We all know people look different. Anyone can tell a Czech from a
Chinese. But are these differences racial? What does race mean?


Are the Ainu a race?

If not, to what race do they belong?

What do we mean when we the word
“race?”


Race is a geographically
(hence, reproductively) isolated subdivision of a species, or subspecies.

If reproductive isolation lasts long enough, then a new species is produced.


Human populations have not been reproductively isolated long enough to have developed into biological races.

Early human classification into races have been dependent solely on the evaluation of phenotype
(manifest biology — appearance, skin color, eyes and nose shape, hair texture, etc.).

English
French
Jews
Gypsies
Norwegians
Saudi Arabians
Ukranians
Koreans
Nigerians
Ethiopians
Which Race?
Algerians
Native Americans
Inuit
Italians
Australian aborigines
Egyptians
South Africans
Chinese
The Baka
New Guineans


Only 6% of human genes account for the phenotypical differences seen between “races.”

Greater overall variation exists within each “racial” grouping than between such groups.

The phenotypic traits that do exist are largely adaptive in nature.
skin color in about 1500 AD-


Compare this map with the previous one

If human races were as distinct as many have assumed, shouldn’t there be some correlation between skin color and blood type?

Skin color is a function of melanin production in the dermis layer of the skin.
Distribution of Type “O” blood

Melanocytes - cells, located in the basal layer of the skin, produce melanin, a pigment in the skin, eyes, and hair.

Differences in skin color are not due to the number of melanocytes in the skin, but to the melanocytes' level of activity

Skin coloring is adaptive.

Skin pigmentation, Vitamin D, and survival

Vitamin D not common in nature; the human body synthesizes it in the skin with the help of ultraviolet radiation.

Vitamin D is necessary for directing the body’s use of calcium.

Too much Vitamin D is toxic; too little will result in rickets – a debilitating bone disease.

Skin pigmentation levels control Vitamin D production.


Northern populations, with little sunlight, require minimal pigmentation to produce Vitamin D.

Tropical populations require protection from too much ultraviolet radiation and too much Vitamin
D.

Light skinned people are maladapted for tropical areas.

Dark skinned people are maladated to northern areas


Hair form types and skin colours shade into each other; there is no line in nature between a white and a black race, or Asian race

Simplistic racial categories based merely upon a few traits do not constitute a scientific approach to human biological variability.
 while there is plenty of genetic variation in humans, most of the variation is individual variation.

While between-population variation exists, it is minimal


There are no races in the biological sense of distinct divisions of the human species

The physical traits chosen to define race are basically arbitrary and could be things such as red hair, or ear, nose or eye shape
 terms like Black, White, Asian, and
Latino are social groups, not genetically distinct branches of humankind.

Race is a real cultural, political and economic concept in society

What race is this man?

dd Paternal
Grandparents
1 White
1 Native American
2 Black
Father dd Maternal
Grandparents
2 Chinese
2 Thai
Mother

• The “drop of blood” theory
• Southern segregation laws: 1/64 black = black
• The obsession to classify people by race in the US:
• These are social, not biological ideas

 not a fixed, concrete, natural attribute
 the institutionalisation of physical appearance
 socially or culturally and historically constructed

Categories defined and assigned significance by the society
 social meaning which has been legally constructed
 shaped by those in power.
 an ever changing complex of meanings shaped by sociopolitical conflict
 racial differences exist and are perpetuated because they have cultural significance

… the number of races will depend on the purpose of classification. I think we should require people who propose a classification of races to state in the first place why they wish to divide the human species.

Although people obviously differ from each other physically, we are not able to attribute differences in culture to differences in physique (or “mentality”). In our study of culture, therefore, we may regard human race as of uniform quality, i.e., as a constant, and, hence, we eliminate it from our study.—
Leslie White (1900-1975)







Health Disparity

• The U.S. Census Bureau began gathering data by race in
1790 because the Constitution specified that a slave counted as three-fifths of a white person, and because Indians were not taxed.
• More recently, the way in which information regarding race is collected has been hotly debated.
– Some social scientists and interested citizens have been working to add a “multiracial” category to the census.
– This “multiracial” category has been opposed by the
NAACP and the National Council of La Raza because both groups feel that the communities they represent will lose access to funding, resources, and jobs if their numbers as counted by the census go down.

• The choice of “some other race” more than doubled between 1980 and 2000.
– This represents an imprecision in and dissatisfaction with the existing categories.
– Also, the number of interracial marriages and children is increasing.

