Race, By Ali Rattansi And ' Between Barack And A Hard Place '

Sociologist define race as a “socially defined category based on real or percived biological differnces between groups of people”. In the 19th century biologist came up with the three different categories that groups the three human races: Mongoloid, Causasoid and Negroid. They belived that different races where charaterized by biological makeup. But modern sciences have proved that theory to be wrong because there is no such thing as a “pure” race. We are 99.9% genetically idenitcal. Race is just a concept humans made up, it isn’t actually real.

The PBS series “Race: The Power of an Illusion” effectively works to expose race as a social construct and deconstructs the false notions that race is a biological marker. The series first discusses that all human beings originated from Africa but dispersed about 70,000 years ago to various places in the world. As a result of this migration, people were spread to different locations throughout the world with different environmental conditions that affected their physical traits. It was many years after the migration in which people began to display these new physical traits such as slanted eyes, fair skin, and differing hair textures. While the series notes the physical changes that occurred during the migration it also emphasizes that race while it may seem apparent in skin color and other physical features has no real biological basis.

The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident

Race is defined in our textbook as a group of people who share a set of characteristics- typically these characteristics are described as physical ones, common bloodlines. We often think as race in relation to racism, which is a belief that members of a separate race possess different and unequal traits coupled with the power to restrict freedoms based on those differences. Racism is connected with three different keys in belief, that humans are in different groups in relation to bloodlines and physical types, that these

Race is a social construct that was developed to classify people into vast different groups through ethnic, anatomical, cultural, genetic, historical, linguistic, geographical, and social attachment. Initially, race referred to people using a common language to identify national affiliations, but with time observable physical traits were used to denote race. The idea of race means that humans are divisible into biologically distinct and exclusive groups in terms of physical and cultural features. The ideology of race is also associated with the beliefs of the superiority of white people. These beliefs were concretized during the Scientific Revolution and American colonization that established political relations between Europeans and people with different cultural and political backgrounds. Therefore, race is a social construction, the idea that people have perceived through their daily interaction. Race does not have any significance in taxonomy because all humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens. Assertions from various scholars

A relatively recent topic, meaning in the last one hundred year, within society is the concept of race and if it is biologically true, this meaning that evidence suggests a biological reason behind the different categories of race that are independent from social, economical, or personal views. This type of discussion can raise many concerns, questioning the possible social constructs revolving around race and its reason for being used in society today.

The title of the paper intends to raise awareness about the large number of historians and activists still struggling to clearly define their understanding of racial identities. Given the complex use of the term “race” in biology, in everyday life, and in the social sciences, this does not come as a surprise. However, without properly addressing issues of historical and present understandings of race, both scholars and activists run the risk of reinforcing rather than challenging racial misconceptions.

As defined by Guest in the textbook, race is a flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics (such as skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and eye color) to divide the human population into supposedly discrete groups. The issue of race has been a very controversial topic for many years now and rightfully so. Race has become a huge aspect of our social society and has resulted in many riots, petitions, genocides, and killings have even resulted in separations of entire populations of people. There is a plethora of reasons to why the concept of race is flawed such as the fact that race is a sociocultural construction, and has no biological reality. Or that racial categories that many of us are accustom with and have experienced, differ from society to society and are not stable to use as a concrete statistic for classification of

In the nineteenth century biologist attempted to create a science of racial differences that would support the view of racialism. “These traits and tendencies characteristic of a race constitute, on the racialist view, a sort of racial essence; and it is part of the content of racialism that the essential heritable characteristics of what the nineteenth century called the “Races of Man” account for more than the visible morphological characteristics—skin color, hair type, facial features—on the basis of which we make our informal classification (Appiah 394). As of today, most scientists working in these fields continue to reject racialism. The claims of racialism are not supported by science. Plausibly, Appiah states that racialism doesn’t necessarily have to be an ethical issue. An individual may possibly acknowledge racialism but still believe that constructive moral characteristics are equally disseminated across the different races. But, what is logically possible and what usually occurs are two different things. “I believe—and I have argued elsewhere—that racialism is false; but by itself it seems to be a cognitive rather than a moral problem” (Appiah 394).

Race can be generally defined as the clear cut divisions of human kind on their physical characteristics. However, the aspect of race is far more in depth than meets the eye. Other factors that have been argued to include what makes a race are genetics, social relations and ancestry. The most fundamental concept that has been attached to race more than the biological traits is the social

J. Rushton argues that the stereotypical racial divisions are not only an accurate taxonomy of society but also serves as a key divider of human species into a hierarchical community (Rushton, 41). It was mostly during the 19th through 20th centuries that race was widely known as a biological construct, and this was often referred to as biological realism (Andreasen, 653). In today’s time theorists, such as Franz Boas (Boasianism) and Stuart Hall, argue to abolish racial segregation due to biological standards, rather they see race as a discursive and social construct. Templeton said during a panel discussion on National Public Television’s “Race: The Power of an Allusion“ that there are not enough genetic differences between groups of people to say that there are sub lineages (races) of humans…There is more and more hard generic evidence that all of humanity has evolved as a single unit…”(Fitzpatrick) This idea of race being a social construct has gained great notoriety among prestige theorists of our modern time. Brown writes that genetic elasticity proves that there are no specific traits distinct to one group (race), that throughout history the different traits have been embedded into our genetics through generations and have been far too intermixed to define specific races (Brown,

The English term ‘race’ is believed to originate from the Spanish word raza, which means ‘breed’ or ‘stock’ (Race). People use race to define other groups, this separation of groups is based largely on physical features. Features like skin color and hair don’t affect the fundamental biology of human variation (Hotz). Race is truly only skin deep, there are no true biological separations between two ‘racial’ groups. Scientifically speaking, there is more variation between single local groups than there is between two large, global groups; the human variation is constantly altering (Lewontin). The majority of today’s anthropologists agree that race is a form of social categorization, not the separation of groups based on biological

Race is not biological but rather a term that has been socially constructed. Race has been socially constructed as a way to put individuals into racial classifications that are made up of groups thought to share particular distinctive physical characteristics, such as skin color and facial features. Race is not in any way connected to our genetic genes so it cannot be traced back biologically. Race is a term that has changed over time and does not have a fixed definition. However, through our readings, we know that race has been determined by social and political entities. Race has been created and made to be physically different as a way to fuel beliefs of superiority and inferiority.

It is important to explore the word ‘race’. Race for some individuals is biological and there is nothing society can do about it. However, there are others that think race has been socially constructed throughout time. When taking a closer look, it might be true that society categorizes

For many years race was to distinguish the different types of cultures and backgrounds of people but Anthropologist proposed to use the term ethnicity to better distinguish between the two terms. As it states in Essentials of Physical Anthropology, “ethnicity refers to cultural factors, but the fact that the words ethnicity and race are used interchangeably reflects the social importance of phenotypic expression and demonstrates once again how phenotype is mistakenly associated with culturally defend variables” (313-14). Although many still will confuse the two terms, human variation helps Anthropologists determine that all humans belong to the same polytypic species, Homo sapiens. Aside from physical differences, all humans fall within the