Talk:Historical definitions of race

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[edit] This page needs

This page needs:

  • Some acknowledgment of the ways in which 16th-18th century definitions of race varied considerably with 19th-century definitions
  • 18th-century definitions of race (and the role of colonialism and slavery in the simplifying of the categories)
  • The arguments over monogeny vs polygeny (are races different species or not) which was very important up through the late 19th century
  • Citations and references!

I'll try and patch some of this together at some point, but if anybody else can work on any of this, it would be appreciated. --Fastfission 03:10, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I absolutely second your caveats. I will also try to put some work into this, but there is much to do. For now, I will just include a few references as a starting point. --Jottce 07:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] POV?

User:Agurzil deleted the following paragraphs on Carleton Coon on the grounds that he/she thought they were POV:

Coon assigned even some populations on the northern fringe of 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 [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/64/C006/057.html#RACE), perhaps because his liberal opponents who de-emphasized the significance and definability of race, naturally did not introduce any superseding classification to drive them out of use. 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.

I don't see what's POV enough about them to warrant total deletion -- it explains that Coon's theory was pretty controversial in its day and is currently used by white nationalists in particular. All of these statements as quite true and attribute opinions to their sources, generally speaking. A little better attribution could be warranted, and the paragraphs could be a little better written, but that's not really the question here. --Fastfission 01:34, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • 1st POV statement : "Coon assigned even some populations on the northern fringe of sub-Saharan Africa to a broadly defined Caucasoid race (...) n order to depict the remaining "Congoid" race as lacking in culture."
  • 2nd POV statement : "European "subraces", is popular with racist groups who agree with the existence of distinct racial types, and is widely reproduced on "white nationalist" websites."--Agurzil 19:16, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • If *some* people people thought that his work was racist, it does not mean that his writing were "idely accused, even at the time, of obsolete thinking or outright racism". That's a POV statement, *many anthropologists use his work, if some retarded people use it for other puroposes it's not important. I personally use his his work for entertainment puroposes, should that be included in the article? no, the one who added white nationalists into the article had an agenda.
I don't understand why you find those statements to be a non-neutral POV -- they seem pretty straightforward to me. Please explain a bit further about the bias you think they contain.
Coon was widely accused of being backwards in his racial theories in his time and especially now. Are you disputing this? I'd be happy to provide some quotes from prominent anthropological works on the subject, both current and contemporary. There's even a nice little article on the controversy about Coon within and outside the scientific community at [1].
--Fastfission 21:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Focus and structure of the article

The article seems to me to go in two directions:

  1. History of the usage of the word "race" in the English language;
  2. History of scientific race theories in the West

The two are, of course related, but by no means identical. I am not sure how one could sort this out. The article was actually started by just dumping in one historical definition (the 1913 Webster's) verbatim without commentary. I just removed this section, because the rest of the article seemed to go in direction (2). However, the introductory paragraph still mostly refers to word usage. I am not sure how one could deal with this. It might be best to move the History of scientific race theories into a separate article and refer word usage to the Wiktionary (?) or to a more fleshed-out article on the etymology of the word. It seems to me that some of the material that is still in race (which is much too long anyways) could be transfered to an article devoted to the history of race as a concept in science and related fields.

--Jottce 16:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Map key

The map key is very visually distracting when viewing the rest of the page. Perhaps something usch as:

  1. European, North African, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American race (shown as white)
  2. East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Central Asian race (shown as blue)
  3. Sub-Saharan African race (shown as red)
  4. Lapp race (shown as green)

would work better. It's not perfect (calling anything shown as white on a page about race makes me uneasy) but currently it is far too tacky. Thoughts? --Lunar Jesters (talk) 21:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The maps are tacky and unnecessary IMHO. Also looks like someone is playing at racial parody too on some maps with reference to an "Orang-utang race." Allegedly Edward Long, a former British colonial administrator with strong anti-black views, in Jamaica in the 1700s, made the following joke sometime: 'Ludicrous as the opinion may seem I do not think that an orangutang husband would be any dishonour to a Hottentot female.' Apparently someone with a lot of time on their hands and a graphics program, felt moved to convert this marginal garbage into a "map" of "races" with reference to "orangutangs." Such nonsense is typical of what makes many Wikipedia articles so poor.Enriquecardova 23:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sanskrit etymology

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), and is a cognate of Sanskrit jAti (caste).

"Jati"?! For the life of me, I can't see the relation between that and "gens" or "genos". Can anyone confirm/refute with a source?... FilipeS 21:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is any of this cited?

I have never seen so much original research in my life. This page needs to be deleted ASAP. There's no such thing as an Africoid race. It's called negroid. And who the hell created these images? And how can you create an article about historical definitions of race without including the most common 3 race model: Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid? Removeor

The term "africoid" was created here year or two ago, when someone decided that the term "negroid" is not noble enough. This is an example where Wiki fails: if you have an agenda and lot of time you push it through eventually. Pavel Vozenilek 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maps and "historical definition"

See Map key subsection above. I agree that the maps are distracting and do not provide any real value to the article. I think the user who put them did that with the good intent of demonstrating the sillyness of such theories by showing their diversity and contradiction. But I find the text in red, green, blue, not very pretty, and surely one or two of these maps is enough to make the point. IMO, they should be moved to Mediawiki, and a link provided here with "More media wiki" available, if anyone wants to compare them. Right now, it is just impossible to concentrate on the article and see something else than these maps. Another question I have regards the title of this article itself: what is "historical definition" supposed to mean? Shouldn't this simply be merged to scientific racism? If "historical definition" is supposed to refer to the biological conception of race, I am all too afraid that this one survives to this day (via modern racial theories which claims to find scientific proofs in genetics). If this is the case, then it should be named Race (biological definition). Tazmaniacs 02:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


Agree, there are too many maps. futurebird 02:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Following the many criticisms of these maps on the talk page, I removed them and kept the one that hadn't stuff written in all colours. I do still wonder if this page should not be merged in scientific racism, or be renamed to race (biological definition) (which could lead to an opposition between scientific racism of the 19th century, based on a biological conception of race, and modern racism, such as supported by the Nouvelle Droite and others proponents, which has admitted cultural relativism theories exposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and others but adapted them to their discourses - which mainly states that some cultures are superior than others and that they should not mix together, claiming in the same time that they totally respect others cultures). Tazmaniacs 02:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, let's propose a merge and see how others feel about it. futurebird 02:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the maps. They further advance a view not supported by the citations in this article. They present roundly debunked and discredited 'research' into racialism as factually based, like a bus time table or parhaps the distibution of language. The lead of the article is also factually incorrect, species contain races, maybe. This article should be about the the biological idea of race as it applies to species, and the history of that still contentious proposition.
As for humans, and the sociological implications of the term, this article entangles any ideas and formulations of otherness and presents various conceptions of 'race' as a discovered fact. It can not be so. Fred ☻ 18:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge from Race (classification of human beings)

Just merged a bunch of info from Race (classification of human beings). Please take a look and feel free to make any changes, as I'm not an expert in this field. Cheers =) --slakr\ talk / 00:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Large graphical box

I took this quote out:

"Thus human beings of whatever nationality, "race," or creed are representatives of the species Homo sapiens, of the family Hominidae, of the genus Homo," Lancelot T. Hogben, Principles of Animal Biology, p. 261. Christophers: London (1930).Submitted by Drdavidh, David Hogben, Ph.D.

because it was in a huge box that was necessitating a lot of side scrolling. I run 1280x800. I couldn't figure out why it was in that box. When I went to edit it, it was just pasted in there like that above. So, I took it out.

Tjshermer (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)