Some people argue that since race has no biological existence, the U.S. government should cease collecting data about race the American Sociological Association asks “Would
‘Race” Disappear if the United States Officially Stopped
Measuring It?”
“As long as Americans routinely sort each other into racial categories and act on the basis of those attributions, research on the role of race and race relations in the United States falls squarely within [a] scientific agenda...As the United States becomes more diverse, the need for public agencies to continue to collect data on racial categories will become even more important. The continuation of the collection and scholarly analysis of data serves both science and the public interest.” --American
Sociological Assoc.

Statistics Canada
Collects information on
1. Visible minorities
• persons who are identified according to the Employment
Equity Act as being non-Caucasian in race or non-white in colour
• Aboriginal persons are not considered to be members of visible minority groups
2. Ethnicity
• includes aspects such as race, origin or ancestry, identity, language and religion, culture, the arts, customs and beliefs and even practices such as dress and food preparation.
•
It is also dynamic and in a constant state of flux. It will change as a result of new immigration flows, blending and intermarriage, and new identities may be formed.


There are three fundamental ways of measuring ethnicity: origin or ancestry, race and identity.

Race refers to the genetically imparted physiognomical features of a person

The change in format to an open-ended question in 1996 likely affected response patterns, especially for groups who had been included as mark-in response categories in 1991.

In addition, the presence of examples such as
"Canadian", which were not included in previous censuses, may also affect response patterns.


Each of us has an ethnicity
- frequently confused with race

Shared cultural characteristics of a group

Includes: national origin, language, traditions, customs, religious beliefs/practices, etc. as well as racial category

The American Anthropological Association has recommended that the Census Bureau eliminate the term "race" and replace it with
"ethnic origins," noting that many Americans confuse race, ethnicity and ancestry.

A Brief History of race

Race did not exist until the European expansion and exploration beginning around 1500

The ancient Greeks, for example, saw themselves as first among civilized nations around the Mediterranean

But the Greeks did not link physical appearance and cultural attainment.

They granted civilized status to the
Nile Valley Nubians who were among the darkest skinned people they knew

They did not grant it to European barbarians to the north who were lighter skinned than they were

People were divided on the basis of religion, class or language or status

The distribution of human skin color before A.D. 1400

Slavery

Before the 1400s slavery was widespread in state societies
 but its victims were either recruited internally or from neighbouring groups and were largely physically indistinguishable from slave-holders. i .e. slavery was not based on race
Egyptian slaves

Slavery was a status that might be held by anyone.

Slave descendants could acculturate into the dominant population and did not become permanently demarcated by race.
Romans slaves pouring wine

After 1500

European exploration brought them increasingly into contact with other human societies

Europeans did not encounter them on equal terms
 superior technology, especially military technology, meant
Europeans were significantly more powerful

As a result, exploration quickly turned to conquest and gave rise to an Ethnocentric feeling of European superiority.
Pizarro at The Battle of Cajamarca
Nov 16, 1532
Francisco Pizarro
1475 –1541)
Pizarro and 168 Spanish Conquistadores with cannons, guns and horses defeat Atahuallpa, the last independent Inca emperor and an army of 80,000 precipitating the demise of the great Incan Empire.

After 1500 a racial order built on the ethnocentrism of the various European colonial powers.
A Women of
Color with her
African Slave.
1804


What struck explorers most forcefully were differences in physical appearance particularly skin colour

An early distinction emerged between those who had black skin as opposed to had white skin.

This characterisation was important because of the way in which the colours black and white were emotionally loaded concepts in European languages especially English

The contrasts denoted polar opposites
 white represented good, purity and virginity
 black symbolized death, evil and debasement
 Africans, native Americans, and colonised
Asians were devalued, intermarriage was prohibited and persons of mixed ancestry were denied same entitlements as those of solely
European ancestry
 evident in all European colonial societies by the late 1600s

•
16 th & 17 th C: race used interchangeably with type, variety, people, nation, generation & species
•
By the latter half of the 18 th C race is strongly equated with “breeding stock”
–
Farmers and herders understand animal breeds as highly inbred lineages with heritable characteristics
–
Emphasizes innateness of characteristics
–
Value judgments were and are critical to choosing the reproducing members of a line of stock, because one breeds for some specific, valued quality

The Scientific basis of race
 The concept of race emerged in modern form between the end of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th.

Its emergence is, in part, an aspect of the general growth of scientific enquiry and explanation

In the 1700s as Western science developed it began thinking about, and explaining natural and social phenomena and to place the world’s peoples into natural schemes
 a drive was underway to map and explain a similar order in the natural and social worlds.

