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>