Race and Racism

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Race and Racism
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What is race?
We all know that people look different. Anyone
can tell a Czech from a Chinese. But are these
differences racial? What does race mean?
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Traditional view

• distinct divisions of the human species into
  groups based on physical characteristics such as
• skin color,
• eye and nose shape, - hair texture, etc.

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(No Transcript)
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Which Race?
English French Jews Gypsies Norwegians Saudi
Arabians Ukranians Koreans Nigerians Ethiopians
Algerians Native Americans Inuit Italians Australi
an aborigines Egyptians South Africans Chinese The
Baka New Guineans
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What race is this man?
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ddPaternal Grandparents 1 White 1 Native
American 2 Black
ddMaternal Grandparents 2 Chinese 2 Thai
Mother
Father
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What assumptions lie behind the designation of
Tiger Woods as an African American?

• The drop of blood theory
• Southern segregation laws 1/64 black black
• The obsession to classify people by race in the
  US
• These are social, not biological ideas

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• very few genes determine racial appearance
• Hair form types and skin colours shade into each
  other there is no line in nature between a white
  and a black race, or Asian race
• Simplistic racial categories based merely upon a
  few traits hardly constitute a scientific
  approach to human biological variability.
• while there is plenty of genetic variation in
  humans, most of the variation is individual
  variation.
• While between-population variation exists, it is
  minimal

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• There are no races in the biological sense of
  distinct divisions of the human species
• The physical traits chosen to define race are
  basically arbitrary and could be things such as
  red hair, or ear, nose or eye shape

• terms like Black, White, Asian, and Latino are
  social groups, not genetically distinct branches
  of humankind.
• "Race is a real cultural, political and economic
  concept in society

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Race is

• Categories defined and assigned significance by
  the society
• an ever changing complex of meanings shaped by
  sociopolitical conflict
• not a fixed, concrete, natural attribute
• the institutionalisation of physical appearance
• socially or culturally and historically
  constructed
• shaped by those in power.
• meaningful
• social meaning which has been legally constructed
  
• racial differences exist and are perpetuated
  because they have cultural significance

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S.Washburn, anthropologist
the number of races will depend on the purpose
of classification. I think we should require
people who propose a classification of races to
state in the first place why they wish to divide
the human species.
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The Anthropology View
Although people obviously differ from each other
physically, we are not able to attribute
differences in culture to differences in physique
(or mentality). In our study of culture,
therefore, we may regard human race as of uniform
quality, i.e., as a constant, and, hence, we
eliminate it from our study.Leslie White
(1900-1975)
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Social Meaning of Race Affects

• Access to wealth, power and prestige
• Access to education, housing, and other valued
  resources
• Where you live
• How you are treated
• Life chances
• Life expectancy

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Health Disparity
                                             
                                                  
                                                  
                                    
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• The U.S. Census Bureau began gathering data by
  race in 1790 because the Constitution specified
  that a slave counted as three-fifths of a white
  person, and because Indians were not taxed.
• More recently, the way in which information
  regarding race is collected has been hotly
  debated.
• Some social scientists and interested citizens
  have been working to add a multiracial category
  to the census.
• This multiracial category has been opposed by
  the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza
  because both groups feel that the communities
  they represent will lose access to funding,
  resources, and jobs if their numbers as counted
  by the census go down.

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• The choice of some other race more than doubled
  between 1980 and 2000.
• This represents an imprecision in and
  dissatisfaction with the existing categories.
• Also, the number of interracial marriages and
  children is increasing.

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Some people argue that since race has no
biological existence, the U.S. government should
cease collecting data about race the American
Sociological Association asks Would Race
Disappear if the United States Officially Stopped
Measuring It?
As long as Americans routinely sort each other
into racial categories and act on the basis of
those attributions, research on the role of race
and race relations in the United States falls
squarely within a scientific agenda...As the
United States becomes more diverse, the need for
public agencies to continue to collect data on
racial categories will become even more
important. The continuation of the collection
and scholarly analysis of data serves both
science and the public interest. --American
Sociological Assoc.
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Statistics Canada

• Collects information on
• Visible minorities
• persons who are identified according to the
  Employment Equity Act as being non-Caucasian in
  race or non-white in colour
• Aboriginal persons are not considered to be
  members of visible minority groups
• Ethnicity
• includes aspects such as race, origin or
  ancestry, identity, language and religion,
  culture, the arts, customs and beliefs and even
  practices such as dress and food preparation.
• It is also dynamic and in a constant state of
  flux. It will change as a result of new
  immigration flows, blending and intermarriage,
  and new identities may be formed.

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• There are fundamental three ways of measuring
  ethnicity origin or ancestry, race and identity.
• Race refers to the genetically imparted
  physiognomical features of a person
• The change in format to an open-ended question
  in 1996 likely affected response patterns,
  especially for groups who had been included as
  mark-in response categories in 1991.
• In addition, the presence of examples such as
  "Canadian", which were not included in previous
  censuses, may also affect response patterns.

