has been ruled to be both unconstitutional and also to constitute a violation of civil rights. There is active debate regarding the cause of a marked correlation between the recorded crimes, punishments meted out, and the country's "racially divided" people. Many consider de facto racial profiling an example of institutional racism in law enforcement. The history of misuse of racial categories to adversely impact one or more groups and/or to offer protection and advantage to another has a clear impact on debate of the legitimate use of known phenotypical or genotypical characteristics tied to the presumed race of both victims and perpetrators by the government.

Use of race in forensicsEdit

More recent work in racial taxonomy based on DNA cluster analysis (see Lewontin's Fallacy) has led law enforcement to narrow their search for individuals based on a range of phenotypical characteristics found consistent with DNA evidence.^[30]

While controversial, DNA analysis has been successful in helping police identify both victims and perpetrators by giving an indication of what phenotypical characteristics to look for and what community the individual may have lived in. For example, in one case phenotypical characteristics suggested that the friends and family of an unidentified victim would be found among the Asian community, but the DNA evidence directed official attention to missing Native Americans, where her true identity was eventually confirmed.^[31] In an attempt to avoid potentially misleading associations suggested by the word "race," this classification is called "biogeographical ancestry" (BGA),^[32] but the terms for the BGA categories are similar to those used as for race. The difference is that ancestry-informative DNA markers identify continent-of-ancestry admixture, not ethnic self-identity, and provide a wide range of phenotypical characteristics such that some people in a biogeographical category will not match the stereotypical image of an individual belonging to the corresponding race. To facilitate the work of officials trying to find individuals based on the evidence of their DNA traces, firms providing the genetic analyses also provide photographs showing a full range of phenotypical characteristics of people in each biogeographical group. Of special interest to officials trying to find individuals on the basis of DNA samples that indicate a diverse genetic background is what range of phenotypical characteristics people with that general mixture of genotypical characteristics may display.

Similarly, forensic anthropologists draw on highly heritable morphological features of human remains (e.g. cranial measurements) in order to aid in the identification of the body, including in terms of race. In a recent article anthropologist Norman Sauer asked, "if races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them."^[33] Sauer observed that the use of 19th century racial categories is widespread among forensic anthropologists:

• "In many cases there is little doubt that an individual belonged to the Negro, Caucasian, or Mongoloid racial stock."^[34]
• "Thus the forensic anthropologist uses the term race in the very broad sense to differentiate what are commonly known as white, black and yellow racial stocks."^[35]
• "In estimating race forensically, we prefer to determine if the skeleton is Negroid, or Non-Negroid. If findings favor Non-Negroid, then further study is necessary to rule out Mongoloid."^[36]

According to Sauer, "The assessment of these categories is based upon copious amounts of research on the relationship between biological characteristics of the living and their skeletons." Nevertheless, he agrees with other anthropologists that race is not a valid biological taxonomic category, and that races are socially constructed. He argued there is nevertheless a strong relationship between the phenotypic features forensic anthropologists base their identifications on, and popular racial categories. Thus, he argued, forensic anthropologists apply a racial label to human remains because their analysis of physical morphology enables them to predict that when the person was alive, that particular racial label would have been applied to them.^[37]

Regional issuesEdit

Race in the United StatesEdit

The United States is a racially diverse country. There is an extensive history of race-based slavery, the abolishment of it, and its economic impact. Modern issues of race, as well as its impact in the political and economic development of the nation have been examined by multiple historians and researchers. There are issues and controversies with the self-identification and classification of race within the country, and several trends have emerged in the demographic movements of ethnic groups as discovered by self-reports and genetic testing.

Race in BrazilEdit

Compared to the United States, the identification of a person by race is far more fluid and flexible in Brazil than in the U.S.; however, there still are racial stereotypes and prejudices. African features have been considered less desirable; Blacks have been considered socially inferior, and Whites superior (Harris 1964: 59-60). These white supremacist values seem to be an obvious legacy of European colonization and the slave-based plantation system (Harris 1964: 54-57). The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil is reflective of the extent of miscegenation in Brazilian society, a society that remains highly, but not strictly, stratified along color lines.

See alsoEdit

Breed Black Nationalism Clan Ethnicity Species Political correctness Cultural difference Population genetics Pre-Adamite Race Racial stereotypes Race and genetics Race and health Race and intelligence Race

Race Race in biomedicine Race baiting Race card Racial purity Racial discrimination Racial realism Racial superiority The Race Question The Race of the Future Societal collapse Subspecies White Nationalism Whiteness studies Nationalism Ethnic nationalism

FootnotesEdit

Bibliography Edit

External linksEdit

Official statements and standardsEdit

• American Anthropological Association's Statement on Race and RACE: Are we so different?a public education program developed by the American Anthropological Association.

• American Association of Physical Anthropologists' Statement on Biological Aspects of Race
• OMB Statistical Directive 15, "Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity", Federal Register, 30 October 1997.
• "The Race Question", UNESCO, 1950
• US Census Bureau: Definition of Race

Popular press Edit

• Richard Dawkins: Race and creation (extract from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life) - On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved. (Prospect Magazine October 2004) (see also longer extract here)
• Race - The power of an illusion Online companion to California Newsreel's 3-part documentary about race in society, science, and history.
• Is Race "Real"? - forum organized by the Social Science Research Council, includes a March 2005 op-ed article by A.M. Leroi from the New York Times advocating biological conceptions of race and responses from scholars in a variety of fields. - More from Leori with responses
• Steven and Hilary Rose, The Guardian, "Why we should give up on race", 9 April 2005
• Times Online, "Gene tests prove that we are all the same under the skin", 27 October 2004.
• Michael J. Bamshad, Steve E. Olson "Does Race Exist?", Scientific American, December 2003
• "Gene Study Identifies 5 Main Human Populations, Linking Them to Geography", Nicholas Wade, NYTimes, December 2002. Covering
• Scientific American Magazine (December 2003 Issue) Does race exists ?.
• DNA Study published by United Press International showing how 30% of White Americans have at least one Black ancestor
• Yehudi O. Webster Twenty-one Arguments for Abolishing Racial Classification, The Abolitionist Examiner, June 2000
• The Tex(t)-Mex Galleryblog, An updated, online supplement to the University of Texas Press book (2007), Tex(t)-Mex
• Times of India - Article about Asian racism
• South China Morning Post - Going beyond ‘sorry’

Others Edit

• Race FAQ by John Goodrum (argues for the existence of races)
• American Anthropological Association's educational website on race, geared for general public with links for primary school educators and researchers
• The Institute of Race Relations, London, UK
• Boas's remarks on race to a general audience
• Race differences in average IQ are largely genetic, 26-Apr-2005
• Catchpenny mysteries of ancient Egypt, "What race were the ancient Egyptians?", Larry Orcutt.
• Judy Skatssoon, "New twist on out-of-Africa theory", ABC Science Online, Wednesday, 14 July 2004.
• Racial & Ethnic Distribution of ABO Blood Types - bloodbook.com
• "The Races of Europe" by Carleton S. Coon - collection of physical anthropological data on the indigenous European populations.
• Are White Athletes an Endangered Species? And Why is it Taboo to Talk About It? Discussion of racial differences in athletics
• "Does Race Exist? A proponent's perspective" - The author argues that the evidence from forensic anthropology supports the idea of race.
• "Does Race Exist? An antagonist's perspective" - The author argues that clinal variation undermines the idea of race.

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