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Race

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Culture and Diversity

   The term race distinguishes one population of an animal species from
   another of the same subspecies. The most widely used human racial
   categories are based on visible traits (especially skin colour and
   facial features), genes, and self-identification. Conceptions of race,
   as well as specific racial groupings, vary by culture and time and are
   often controversial due to their impact on social identity and identity
   politics, and many regard race as a social construct. Legal
   definitions, common usage, and scientific meaning can all be
   confounded, and care must be taken to note the context in which it is
   used.

   Since the 1940s, evolutionary scientists have rejected the view of race
   according to which any number of finite lists of essential
   characteristics could be used to determine a like number of races. For
   example, the convention of categorizing the human population based on
   human skin colors has been used, but hair colors, eye colors, nose
   sizes, lip sizes, and heights have not. Many evolutionary and social
   scientists think common race definitions, or any race definitions
   pertaining to humans, lack taxonomic rigour and validity. They argue
   that race definitions are imprecise, arbitrary, derived from custom,
   have many exceptions, have many gradations, and that the numbers of
   races observed vary according to the culture examined. They further
   maintain that "race" as such is best understood as a social construct,
   and they prefer to conceptualize and analyze human genotypic and
   phenotypic variation in terms of populations and clines instead.

   Some scientists, however, have argued that this position is motivated
   more by political than scientific reasons. Some others also argue that
   categories of self-identified race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry
   are both valid and useful, that these categories correspond to clusters
   inferred from multilocus genetic data, and that this correspondence
   implies that genetic factors might contribute to unexplained phenotypic
   variation among groups.

History

Popular concepts of "race"

   Given visually complex social relationships, humans presumably have
   always observed and speculated about the physical differences between
   individuals and groups. But different societies have attributed
   markedly different meanings to these distinctions. The division of
   humanity into distinct "races" can be traced as far back as the Ancient
   Egyptian sacred text the Book of Gates, which identifies four
   categories that are now conventionally labelled "Egyptians",
   "Asiatics", "Libyans", and "Nubians". However, such distinctions tended
   to merge differences defined by features such as skin colour, with
   tribal and national identity. Classical civilizations from Rome to
   China tended to invest much more importance in family or tribal
   affiliations than in physical appearance (Dikötter 1992; Goldenberg
   2003). Ancient Greek and Roman authors also attempted to explain and
   categorize visible biological differences between peoples known to
   them. Such categories often also included fantastical human-like beings
   that were supposed to exist in far-away lands. Some Roman writers
   adhered to an environmental determinism in which climate could affect
   the appearance and character of groups (Isaac 2004). But in many
   ancient civilizations, individuals with widely varying physical
   appearances could become full members of a society by growing up within
   that society or by adopting the society's cultural norms (Snowden 1983;
   Lewis 1990). Medieval models of race mixed Classical ideas with the
   notion that humanity as a whole was descended from Shem, Ham and
   Japheth, the three sons of Noah, producing distinct Semitic (Asian),
   Hamitic (African), and Japhetic (European) peoples. This scheme leaves
   out Asian, Meso-American, and Oceanic ethnic groups entirely.

   After the end of the Reconquista, the Spanish Inquisition persecuted
   Jews and Muslims, theorizing a limpieza de sangre ("blood-purity" or
   "blood-cleansing") doctrine. Furthermore, after the discovery of the
   New World, Bartolomé de Las Casas opposed the conquistadores theories,
   upheld by Sepúlveda, on the pretended Amerindians's absence of souls.

   It wasn't until the 16th century that the word race entered the English
   language, from the French race - "race, breed, lineage" (which in turn
   was probably a loan from Italian razza). Meanings of the term in the
   16th century included "wines with a characteristic flavour", "people
   with common occupation", and " generation". The meaning "tribe" or "
   nation" emerged in the 17th century. The modern meaning, "one of the
   major divisions of mankind", dates to the late 18th century, but it
   never became exclusive (cf. continued use of "the human race"). The
   ultimate origin of the word is unknown; suggestions include Arabic
   ra'is meaning "head", but also "beginning" or "origin".