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Ethnicity

• Each of us has an ethnicity- frequently confused
  with race
• Shared cultural characteristics of a group
• Includes national origin, language, traditions,
  customs, religious beliefs/practices, etc. as
  well as racial category
• The American Anthropological Association has
  recommended that the Census Bureau eliminate the
  term "race" and replace it with "ethnic origins,"
  noting that many Americans confuse race,
  ethnicity and ancestry.

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A Brief History of race

• Race did not exist until the European expansion
  and exploration beginning around 1500

• The ancient Greeks, for example, saw themselves
  as first among civilized nations around the
  Mediterranean
• But the Greeks did not link physical appearance
  and cultural attainment.
• They granted civilized status to the Nile Valley
  Nubians who were among the darkest skinned people
  they knew
• They did not grant it to European barbarians to
  the north who were lighter skinned than they were
• People were divided on the basis of religion,
  class or language or status

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The distribution of human skin color before A.D.
1400
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• Slavery
• Before the 1400s slavery was widespread in state
  societies
• but its victims were either recruited internally
  or from neighbouring groups and were largely
  physically indistinguishable from slave-holders.
  i .e. slavery was not based on race

Egyptian slaves

• Slavery was a status that might be held by
  anyone.
• Slave descendants could acculturate into the
  dominant population and did not become
  permanently demarcated by race.

Romans slaves pouring wine
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After 1500

• European exploration brought them increasingly
  into contact with other human societies

• Europeans did not encounter them on equal terms
• superior technology, especially military
  technology, meant Europeans were significantly
  more powerful

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As a result, exploration quickly turned to
conquest and gave rise to an Ethnocentric feeling
of European superiority.
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After 1500 a racial order built on the
ethnocentrism of the various European colonial
powers.
A Women of Color with her African Slave. 1804
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• What struck explorers most forcefully were
  differences in physical appearance particularly
  skin colour
• An early distinction emerged between those who
  had black skin as opposed to had white skin.

• This characterisation was important because of
  the way in which the colours black and white were
  emotionally loaded concepts in European languages
  especially English
• The contrasts denoted polar opposites
• white represented good, purity and virginity
• black symbolized death, evil and debasement
• Africans, native Americans, and colonised Asians
  were devalued, intermarriage was prohibited and
  persons of mixed ancestry were denied same
  entitlements as those of solely European ancestry

• evident in all European colonial societies by the
  late 1600s

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Races as families or inbred lines

• 16th 17th C race used interchangeably with
  type, variety, people, nation, generation
  species
• By the latter half of the 18th C race is strongly
  equated with breeding stock
• Farmers and herders understand animal breeds as
  highly inbred lineages with heritable
  characteristics
• Emphasizes innateness of characteristics
• Value judgments were and are critical to choosing
  the reproducing members of a line of stock,
  because one breeds for some specific, valued
  quality

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• The Scientific basis of race
• The concept of race emerged in modern form
  between the end of the 18th century and the
  middle of the 19th.
• Its emergence is, in part, an aspect of the
  general growth of scientific enquiry and
  explanation
• In the 1700s as Western science developed it
  began thinking about, and explaining natural and
  social phenomena and to place the worlds peoples
  into natural schemes
• a drive was underway to map and explain a similar
  order in the natural and social worlds.

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Formal Human Classification Linneaus Systemae
Naturae, 1758

• Europeaeus
• White muscular hair long, flowing eyes blue
• Americanus
• Reddish erect hair black, straight, thick
  wide nostrils
• Asiaticus
• Sallow (yellow) hair black eyes dark
• Africanus
• Black hair black, frizzled skin silky nose
  flat lips tumid

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Formal Human Classification Linneaus Systemae
Naturae, 1758

• Europeaeus
• White muscular hair long, flowing eyes blue
• Americanus
• Reddish erect hair black, straight, thick
  wide nostrils
• Asiaticus
• Sallow (yellow) hair black eyes dark
• Africanus
• Black hair black, frizzled skin silky nose
  flat lips tumid

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culminated in 1795 when Johann Friedrich
Blumenbach first used the word race to classify
humans into five divisions

• Caucasian,
• Malayan
• Ethiopian,
• American
• Mongolian,

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752-1840)
Blumenbach also coined the term "Caucasian"
because he believed that the Caucasus region of
Asia Minor produced "the most beautiful race of
men".
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• 1830s and 1840s Philadelphia doctor and
  polygenist Samuel Morton set out to prove that
  whites were naturally superior and that brain
  size bore a direct relation to intelligence

• He collected hundreds of human skulls and
  measured them by filling the skulls with lead
  pellets and then pouring the pellets into a glass
  measuring cup.
• His tables assign the highest brain capacity to
  Europeans (with the English highest of all).
  Second rank goes to Chinese, third to Southeast
  Asians and Polynesians, fourth to American
  Indians, and last place to Africans and
  Australian aborigines.