Linneaus Systemae Naturae, 1758
•
Europeaeus
–
White; muscular; hair – long, flowing; eyes blue
•
Americanus
– Reddish; erect; hair – black, straight, thick; wide nostrils
•
Asiaticus
–
Sallow (yellow); hair black; eyes dark
•
Africanus
– Black; hair – black, frizzled; skin silky; nose flat; lips tumid

Linneaus Systemae Naturae, 1758
•
Europeaeus
–
White; muscular; hair – long, flowing; eyes blue
•
Americanus
– Reddish; erect; hair – black, straight, thick; wide nostrils
•
Asiaticus
–
Sallow (yellow); hair black; eyes dark
•
Africanus
– Black; hair – black, frizzled; skin silky; nose flat; lips tumid

culminated in 1795 when Johann Friedrich Blumenbach first used the word ”race” to classify humans into five divisions

Caucasian,

Malayan

Ethiopian,
 American

Mongolian,
Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach
(1752-1840)
Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian" because he believed that the Caucasus region of Asia Minor produced
"the most beautiful race of men".


1830s and 1840s Philadelphia doctor and polygenist Samuel
Morton set out to prove that whites were naturally superior and that brain size bore a direct relation to intelligence

He collected hundreds of human skulls and measured them by filling the skulls with lead pellets and then pouring the pellets into a glass measuring cup.

His tables assign the highest brain capacity to Europeans (with the English highest of all). Second rank goes to Chinese, third to
Southeast Asians and Polynesians, fourth to American Indians, and last place to Africans and
Australian aborigines.
Samuel G. Morton (1799-1851)

His work helped establish the scientific basis for physical anthropology but also the idea that race is inherently biological


In 1977 Stephen Jay Gould (In the Mismeasure of Man 1981), reanalysed the data
 discovered that Morton’s racist bias had prevented identification of what clearly were fully overlapping measurements among the racial skull samples he used.

Gould in his desire to prove
Morton wrong demonstrated the opposite bias and discovered that the skulls of black people were actually larger.

He then did a blind test and discovered the overlapping measurements

Breaking the link between race and anthropology

Boas in the 1890s broke the link of anthropology with race by showing that language, race and culture were separate things and needed to be studied separately.

Showed that mappings of
Northwest Coast Native
American biological traits, cultural similarities and linguistic affinities yielded different results.

The Concept of race under attack
 The revelation of the Holocaust, and the enlistment of science in its perpetuation, caused a wave of international revulsion.

In the 1960s the idea of race itself became the target

The anti-racists attacked the notion that the human species was divisible into five or any other small number of races.
 the result was the gradual disappearance of the concept of race from natural science

In the 1960s anthropology affirmed that race does not exist

Racism
Homo sapiens celebrating their diversity (from the
American Anthropological
Association Newsletter).
Vending-machine in Jackson,
Tennessee
Jim Crow Laws (1876 – 1967)

 a doctrine or belief in racial superiority, including the idea that race determines intelligence, cultural characteristics and moral attributes

Racism thus makes an association between physical psychological and moral attributes
 and these are used to justify discrimination and prejudice.

Martin Luther King:
‘I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they are not judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character’

Racism

The notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a person’s genetic lineage

Which means, in practice, that a person is to be judged, not by their own character and actions, but by the character and actions of a collective of ancestors.

Even if it were proved that the incidence of a person of potentially superior brain power is greater among the members of certain races than among the members of others, it would tell us nothing about any given individual and it would be irrelevant to one’s judgement of him or her.
 Should a Hitler be raised to superior status because his German
“race” has produced Goethe, Brahms, Wagner, etc.


A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race - and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.

Racism claims that the content of a person’s mind (not their cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited;
 that a persons conviction, values and character are determined before they are born, by physical factors beyond their control.

Race is employed in order to classify and systematically exclude members of given groups from full participation in the social system controlled by the dominant group

Levi Strauss sums up racism doctrine in 4 points
1. There is a correlation between genetic heritage on the one hand and intellectual aptitudes and moral inclinations on the other
2. All members of human groups share this heritage, on which these aptitudes and inclinations depend
3. These groups, called races, can be evaluated as a function of the quality of their genetic heritage
4. These differences authorise the so-called superior races to command and exploit the others

 In examining inequalities anthropologists are not concerned with inequalities of ability, aptitude or talent among individuals

But concerned with inequalities that are an inherent part of collective existence
 and that arise from the evaluation of qualities and performances and the organization of persons into more or less stable arrangements.

These studies aim at investigating not only the existing patterns of inequality but also the mechanisms of their reproduction over time.

A major change between the past and the present has been the shift of attention from the origin to the reproduction of inequality.

On April 20th, 1999 two gun-toting students entered
Columbine High
School in Littleton,
Colo., killing 12 students and a teacher
What if they had been black?