   In Society Must be Defended (1978-79), Michel Foucault traced the
   "historical and political discourse" of "race struggle" to the 1688
   "Glorious Revolution" in England and Louis XIV's reign in France,
   during which conflicting political values were ascribed to ancestral
   ethnicities (Saxon, Norman, Frankish etc). According to him, these
   debates initiated a form of "popular history" based on ethnic identity,
   as opposed to the classical juridical and philosophical discourse of
   sovereignty. In England, it was used by Edward Coke and John Lilburne
   to demand " inalienable rights" and oppose the monarchy. In France,
   Boulainvilliers, Nicolas Fréret, and then Sieyès, Augustin Thierry and
   Cournot reappropriated this discourse. During the 19th century, the
   discourse developed in two different directions. On the one hand,
   according to Foucault, Marxists seized this historical and political
   discourse, replacing the essentialist notion of "race" with the
   historical and social concept of " class struggle." On the other hand,
   also according to Foucault, at the end of the 19th century, the notion
   of "race" was adopted by racist biologists and eugenicists, who gave it
   the modern sense of "biological race", which was then integrated to "
   state racism". This displacement of discourse constitutes one of the
   basis of Foucault's thought: discourse is not tied to the subject,
   rather the "subject" is a construction of discourse.

   The English word "race", along with many of the ideas now associated
   with the term, were products of the European era of exploration
   (Smedley 1999). As Europeans encountered people from different parts of
   the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural
   differences among human groups. The rise of the African slave trade,
   which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout
   the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups to
   justify the barbarous treatment of African slaves (Meltzer 1993).
   Drawing on classical sources and on their own internal interactions —
   for example, the hostility between the English and Irish was a powerful
   influence on early thinking about the differences between people
   (Takaki 1993) — Europeans began to sort themselves and others into
   groups associated with physical appearance and with deeply ingrained
   behaviors and capacities. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked
   inherited physical differences between groups to inherited
   intellectual, behavioural, and moral qualities (Banton 1977). Although
   similar ideas can be found in other cultures (Lewis 1990; Dikötter
   1992), they appear not to have had as much influence on social
   structures as they did in Europe and the parts of the world colonized
   by Europeans. However, often brutal conflicts between ethnic groups
   have existed throughout history and across the world, and racial
   prejudice against Africans also exists in non-colonised countries such
   as Japan and China.

Scientific concepts of "race"

   The first scientific attempts to categorize race date from the 17th
   century, along with the development of European imperialism and
   colonization around the world. The first post- Classical published
   classification of humans into distinct races seems 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.

17th and 18th century

   In the 18th century, the differences between human groups became a
   focus of scientific investigation (Todorov 1993). Initially, scholars
   focused on cataloging and describing "The Natural Varieties of
   Mankind," as Johann Friedrich Blumenbach entitled his 1775 text (which
   established the five major divisions of humans still reflected in some
   racial classifications). From the 17th through the 19th centuries, the
   merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific
   explanations of those differences produced what one scholar has called
   an " ideology of race" (Smedley 1999). According to this ideology,
   races are primordial, natural, enduring, and distinct. Some groups
   might be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations,
   but careful study can distinguish the ancestral races that had combined
   to produce admixed groups.

19th century

   The 19th century saw attempts to change race from a taxonomic to a
   biological concept. In the 19th century a number of natural scientists
   wrote on race: Georges Cuvier, Charles Darwin, Alfred Wallace, Francis
   Galton, James Cowles Pritchard, Louis Agassiz, Charles Pickering, and
   Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. As the science of anthropology took shape
   in the 19th century, European and American scientists increasingly
   sought explanations for the behavioural and cultural differences they
   attributed to groups (Stanton 1960). For example, using
   anthropometrics, invented by Francis Galton and Alphonse Bertillon,
   they measured the shapes and sizes of skulls and related the results to
   group differences in intelligence or other attributes (Lieberman 2001).

   These scientists made three claims about race: first, that races are
   objective, naturally occurring divisions of humanity; second, that
   there is a strong relationship between biological races and other human
   phenomena (such as forms of activity and interpersonal relations and
   culture, and by extension the relative material success of cultures),
   thus biologizing the notion of "race", as Foucault demonstrated in his
   historical analysis; third, that race is therefore a valid scientific
   category that can be used to explain and predict individual and group
   behaviour. Races were distinguished by skin colour, facial type,
   cranial profile and size, texture and colour of hair. Moreover, races
   were almost universally considered to reflect group differences in
   moral character and intelligence.

   The eugenics movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
   inspired by Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human
   Races (1853-1855), Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology" asserted as
   self-evident the biological inferiority of particular groups (Kevles
   1985). In many parts of the world, the idea of race became a way of
   rigidly dividing groups by culture as well as by physical appearances
   (Hannaford 1996). Campaigns of oppression and genocide were often
   motivated by supposed racial differences (Horowitz 2001).

