Race (historical definitions)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article or section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please help improve this article or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since April 2006. (help, talk)

The definition of race, before the development of evolutionary biology, was that of common lineage—a vague concept interchangeable with cline, breed, cultural origin, or national character ("The whole race of mankind." – Shakespeare; "From whence the race of Alban fathers come" – Dryden).

The word race, interpreted to mean common descent, was introduced into English in about 1580, from the Old French "rasse" (1512), from Italian razza, which may have been derived from the Latin word generatio (a begetting). The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens (clan, stock, people) and genus (birth, descent, origin, race, stock, family) which in turn comes from the Greek γένος (race, stock, or family).'Genus' is cognate with Sanskrit 'jAti' (caste).

This late origin for the English and French terms is consistent with the thesis that the concept of "race" as defining a very small number of groups of human beings based on lineage dates from the time of Columbus. Older concepts that were also at least partly based on common descent, such as nation and tribe, entail a much larger number of groupings.

[edit] 17th century theories of racial difference

While the 17th century did not have systematic notions of racial difference, colonialism led to the development of social and political institutions, such as slavery in the New World, that were later justified through racial theories (cf. Gossett 1997:17).

[edit] Society Must Be Defended: the "race struggle" discourse

In Society Must be Defended (1978-79), Michel Foucault traced the "historical and political discourse" of "race struggle" to the "Glorious Revolution" and Louis XIV's end of reign. According to him, it was the first example of a popular history, opposed to the classical juridical and philosophical discourse of sovereignty. In Great Britain, it was used by Edward Coke or John Lilburn against the monarchy. In France, Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Fréret, and then Sieyès, Augustin Thierry and Cournot reappropriated this discourse.

[edit] François Bernier's New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it" (1684)

The first comprehensive classification of humans into distinct races is believed to be François Bernier's Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684 (Gossett, 1997:32-33). Bernier distinguished four "races":

This map shows the racial classification scheme of François Bernier.[1].

European, North African, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American race East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Central Asian race Sub-Saharan African race Lapp race

Bernier's race classification had a political message. At the time, races were distinguished by skin color, facial type, cranial profile and amount, texture and color of hair (see scientific racism). Though many experts declare these to have little relationship with any other heritable characteristics, they remain persuasive due to the ease of distinction based on physical appearance. One term for this now-discredited form of classification is the typological model.

Because of interracial breeding, such classification is weak in that it is difficult to classify some borderline individuals. (Contrast the difficulty of determining to which group a child of mixed parentage belongs with the much more clear-cut decisions involved in determining membership in species). In other words, racial purity has no clear biological meaning. It is clear, though, that for an extended period of time after Homo sapiens' first migrations from Africa (probably around 80,000 BCE) and before the rise of wheeled and seagoing transportation (around 3,000 BCE), geographically isolated groups of people underwent some degree of divergent evolution. Whether that degree was high enough to merit strict taxa beneath the species level is a question discussed by human biologists since the 1800s. It is a complicated issue full of semantic and emotional pitfalls, with much at stake on the consensus for all who look upon science as the bedrock authority for decisions in their daily lives.

[edit] 18th century anthropologists

[edit] Carolus Linnaeus

This map shows the racial classification scheme of Carolus Linnaeus.

Africanus negreus Americanus rubenscens Asiaticus fucus Europeus albescens Feral Monstrosous Anthropomorpha No Classification

[edit] Edward Long

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Edward Long in his book History of Jamaica (1774).

European race Negro race Orang-utang race

[edit] 19th century anthropologists

Among the 19th-century naturalists who defined the field were Georges Cuvier, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering (Races of Man and Their Geographical Distribution, 1848), and Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Cuvier enumerated three races, Pritchard seven, Agassiz twelve, and Pickering eleven. Blumenbach's classification was widely adopted:

this map shows the racial classification scheme of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach.

Caucasian race Mongolian race Ethiopian race American race Malay race

[edit] Louis Agassiz's Racial Definitions

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the naturalist Louis Agassiz.

Arctic race Western American Temperate race Eastern American Temperate race American Tropical race South American Temperate race Cape of Good Hope race Tropical Asiatic race Temperate Asiatic race European Temperate race African zoological race New Holland race Pacific race

[edit] Thomas Huxley's Racial Definitions

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Thomas Huxley from his book On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind (1870).

Esquimaux race American race Amphinesian race Negrito race Australian race Mongolian race Negro race Bushmen race Mincopies race Xanthochroi race Melanochroi race

[edit] Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau.

White race Black race Yellow race Degenerative race

[edit] 20th Century Anthropologists

[edit] Stanley M. Garn's Racial Definitions

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Stanley Marion Garn in his book Human Races (1961), although he considered thirty-four local subraces to exist within the nine major races.

Amerindian race Asiatic race Australian race Melanesian race Micronesian race Polynesian race Indian race African race European race

[edit] William Henry Boyd's Racial Definitions

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist William Henry Boyd in his book Genetics and the Races of Man (1956).

Early European race European race African race Asiatic race American Indian race Australoid race

[edit] Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt's Racial Definitions for Europe

Racial classification of Europeans by the 20th century anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt from his book Ethnology and the Race History of Mankind.

Alpine race Osteuropid race Nordic race Mediterranean race

[edit] Jan Czekanowski's Racial Definitions for Europe

This map shows the racial classification scheme of the anthropologist Jan Czekanowski in his book AAnz, vol. 5 (1928).

