What Is Race?

Race and Ethnicity SOCI 1306 What Is Race? A human race is a collection of people who are related by common physical or social characteristics, which might differ throughout societies. The idea of race has historically evolved throughout cultures and historical periods, gradually becoming less associated with ancestry and family relationships and more focused on outward physical traits. Theorists once classified people into categories of race according to different geographic areas, ethnic groups, skin tones, and other factors. For example, their designations for racial categories have implied areas or skin tones. One of the well-known groups was created by the German anthropologist, naturalist, and physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) via his study of human skulls. Humans are classified into five races by Blumenbach (MacCord 2014): • Caucasian or White race: those with roots in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa • Ethiopian or Black race: individuals of African descent from sub-Saharan Africa (also spelt Aethiopian) • Malayan or Brown race: individuals from Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia • People of all East Asian and partly Central Asian descent are known as Mongolians or Yellow Races. • Americans or Reds: Native Americans and those of North American descent Blumenbach's and other explanations of race have become less common over time, and the social construction of race is now a more widely acknowledged framework for comprehending racial classifications. Official rejections of theories of race such as those described above have come from social scientific organisations such as the American Psychological Association, the American Sociological Association, and the American Association of Anthropologists. According to research, race is not biologically determinable, and prior racial classifications were founded on pseudoscience and frequently utilised as an excuse for discriminatory behaviour (Omi and Winant 1994; Graves 2003). For instance, there was a time when some believed that IQ was dictated by racial biology. Though this theory was largely abandoned in the middle 20th century, it has made many reappearances in the previous 50 years, most notably in the highly read and referenced book The Bell Curve from 1994. Since then, researchers have produced a wealth of data that challenges the idea that intelligence is based on racial or biological factors. One such piece of evidence is the general narrowing of IQ disparities when Black people have greater access to education (Dickens 2006). To use the language of the Socialisation chapter, this findings and other supporting studies suggest that any usually lower IQ within a racial group was more a product of upbringing than nature. Some of the earlier terminology for race still exist, even if many historical concerns have been replaced by more sensitive and accurate definitions. For instance, using color-based vocabulary to refer to Asian or Native American people is typically considered offensive and inappropriate; but, using the same word to refer to White and Black people is allowed. While not all newspapers took the same tack, several said in 2020 that they will start capitalising the names of races (Seipel 2020). This practice was introduced about a century after sociologist and activist W.E.B. Du Bois insisted that newsrooms capitalise the term "Negro," which was then commonly used. Lastly, some people who belong to racial (or ethnic) groups (which are discussed below) "reclaim" phrases that were previously used to denigrate them (Rao 2018). These instances provide additional proof of how race is socially constructed as well as how interactions between individuals and groups are changing.