   In Charles Darwin's most controversial book, The Descent of Man, he
   made strong suggestions of racial differences and European superiority.
   In Darwin's view, stronger tribes of humans always replaced weaker
   tribes. As savage tribes came in conflict with civilized nations, such
   as England, the less advanced people were destroyed. The destruction of
   the weaker peoples seemed desirable to many scientists at the time. It
   was thought that "fit" people would replace the "unfit" and human
   evolution would be accelerated. Nevertheless, he also noted the great
   difficulty naturalists had in trying to decide how many "races" there
   actually were (Darwin was himself a monogenist on the question of race,
   believing that all humans were of the same species and finding "race"
   to be a somewhat arbitrary distinction between groups):

          Man has been studied more carefully than any other animal, and
          yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable
          judges whether he should be classed as a single species or race,
          or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five
          (Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz),
          eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent), sixteen
          (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as
          sixty- three, according to Burke. This diversity of judgment
          does not prove that the races ought not to be ranked as species,
          but it shews that they graduate into each other, and that it is
          hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between
          them.

20th century

   At the beginning of the 20th century, anthropologists questioned, and
   subsequently abandoned, the claim that biologically distinct races are
   isomorphic with (related to) distinct linguistic, cultural, and social
   groups. Then, the rise of population genetics led some mainstream
   evolutionary scientists in anthropology and biology to question the
   very validity of race as scientific concept describing an objectively
   real phenomenon. Those who came to reject the validity of the concept,
   race, did so for four reasons: empirical, definitional, the
   availability of alternative concepts, and ethical (Lieberman and Byrne
   1993).

   The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were
   anthropologists Franz Boas, who demonstrated phenotypic plasticity due
   to environmental factors (Boas 1912) (see also ), and Ashley Montagu
   (1941, 1942), who relied on evidence from genetics. Zoologists Edward
   O. Wilson and W. Brown then challenged the concept from the perspective
   of general systematics, and further rejected the claim that "races"
   were equivalent to "subspecies" (Wilson and Brown 1953).

   One of the crucial innovations in reconceptualizing genotypic and
   phenotypic variation was anthropologist C. Loring Brace's observation
   that such variations, insofar as they are affected by natural
   selection, migration, or genetic drift, are distributed along
   geographic gradations called " clines" (Brace 1964). This point called
   attention to a problem common to phenotypic-based descriptions of races
   (for example, those based on hair texture and skin colour): they ignore
   a host of other similarities and difference (for example, blood type)
   that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus,
   anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion that, since clines cross
   racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines" (Livingstone 1962:
   279). In 1964, biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where
   two or more clines are distributed discordantly—for example, melanin is
   distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south;
   frequencies for the haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin, on the other hand,
   radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa (Ehrlich and Holm
   1964). As anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson
   observe, "Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description
   of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically
   homogeneous" (Lieverman and Jackson 1995).

   Finally, geneticist Richard Lewontin, observing that 85 percent of
   human variation occurs within populations, and not between populations,
   argued that neither "race" nor "subspecies" was an appropriate or
   useful way to describe populations (Lewontin 1973). This view is
   described by its opponents as Lewontin's Fallacy. Edwards claimed in
   2003 that Lewontin's conclusion is unwarranted because the argument
   ignores the fact that most of the information that distinguishes
   populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not
   simply in the variation of the individual factors. Dr. Leroi, an
   evolutionary developmental biologist at Imperial College in London, is
   one of the scientists that agrees with Edwards.

   Some researchers report the variation between racial groups (measured
   by Sewall Wright's population structure statistic F[ST]) accounts for
   as little as 5% of human genetic variation^2. However, because of
   technical limitations of F[ST], many geneticists now believe that low
   F[ST] values do not invalidate the suggestion that there might be
   different human races (Edwards, 2003). Meanwhile, neo-Marxists such as
   David Harvey (1982, 1984, 1992) believe that race is a social construct
   that serves in no way to help humans deal with their reality, and is
   used, instead, to justify and reinforce class differences.

   These empirical challenges to the concept of race forced evolutionary
   sciences to reconsider their definition of race. Mid-century,
   anthropologist William Boyd defined race as:

          A population which differs significantly from other populations
          in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it
          possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene
          loci we choose to consider as a significant "constellation"
          (Boyd 1950).

   Lieberman and Jackson (1994) have pointed out that "the weakness of
   this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the
   number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples
   reproducing." Moreover, anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested
   that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication
   of races that renders the concept itself useless (Molnar 1992).

   Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with "race" following the
   Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware
   of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination,
   apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in
   the 1960s during the American Civil Rights Movement and the emergence
   of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide.

   In the face of these issues, some evolutionary scientists have simply
   abandoned the concept of race in favour of " population." What
   distinguishes population from previous groupings of humans by race is
   that it refers to a breeding population (essential to genetic
   calculations) and not to a biological taxon. Other evolutionary
   scientists have abandoned the concept of race in favour of cline
   (meaning, how the frequency of a trait changes along a geographic
   gradient). The concepts of population and cline are not, however,
   mutually exclusive and both are used by many evolutionary scientists.

   In the face of this rejection of race by some evolutionary scientists,
   many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word
   "ethnicity" to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs in
   shared religion, nationality, or race. Moreover, they understood these
   shared beliefs to mean that religion, nationality, and race itself are
   social constructs and have no objective basis in the supernatural or
   natural realm (Gordon 1964). See also the American Anthropological
   Association's Statement on Race .

Summary of different definitions of race

   CAPTION: Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles, 2003) et al.

   Concept Reference Definition
   Essentialist Hooton (1926) "A great division of mankind, characterized
   as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which
   have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague
   physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual
   variations, and realized best in a composite picture."
   Taxonomic Mayr (1969) "An aggregate of phenotypically similar
   populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the
   range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations
   of the species."
   Population Dobzhansky (1970) "Races are genetically distinct Mendelian
   populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes,
   they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."
   Lineage Templeton (1998) "A subspecies (race) is a distinct
   evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a
   subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic
   exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the
   subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current
   genetic differentiation."
   Clade Levin (2002) Race "connotes geographic ancestry, by continent or
   large continental subregion" and "is used to denote continental or
   subcontinental clades". In "Cladistic taxonomy ... the basic taxon [is]
   the genealogical unit, ancestors-plus-line- (or tree) -of-descent, what
   according to the present analysis races are."

Human genetic variation

Physical variation in humans

   Map of skin-color distribution for "native populations" collected by
   Renato Biasutti prior to 1940.
   Enlarge
   Map of skin-colour distribution for "native populations" collected by
   Renato Biasutti prior to 1940.

   The distribution of many physical traits resembles the distribution of
   genetic variation within and between human populations ( American
   Association of Physical Anthropologists 1996; Keita and Kittles 1997).
   For example, ∼90% of the variation in human head shapes occurs within
   every human group, and ∼10% separates groups, with a greater
   variability of head shape among individuals with recent African
   ancestors (Relethford 2002).

   A prominent exception to the common distribution of physical
   characteristics within and among groups is skin color. Approximately
   10% of the variance in skin color occurs within groups, and ~90% occurs
   between groups (Relethford 2002). This distribution of skin colour and
   its geographic patterning—with people whose ancestors lived
   predominantly near the equator having darker skin than those with
   ancestors who lived predominantly in higher latitudes—indicate that
   this attribute has been under strong selective pressure. Darker skin
   appears to be strongly selected for in equatorial regions to prevent
   sunburn, skin cancer, the photolysis of folate, and damage to sweat
   glands (Sturm et al. 2001; Rees 2003). A leading hypothesis for the
   selection of lighter skin in higher latitudes is that it enables the
   body to form greater amounts of vitamin D, which helps prevent rickets
   (Jablonski 2004). Evidence for this includes the finding that a
   substantial portion of the differences of skin colour between Europeans
   and Africans resides in a single gene, SLC24A5 the threonine-111 allele
   of which was found in 98.7 to 100% among several European samples,
   while the alanine-111 form was found in 93 to 100% of samples of
   Africans, East Asians and Indigenous Americans (Lamason et al. 2005).
   However, the vitamin D hypothesis is not universally accepted (Aoki
   2002), and lighter skin in high latitudes may correspond simply to an
   absence of selection for dark skin (Harding et al. 2000). Melanin which
   serves as the pigment, is located in the epidermis of the skin, and is
   based on hereditary gene expression.

   Because skin color has been under strong selective pressure, similar
   skin colors can result from convergent adaptation rather than from
   genetic relatedness. Sub-Saharan Africans, tribal populations from
   southern India, and Indigenous Australians have similar skin
   pigmentation, but genetically they are no more similar than are other
   widely separated groups. Furthermore, in some parts of the world in
   which people from different regions have mixed extensively, the
   connection between skin colour and ancestry has been substantially
   weakened (Parra et al. 2004). In Brazil, for example, skin colour is
   not closely associated with the percentage of recent African ancestors
   a person has, as estimated from an analysis of genetic variants
   differing in frequency among continent groups (Parra et al. 2003).