Pure Races α =Nordic race ε =Ibero-Insular race λ =Lapponoid race χ =Armenoid race

Mixed Types ι =Northwestern mixed type γ =Subnordic mixed type ω =Alpine mixed type ρ =Littoral mixed type β =Pile Dwelling mixed type δ =Dinaric mixed type

Researchers in the decades following Blumenbach classified the Malay and American races as branches of the Mongolian, leaving only the Caucasian, Mongolian, and Ethiopian races. Further explication in the early and mid twentieth century, arrived at three primary races:

• Negroid
• Caucasoid
• Mongoloid or Sinoid

with a small number of less widespread races.

The most widely referenced 20th century racial classification, by American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon, divided humanity into five races:

This map shows the racial classification scheme of Carleton S. Coon [2].

Caucasoid race   Congoid race   Capoid race   Mongoloid race   Australoid race

Coon assigned even some populations on sub-Saharan Africa to a broadly defined Caucasoid race, leading to charges that peoples with recorded ancient civilizations were being defined out of the black race, in order to depict the remaining "Congoid" race as lacking in culture.

Coon and his work were widely accused, even at the time, of obsolete thinking or outright racism, but some of his terminology continues in use to a lesser degree even today, even though the "-oid" terms now have offensive connotations [3]. In addition to references in legitimate scientific discussion, Coon's macro-racial classification, as well as his detailed list of European "subraces", is popular with racist groups who agree with the existence of distinct racial types, and is widely reproduced on "white nationalist" websites.

[edit] Criticism of the biological significance of the notion of "race"

In Blumenbach's day, physical characteristics like skin color, cranial profile, etc., went hand in hand with declarations of group moral character, intellectual capacity, and other aptitudes. The "fairness" and relatively high brows of "Caucasians" were held to be apt physical expressions of a loftier mentality and a more generous spirit. The epicanthic folds around the eyes of "Mongolians" and their slightly sallow outer epidermal layer supposedly bespoke a crafty, literal-minded nature. The dark skin, relatively sloping craniums and other common traits among "Ethiopians" were taken as wholesale proof of a closer genetic proximity to the other great apes, even though the skin of chimpanzees and gorillas beneath the hair is whiter than the average "Caucasian" skin, that the thin lips characteristic of "Caucasians" are actually closer in form to the lips of lower primates, that "high foreheads" can be seen in orangutans and some monkey species, and that the straight and relatively profuse body hair of Europeans is considerably more "ape-like" than the sparse, tightly curled body hair of "Ethiopians". By Coon's day, group physical characteristics were, for the most part, unhitched from assessments of group character and aptitude, and, since then, those maintaining the mere reality of physical group traits are often suspected of carrying the old malign racism.

Criticism of the new biological significance of race often accompanied the development of racial theories. In Society Must Be Defended (1978-79), Michel Foucault showed how, from a historical and political discourse of "race struggle", the notion of "race" was discussed in scientific terms in the 19th century by racist biologists and eugenicists. Psychoanalysis, he argues, was instrumental in opposing this dangerous form of essentialism, which would lead eventually to the Nazi "state racism".

Many significant criticisms also came from the school of Franz Boas beginning in the 1920s. During the mid-1930s, with the rise of Nazi Germany and its prominent espousing of racist ideologies, there was an outpouring of popular works by scientists criticizing the use of race to justify the politics of "superiority" and "inferiority". An influential work in this regard was the publication of We Europeans: A Survey of "Racial" Problems by Julian Huxley and A. C. Haddon in 1935, which sought to show that population genetics allowed for only a highly limited definition of race at best. Another popular work during this period, "The Races of Mankind" by Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, argued that though there were some racial differences, they were primarily superficial, and in any case did not justify political action. Claude Lévi-Strauss' Race and History (UNESCO, 1952) was another milestone in the critique of the biological "race" notion, arguing in favor of cultural relativism through the famous metaphor of cultures as different trains crossing each others in various directions and speed, thus each one seeming to progress to himself while others supposedly kept immobile. The question of whether "race" was at all a useful scientific concept has been in continuous debate since that time, becoming especially politicized during and after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

[edit] See also

• Ancestry-informative marker
• Claude Lévi-Strauss
• Craniometry
• Nordic theory
• Physical anthropology
• Race
• Racialism
• Scientific racism

[edit] References

• Augstein, Hannah Franziska, ed. Race: The Origins of an Idea, 1760-1850. Bristol, England: Thoemmes Press, 1996. ISBN 1-85506-454-5
• Dain, Bruce R. A Hideous Monster of the Mind: American Race Theory in the Early Republic. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-674-00946-0
• Banton, Michael P. Racial Theories. 2nd ed. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-33456-X
• Foucault, Michel. Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège De France, 1975-76. Trans. David Macey. Eds. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. City: Picador, 2003. ISBN 0-312-20318-7
• Gossett, Thomas F.. Race: The History of an Idea in America. 1963. Ed. and with a foreword by Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Arnold Rampersad. Oxford, England: Oxford UP, 1997. ISBN 0-19-509778-5
• Gould, Stephen Jay. The Mismeasure of Man. Rev. and expand ed. New York: Norton, 1996. ISBN 0-393-03972-2
• Hannaford, Ivan. Race: The History of an Idea in the West. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1996. ISBN 0-8018-5222-6
• Shipman, Pat. The Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the Use and Abuse of Science. 1994. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-674-00862-6

[edit] External links

Dictionary definitions

• Definition of "race" in the 1913 Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary provided by the ARTFL Project, University of Chicago.
• Definition of "race" in the Wiktionary

Web sites devoted to the history of "race"

• History of Race in Science is a web site devoted to providing information for scholars and students of the history of "race" in science, medicine, and technology. This site is maintained at the Department of History at the University of Toronto and includes excellent subject bibliographies as well as an annotated link list.
• PBS website for the three-part television documentary "Race-The Power of an Illusion" with background reading and teaching resources.