Race (Human Categorization)
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Race (human categorization) A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society.[1] First used to refer to speakers of a common language and then to denote national affiliations, by the 17th century the term race began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits. Modern scholarship regards race as a social construct, that is, a symbolic identity created to establish some cultural meaning. While partially based on physical similarities within groups, race is not an inherent physical or biological quality.[1][2] Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies[3] that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete,[4] and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.[5][6][7][8][9] Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptualizations of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways, some of which have essentialist implications.[10] While some researchers use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behaviour, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race often is used in a naive[5] or simplistic way,[11] and argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance by pointing out that all living humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens, and (as far as applicable) subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.[12][13] Since the second half of the 20th century, the association of race with the ideologies and theories of scientific racism has led to the use of the word race itself becoming problematic.[14] Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and loaded terms: populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context.[15][16] Contents Defining race Historical origins of racial classification Colonialism Early taxonomic models Polygenism vs monogenism Modern scholarship Models of human evolution Biological classification Subspecies Ancestrally differentiated populations (clades) Morphologically differentiated populations Clines Genetically differentiated populations Distribution of genetic variation Cluster analysis Clines and clusters in genetic variation Social constructions Brazil European Union France United States Views across disciplines over time Anthropology United States Biology, anatomy, and medicine Law Sociology Political and practical uses Biomedicine Law enforcement Forensic anthropology See also References Bibliography Further reading Popular press External links Official statements Defining race Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. This often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as "white".[1] Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion.[2] This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined.[17][18][19][20][21][22][23] Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of the race concept, the latter is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one.[1] Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans, especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of a race for political reasons.[1] When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved.[24] In this sense, races are said to be social constructs.[25] These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.[26] While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination. Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups.[27] Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior.[28] As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes.[29] Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.[30] In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable. As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, and social institutions.[31][32] Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed.[33] For example, in 2008, John Hartigan, Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics.[34] Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction. In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups. Historical origins of racial classification Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during the historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences.[35] The term race was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense,[15] starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.[36][37] Colonialism According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution, which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions.[35][38] As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves.[39] The three great races according to Meyers Konversations-Lexikon of 1885-90. The Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early subtypes of the Mongoloid race are shown in European thinking about the differences between people[40] – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to yellow and orange tones, those of the individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical Caucasoid race in light and medium grayish spring green-cyan tones and those of the differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities.[41] Similar ideas can be found in other cultures,[42] for example in China, where a concept Negroid race in brown tones. Dravidians and often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor, and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts Sinhalese are in olive green and their [43] between