   Considerable speculation has surrounded the possible adaptive value of
   other physical features characteristic of groups, such as the
   constellation of facial features observed in many eastern and
   northeastern Asians (Guthrie 1996). However, any given physical
   characteristic generally is found in multiple groups (Lahr 1996), and
   demonstrating that environmental selective pressures shaped specific
   physical features will be difficult, since such features may have
   resulted from sexual selection for individuals with certain appearances
   or from genetic drift (Roseman 2004).

Ancestry

   Human population structure can be inferred from multilocus DNA sequence
   data (Rosenberg et al. 2002, 2005). Individuals from 52 populations
   were examined at 993 DNA markers. This data was used to partitioned
   individuals into K = 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 clusters. In this figure, the
   average fractional membership of individuals from each population is
   represented by horizontal bars partitioned into K colored segments.
   Enlarge
   Human population structure can be inferred from multilocus DNA sequence
   data (Rosenberg et al. 2002, 2005). Individuals from 52 populations
   were examined at 993 DNA markers. This data was used to partitioned
   individuals into K = 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 clusters. In this figure, the
   average fractional membership of individuals from each population is
   represented by horizontal bars partitioned into K colored segments.

   An alternative to the use of racial or ethnic categories is to
   categorize individuals in terms of ancestry. Ancestry may be defined
   geographically (e.g., Asian, sub-Saharan African, or northern
   European), geopolitically (e.g., Vietnamese, Zambian, or Norwegian), or
   culturally (e.g., Brahmin, Lemba, or Apache). The definition of
   ancestry may recognize a single predominant source or multiple sources.
   Ancestry can be ascribed to an individual by an observer, as was the
   case with the U.S. census prior to 1960; it can be identified by an
   individual from a list of possibilities or with use of terms drawn from
   that person's experience; or it can be calculated from genetic data by
   use of loci with allele frequencies that differ geographically, as
   described above. At least among those individuals who participate in
   biomedical research, genetic estimates of biogeographical ancestry
   generally agree with self-assessed ancestry (Tang et al. 2005), but in
   an unknown percentage of cases, they do not (Brodwin 2002; Kaplan
   2003).

   Genetic data can be used to infer population structure and assign
   individuals to groups that often correspond with their self-identified
   geographical ancestry. The inference of population structure from
   multilocus genotyping depends on the selection of a large number of
   informative genetic markers. These studies usually find that groups of
   humans living on the same continent are more similar to one another
   than to groups living on different continents. Many such studies are
   criticized for assigning group identity a priori. However, even if
   group identity is stripped and group identity assigned a posteriori
   using only genetic data, population structure can still be inferred.
   For example, using 993 markers, Rosenberg et al. (2005) were able to
   assign 1,048 individuals from 52 populations around the globe to one of
   six main genetic clusters, five of which corresponded to Africa, Europe
   and the part of Asia south and west of the Himalayas, East Asia,
   Oceania, and the Americas. In many cases, subclusters that corresponded
   to individual populations or to subsets of populations were also
   identified.

   However, in analyses that assign individuals to group it becomes less
   apparent that self-described racial groups are reliable indicators of
   ancestry. One cause of the reduced power of the assignment of
   individuals to groups is admixture. Some racial or ethnic groups,
   especially Hispanic groups, do not have homogenous ancestry. For
   example, self-described African Americans tend to have a mix of West
   African and European ancestry. Shriver et al. (2003) found that on
   average African Americans have ~80% African ancestry. Likewise, many
   white Americans have mixed European and African ancestry, where ~30% of
   whites have less than 90% European ancestry. In this context, it is
   becoming more commonplace to describe "race" as fractional ancestry.
   Without the use of genotyping, this has been approximated by the
   self-described ancestry of an individual's grand-parents.

   Nevertheless, recent research indicates that self-described race is a
   near-perfect indicator of an individual's genetic profile, at least in
   the United States. Using 326 genetic markers, Tang et al. (2005)
   identified 4 genetic clusters among 3,636 individuals sampled from 15
   locations in the United States, and were able to correctly assign
   individuals to groups that correspond with their self-described race
   (white, African American, East Asian, or Hispanic) for all but 5
   individuals (an error rate of 0.14%). They conclude that ancient
   ancestry, which correlates tightly with self-described race and not
   current residence, is the major determinant of genetic structure in the
   U.S. population.