Samuel G. Morton (1799-1851)

• His work helped establish the scientific basis
  for physical anthropology but also the idea that
  race is inherently biological

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• In 1977 Stephen Jay Gould (In the Mismeasure of
  Man 1981), reanalysed the data
• discovered that Mortons racist bias had
  prevented identification of what clearly were
  fully overlapping measurements among the racial
  skull samples he used.
• Gould in his desire to prove Morton wrong
  demonstrated the opposite bias and discovered
  that the skulls of black people were actually
  larger.
• He then did a blind test and discovered the
  overlapping measurements

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Breaking the link between race and anthropology

• Boas in the 1890s broke the link of anthropology
  with race by showing that language, race and
  culture were separate things and needed to be
  studied separately.
• Showed that mappings of Northwest Coast Native
  American biological traits, cultural similarities
  and linguistic affinities yielded different
  results.

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• The Concept of race under attack
• The revelation of the Holocaust, and the
  enlistment of science in its perpetuation, caused
  a wave of international revulsion.
• In the 1960s the idea of race itself became the
  target
• The anti-racists attacked the notion that the
  human species was divisible into five or any
  other small number of races.
• the result was the gradual disappearance of the
  concept of race from natural science
• In the 1960s a anthropology affirmed that race
  does not exist

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Racism
Homo sapiens celebrating their diversity (from
the American Anthropological Association
Newsletter).
Vending-machine in Jackson, Tennessee
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What is Racism?

• a doctrine or belief in racial superiority,
  including the idea that race determines
  intelligence, cultural characteristics and moral
  attributes
• Racism thus makes an association between physical
  psychological and moral attributes
• and these are used to justify discrimination and
  prejudice.

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Racialism

• The belief that differences between human beings
  are inherited such that people can be ordered
  into separate races where each race shares traits
  and tendencies not shared by members of any
  other race. Each race has an 'essence'.
• Race was essentialized i.e. it came to be seen as
  real, natural, and unquestionable
• All forms of racism build from the premise of
  racialism. Notice that racialism is not saying
  anything 'good' or 'bad' about races just that
  mutually exclusive races absolutely exist and
  divide the species.

• Over the centuries, dominant groups have used
  racial ideology to justify, explain, and preserve
  their privileged social positions.
• Racism is the socially-organized result of race
  ranking

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I have a Dream
Martin Luther King I have a dream that my four
children will one day live in a nation where they
are not judged by the colour of their skin but by
the content of their character
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Racism

• The notion of ascribing moral, social or
  political significance to a persons genetic
  lineage
• Which means, in practice, that a person is to be
  judged, not by their own character and actions,
  but by the character and actions of a collective
  of ancestors.
• Even if it were proved that the incidence of a
  men of potentially superior brain power is
  greater among the members of certain races than
  among the members of others, it would tell us
  nothing about any given individual and it would
  be irrelevant to ones judgement of him.
• Should a Hitler be raised to superior status
  because his German race has produced Goethe,
  Brahms, Wagner, etc.

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• A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of
  morons who belong to the same race - and a moron
  is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses
  who share his racial origin.

• Racism claims that the content of a persons
  mind (not their cognitive apparatus, but its
  content) is inherited
• that a persons conviction, values and character
  are determined before they are born, by physical
  factors beyond their control.
• Race is employed in order to classify and
  systematically exclude members of given groups
  from full participation in the social system
  controlled by the dominant group

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Levi Strauss sums up racism doctrine in 4
points 1. There is a correlation between genetic
heritage on the one hand and intellectual
aptitudes and moral inclinations on the other 2.
All members of human groups share this heritage,
on which these aptitudes and inclinations
depend 3. These groups, called races, can be
evaluated as a function of the quality of their
genetic heritage 4. These differences authorise
the so-called superior races to command and
exploit the others
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• The physical features of race are unimportant in
  themselves
• They enter into social life only when people
  think they are important and act as if they are.
• What do people think and feel about the physical
  differences of race.
• How does race fit into our common sense views
• People construct racial categories which they
  then impose on their own and other groups
• They use physical appearance to mark out the
  social boundaries between groups
• They draw a false conclusion that the moral and
  intellectual achievements of groups are the
  result of their physical features.
• to claim that someone has expressed a racist
  opinion is to denounce them as immoral and
  unworthy.
• Racism is a term of political abuse
• related to power relations

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On April 20th, 1999 two gun-toting students
entered Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colo., killing 12 students and a teacher
What if they had been black?
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• In examining inequalities anthropologists are not
  concerned with inequalities of ability, aptitude
  or talent among individuals
• But concerned with inequalities that are inherent
  part of collective existence
• and that arise from the evaluation of qualities
  and performances and the organization of persons
  into more or less stable arrangements.
• These studies aim at investigating not only the
  existing patterns of inequality but also the
  mechanisms of their reproduction over time.
• A major change between the past and the present
  has been the shift of attention from the origin
  to the reproduction of inequality.