Historical race concepts: Difference between revisions

{{short description|Disused conception of a person's racial or ethnic makeup}}

{{Race}}

The concept of [[race (human categorization)|race]] as a categorization of [[anatomically modern human]]s (''[[Homo sapiens]]'') has an extensive history in Europe and the Americas. The contemporary word ''race'' itself is modern; historically it was used in the sense of "[[nation]], [[ethnic group]]" during the 16th to 19th centuries.<ref>Kennedy, Rebecca F. (2013). "Introduction". Race and Ethnicity in the Classical world : An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation. Hackett Publishing Company. p. xiii. ISBN 978-1603849944. "The ancients would not understand the social construct we call "race" any more than they would understand the distinction modem scholars and social scientists generally draw between race and "ethnicity." The modern concept of race is a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries that identified race in terms of skin color and physical difference. In the post-Enlightenment world, a "scientific," biological idea of race suggested that human difference could be explained by biologically distinct groups of humans, evolved from separate origins, who could be distinguished by physical differences, predominantly skin color...Such categorizations would have confused the ancient Greeks and Romans."</ref><ref>Bancel, Nicolas; David, Thomas; Thomas, Dominic, eds. (23 May 2019). "Introduction: The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations of Race from Linnaeus to the Ethnic Shows". The Invention of Race : Scientific and Popular Representations. Routledge. p. 11. ISBN 978-0367208646. 'The Invention of Race' has assisted us in the process of locating the "epistemological moment," somewhere between 1730 and 1790, when the concept of race was invented and rationalized. A "moment" that was accompanied by a revolution in the way in which the human body was studied and observed in order to formulate scientific conclusions relating to human variability."</ref> Race acquired its modern meaning in the field of [[physical anthropology]] through [[scientific racism]] starting in the 19th century. With the rise of modern [[genetics]], the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the [[American Association of Biological Anthropologists]] stated: "The belief in 'races' as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past."<ref name="AAPARace">{{cite web|author=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|title=AAPA Statement on Race and Racism |website=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|access-date=19 June 2020 |date=27 March 2019 |url=https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/}}</ref>

 

==Etymology==

 

==Early history==

 

====Johann Friedrich Blumenbach====

[[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]] (1752–1840) divided the human [[species]] into five [[Race (classification of human beings)|races]] in 1779, later founded on crania research (description of human skulls), and called them (1793/1795):<ref>Blumenbach, J. F. 1779. ''Handbuch der Naturgeschichte'' vol. 1, pp. 63f. The names of Blumenbach's five groups are introduced in his 1795 revision of ''De generis humani varietate nativa'' (pp. 23f.) as ''Caucasiae, Mongolicae, Aethiopicae, Americanae, Malaicae''. See also: Kowner and Skott in: R. Kowner, W. Demel (eds.), ''Race and Racism in Modern East Asia: Interactions, Nationalism, Gender and Lineage'' (2015), p. 51.</ref><ref>{{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=62|year=1797|url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=84|access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref>

* the [[Mongoloid|Mongolian]] or yellow race, including all [[East Asian people|East Asians]].

* the [[Negroid|Ethiopian]] or black race, including all [[List of ethnic groups of Africa|sub-Saharan Africans]].

* the American or red race, including all [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]].

{{further|Biological anthropology}}

 

 

Among the 19th century naturalists who defined the field were [[Georges Cuvier]], [[James Cowles Pritchard]], [[Louis Agassiz]], [[Charles Pickering (naturalist)|Charles Pickering]] (''Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution'', 1848). Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz twelve, and Pickering eleven.

The 19th century saw the introduction of anthropological techniques such as [[anthropometrics]], invented by Francis Galton and [[Alphonse Bertillon]]. They measured the shapes and sizes of skulls and related the results to group differences in intelligence or other attributes.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lieberman|first=Leonard|title=How 'Caucasoids' Got Such Big Crania and Why They Shrank: From Morton to Rushton|journal=Current Anthropology|volume=42|issue=1|year=2001|pages=69–95|doi=10.1086/318434|jstor=10.1086/318434|pmid=14992214|s2cid=224794908}}</ref>

 

 