   Genetic techniques that distinguish ancestry between continents can
   also be used to describe ancestry within continents. However, the study
   of intra-continental ancestry may require a greater number of
   informative markers. Populations from neighboring geographic regions
   typically share more recent common ancestors. As a result, allele
   frequencies will be correlated between these groups. This phenomenon is
   often seen as a cline of allele frequencies. The existence of allelic
   clines has been offered as evidence that individuals cannot be
   allocated into genetic clusters (Kittles & Weiss 2003). However, others
   argue that low levels of differentiation between groups merely make the
   assignment to groups more difficult, not impossible (Bamshad et al.
   2004).

Incongruities of racial classifications

   Even as the idea of "race" was becoming a powerful organizing principle
   in many societies, the shortcomings of the concept were apparent. In
   the Old World, the gradual transition in appearances from one group to
   adjacent groups emphasized that "one variety of mankind does so
   sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits
   between them," as Blumenbach observed in his writings on human
   variation. In parts of the Americas, the situation was somewhat
   different. The immigrants to the New World came largely from widely
   separated regions of the Old World—western and northern Europe, western
   Africa, and, later, eastern Asia and southern and eastern Europe. In
   the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix among themselves
   and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In the United
   States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American
   have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that
   have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged
   from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ∼23% for a sample of
   African Americans from New Orleans. Similarly, many people who identify
   as European American have some African or Native American ancestors,
   either through openly interracial marriages or through the gradual
   inclusion of people with mixed ancestry into the majority population.
   In a survey of college students who self-identified as white in a
   northeastern U.S. university, ∼30% were estimated to have <90% European
   ancestry.

   In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time
   that forced individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial
   categories. An example is the " one-drop rule" implemented in some
   state laws that treated anyone with a single known African American
   ancestor as black. The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the
   United States also created an incentive to establish racial categories
   and fit people into those categories. In other countries in the
   Americas where mixing among groups was more extensive, social
   categories have tended to be more numerous and fluid, with people
   moving into or out of categories on the basis of a combination of
   socioeconomic status, social class, ancestry, and appearance.

   Efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States
   into discrete categories generated many difficulties.. By the standards
   used in past censuses, many millions of children born in the United
   States have belonged to a different race than have one of their
   biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a
   proliferation of categories (such as mulatto and octoroon) and "blood
   quantum" distinctions that became increasingly untethered from
   self-reported ancestry. A person's racial identity can change over
   time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race. Until the
   2000 census, Latinos were required to identify with a single race
   despite the long history of mixing in Latin America; partly as a result
   of the confusion generated by the distinction, 42% of Latino
   respondents in the 2000 census ignored the specified racial categories
   and checked "some other race.".

Current views across disciplines

   One result of debates over the meaning and validity of the concept
   "race" is that the current literature across different disciplines
   regarding human variation lacks consensus, though within some fields,
   such as biology, there is strong consensus. Some studies use the word
   race in its early essentialist taxonomic sense. Many others still use
   the term race, but use it to mean a population, clade, or haplogroup.
   Others eschew the word race altogether, and use the word population as
   a less value laden synonym.

   In the 19th century, race was a central concept of anthropology. In
   1866, James Hunt, the founder of the Anthropological Society of London,
   declared that anthropology’s primary truth “is the existence of
   well-marked psychological and moral distinctions in the different races
   of men.” However, this view became marginalised in the 20th century.
   Since 1932, college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have
   increasingly come to reject race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976,
   only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen
   out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of
   nineteen rejected race. The American Anthropological Association,
   drawing on biological research, currently holds that "The concept of
   race is a social and cultural construction. . . . Race simply cannot be
   tested or proven scientifically," and that, "It is clear that human
   populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically
   distinct groups. The concept of 'race' has no validity . . . in the
   human species" . Nevertheless, many scientists, including many
   anthropologists, reject this position.

   In an ongoing debate, some geneticists argue that race is neither a
   meaningful concept nor a useful heuristic device, and even that genetic
   differences almong groups are biologically meaningless, on the grounds
   that more genetic variation exists within such races than among them,
   and that racial traits overlap without discrete boundaries. Other
   geneticists, in contrast, argue that categories of self-identified
   race/ethnicity or biogeographic ancestry are both valid and useful.
   that these categories correspond with clusters inferred from multilocus
   genetic data, and that this correspondence implies that genetic factors
   might contribute to unexplained phenotypic variation between groups.

Biological interpretations of race

   According to Arthur Jensen the traditional races of physical
   anthropology have been more or less confirmed by the research of
   Cavalli-Sforza.

   On pgs 430-431 of the g factor Jensen writes:

          Cavalli-Sforza et al. transformed the distance matrix to a
          correlation matrix consisting of 861 correlation coefficients
          among the forty-two populations, so they could apply principal
          components (PC) analysis on their genetic data...PC analysis is
          a wholly objective mathematical procedure. It requires no
          decisions or judgments on anyone's part and yields identical
          results for everyone who does the calculations correctly...The
          important point is that if various populations were fairly
          homogenous in genetic composition, differing no more genetically
          than could be attributable only to random variation, a PC
          analysis would not be able to cluster the populations into a
          number of groups according to their genetic propinquity. In
          fact, a PC analysis shows that most of the forty-two populations
          fall very distinctly into the quadrents formed by using the
          first and second principal component as axes...They form quite
          widely separated clusters of the various populations that
          resemble the "classic" major racial groups-Caucasoids in the
          upper right, Negroids in the lower right, North East Asians in
          the upper left, and South East Asians (including South Chinese)
          and Pacific Islanders in the lower left...I have tried other
          objective methods of clustering on the same data (varimax
          rotation of the principal components, common factor analysis,
          and hierarchical cluster analysis). All of these types of
          analysis yield essentially the same picture and identify the
          same major racial groupings.

   Image:Fig.2.3.542pop.jpg

   Elsewhere in Jensen's writings, he equates North East Asians with
   Mongoloids, which along with Caucasoids and Negroids, form what Jensen
   describes as the three broadest population groups. To test the
   reliability of these broadgroupings, Jensen performed his own
   independent varimax rotated principal component analysis described on
   paged 518 of the g factor:

   I have used a somewhat different collection of only 26 populations from
   around the world that were studied by the population genetecists Nei &
   Roychoudhury (1993), whose article provides the genetic distance matrix
   among the 26 population samples, based on 29 polymorphic genes with 121
   alleles...Note that some groups have major and minor loadings on
   different components, which represent not discrete categories, but
   central tendencies. The six rotated components can display clusters
   that can be identified as follows: (1) Mongoloids, (2) Caucasoids, (3)
   Southeast Asians and Pacific Islanders, (4) Negroids, (5) North and
   South Amerindians and Eskimos, (6) aboriginal Australians and Papuan
   New Guineans. The genetic groupings are clearly similar to those
   obtained by Cavali-Sforza et al. using other methods applied to other
   samples.

   The following chart by Cavalli-Sforza shows the genetic distance
   between the major races that Jensen describes and the separate branches
   they sit on:

   Image:DNAtree.gif

Criticism

   Dr. Eduardas Valaitis claims the traditional Races of physical
   anthropology have been unscientifically appropriated by geneticists.
   Valaitis, a statistician from Yale, has made a genetic similarity chart
   of the human species. His genetic distance chart does not coincide with
   Cavalli Sforza's genetic distance chart. Valaitis claims to have made a
   genetic distance chart by actual Euclidean distances given by the data.
   Valaitis contrasts his work with other genetic distance charts such
   which he claims were categorized in a priori or predefined groups.
   Namely, Valaitis accuses other genetic anthropologists of using
   hand-me-down racial groups from the earlier craniofacial races of the
   19th century typologists. In particular, the genetic distance
   interpretations of Cavalli Sforza have been ridiculed for using "a
   priori" racial groups such as "Caucasian" not given by the actual
   genetic data itself. The genetic distance plot of Sforza which mirrors
   19th century typological groups, has been used by Arthur Jensen a race
   and IQ psychologist to promote the idea that the traditional races of
   craniofacial anthropology have been confirmed by genetics.

Social interpretations of race

   Historians, anthropologists and social scientists often describe human
   races as a social construct, preferring instead the term population,
   which can be given a clear operational definition. Even those who
   reject the formal concept of race, however, still use the word race in
   day-to-day speech. This may either be a matter of semantics, or an
   effect of an underlying cultural significance of race in racist
   societies.

   In everyday speech, race often describes populations better defined as
   ethnic groups, often leading to discrepancies between scientific views
   on race and popular usage of the term. For instance in many parts of
   the United States, categories such as Hispanic or Latino are viewed to
   constitute a race, though others see Hispanic as a linguistic and
   cultural grouping coming from a variety of backgrounds. In Europe, such
   a distinction, suggesting that South Europeans are not European or
   white, would seem odd at least or possibly even insulting. In the
   United States, in what is referred to as the one-drop rule, the term
   Black subsumes people with a broad range of ancestries under one label,
   even though many who are termed Black could be more accurately
   described as white through simple anthropologic or taxonomic method. In
   much of Europe groups such as Roma and South Asians are commonly
   defined as racially distinct from "White" Europeans, though these
   groups could be considered "Caucasian" by old physical anthropological
   methods which employed finite nose measurements and skull structure as
   the standard form of racial classification.