During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the tension between some who believed in hierarchy and innate superiority, and others who believed in human equality, was at a paramount. The former continued to exacerbate the belief that certain races were innately inferior by examining their shortcomings, namely by examining and testing intelligence between groups. Some scientists claimed that there was a [[biological]] determinant of race by evaluating one's [[genes]] and [[DNA]]. Different methods of eugenics, the study and practice of human selective breeding often with a race as a primary concentration, was still widely accepted in Britain, Germany, and the United States.<ref name="Sarich, Vincent 2004">Sarich, Vincent, and Miele Frank. Race: the Reality of Human Differences. Boulder: Westview Press, 2004.</ref> On the other hand, many scientists understood race as a [[Social constructionism|social construct]]. They believed that the [[phenotypical]] expression of an individual were determined by one's genes that are inherited through reproduction but there were certain social constructs, such as [[culture]], [[environment (biophysical)|environment]], and [[language]] that were primary in shaping behavioral characteristics. Some advocated that race 'should centre not on what race explains about society, but rather on the questions of who, why and with what effect social significance is attached to racial attributes that are constructed in particular political and socio-economic contexts', and thus, addressing the "folk" or "mythological representations" of race.<ref>Black, Les, and Solomos John. Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2000.</ref>

His stance in this case was considered to be quite radical in its time, because it went against the more orthodox and standard reading of the Bible in his time which implied all human stock descended from a single couple (Adam and Eve), and in his defense Agassiz often used what now sounds like a very "modern" argument about the need for independence between science and religion; though Agassiz, unlike many polygeneticists, maintained his religious beliefs and was not anti-Biblical in general.

 

 

===Arthur de Gobineau===

To Gobineau, the development of empires was ultimately destructive to the "superior races" that created them, since they led to the mixing of distinct races. This he saw as a degenerative process.

 

 

===Thomas Huxley's racial definitions===

{{legend|#682b05|2: [[Negro]]es}}

{{legend|#060606|3: [[Negrito]]es}}

 

===Charles Darwin and race===

Though [[Charles Darwin]]'s evolutionary theory was set forth in 1859 upon publication of ''On the Origin of Species'', this work was largely absent of explicit reference to Darwin's theory applied to man. This application by Darwin would not become explicit until 1871 with the publication of his second great book on evolution, ''[[The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex]]''.

 

[[Franz Boas]] (1858–1942) was a [[German American]] anthropologist and has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". Professor of anthropology at Columbia University from 1899, Boas made significant contributions within [[anthropology]], more specifically, [[physical anthropology]], [[linguistics]], [[archaeology]], and [[cultural anthropology]]. His work put an emphasis on cultural and environmental effects on people to explain their development into adulthood and evaluated them in concert with human biology and evolution. This encouraged academics to break away from static taxonomical classifications of race. It is said that before Boas, anthropology was the study of race, and after Boas, anthropology was the study of culture.

 

 

===Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon===

{{further|Anti-racism#Revival in the United States}}

 

 

In his 1984 article in ''[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]]'' magazine, "On Being 'White' ... and Other Lies", [[James Baldwin]] reads the history of [[racialization]] in America as both figuratively and literally violent, remarking that race only exists as a social construction within a network of force relations:

{{blockquote|"America became white&nbsp;— the people who, as they claim, 'settled' the country became white&nbsp;— because of the necessity of denying the Black presence, and justifying the Black subjugation. No community can be based on such a principle&nbsp;— or, in other words, no community can be established on so genocidal a lie. White men from Norway, for example, where they were Norwegians&nbsp;— became white: by slaughtering the cattle, poisoning the well, torching the houses, massacring Native Americans, raping Black women.... Because they are white, they cannot allow themselves to be tormented by the suspicion that all men are brothers."<ref>{{cite news |last1=Baldwin |first1=James |author-link1=James Baldwin |title=On Being White... And Other Lies |url=http://www.cwsworkshop.org/pdfs/CARC/Family_Herstories/2_On_Being_White.PDF |access-date=14 February 2019 |work=[[Essence (magazine)|Essence]] |date=April 1984}}</ref>}}

 

The impossibility of drawing clearly defined boundaries between the areas of the supposed racial groups had been observed by Blumenbach<ref>{{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=62|year=1797|quote=die Neger, die sich dann in die Habessinier, Mauren ꝛc. verlieren, so wie jede andre Menschen-Varietät mit ihren benachbarten Völkerschaften gleichsam zusammen fließt.|trans-quote=the negroes, who then lose their characteristics into the Abyssinians, the Moors etc., the same way in which every other variety of man flows together with the neighbouring ethnic groups, so to speak|url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=84|access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref> and later by [[Charles Darwin]].<ref>"It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant... they graduate into each other, and.. it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them... As it is improbable that the numerous and unimportant points of resemblance between the several races of man in bodily structure and mental faculties (I do not here refer to similar customs) should all have been independently acquired, they must have been inherited from progenitors who had these same characters.", Charles Darwin, [http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F937.1&viewtype=text&pageseq=238 ''The Descent of Man'' p. 225 onwards]</ref>

 

 

In 2019, the [[American Association of Physical Anthropologists]] stated: "The belief in 'races' as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past."<ref name="AAPARace"/>