   Some argue it is preferable when considering biological relations to
   think in terms of populations, and when considering cultural relations
   to think in terms of ethnicity, rather than of race. Instead of
   classing people into one "group", say "Caucasians" or Europeans you
   have Britons, Frenchmen, Germans, Nords, western Slavs and Celts rather
   than having a term implying a (possible) ancestry group in the Caucasus
   which is definitely too distant for any real consideration, and
   moreover reaching to groups including eastern Slavs, Roma, as well as
   Georgians, and others who differ notably, both in culture, and to a
   noteworthy extent in physical appearance, from the aforementioned
   ethnic groups. There can be as much difference between two ethnicities
   grouped into a single "race" as there can be between ethnicities
   grouped (often arbitrarily) into an another "race".

   These developments had important consequences. For example, some
   scientists developed the notion of "population" to take the place of
   race. This substitution is not simply a matter of exchanging one word
   for another. Populations are, in a sense, simply statistical clusters
   that emerge from the choice of variables of interest; there is no
   preferred set of variables. The "populationist" view does not deny that
   there are physical differences among peoples; it simply claims that the
   historical conceptions of "race" are not particularly useful in
   accounting for these differences scientifically.

   Since the 1960s, some anthropologists and teachers of anthropology have
   re-conceived "race" as a cultural category or social construct, in
   other words, as a particular way that some people have of talking about
   themselves and others. As such it cannot be a useful analytical
   concept; rather, the use of the term "race" itself must be analyzed.
   Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people
   use the idea of race: history and social relationships will.

Race in physical anthropology

   Scientific support for the Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid terminology of
   racial classification has fallen steadily over the past century. Where
   78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology
   employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race
   paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in
   1996. In February, 2001, the editors of the medical journal Archives of
   Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine asked authors to no longer use
   "race" as an explanatory variable and not to use obsolescent terms.
   Other prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England
   Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health, have
   done the same. Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health recently
   issued a program announcement for grant applications through February
   1, 2006, specifically seeking researchers who can investigate and
   publicize among primary care physicians the detrimental effects on the
   nation's health of the practice of medical racial profiling using such
   terms. The program announcement quoted the editors of one journal as
   saying that, "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical
   knee-jerk reflex." These terms originally denoted skull types and
   sprang from the technique known as craniofacial anthropometry, but have
   fallen somewhat in scientific use over the past century. The terms
   appear in two main usages today. They are used in forensic
   anthropology, and they are used in several fields as euphemisms for
   terms that came to be seen as offensive by some about thirty years ago.
   In the past, they were more widely used in craniofacial anthropometry
   in phylogeography.

   The most recent survey, taken in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992), asked
   1,200 scientists how many disagree with the following proposition:
   "There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens." The responses
   were:
     * biologists 16%
     * developmental psychologists 36%
     * physical anthropologists 41%
     * cultural anthropologists 53%

   The figure for physical anthropologists at PhD granting departments was
   slightly higher, rising from 41% to 42%, with 50% agreeing. This
   survey, however, did not specify any particular definition of race; it
   is impossible to say whether those who supported the statement thought
   of race in taxonomic or population terms.

Race and intelligence

   Researchers have reported significant differences in the average IQ
   test scores of various ethnic groups. The interpretation and causes of
   these differences are highly controversial. Some researchers, such as
   Arthur Jensen, Richard Herrnstein, and Richard Lynn have argued that
   such differences are at least partially genetic. Others, such as
   Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin, believe categories such as
   "race" and "intelligence" are cultural constructs that render this sort
   of research scientifically flawed. Some, for example Thomas Sowell,
   bypass the issue of the origins of categorization and seek to explain
   test score gaps in terms of social differences that affect how much of
   one's innate capacities any individual person might achieve.

Race in biomedicine

   There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the
   meaning and importance of race in their research. The primary impetus
   for considering race in biomedical research is the possibility of
   improving the prevention and treatment of diseases by predicting
   hard-to-ascertain factors on the basis of more easily ascertained
   characteristics. Regardless of the name, a working concept of
   sub-species grouping can be useful, because in the absence of cheap and
   widespread genetic tests, various race-linked gene mutations (see
   Cystic fibrosis, Lactose intolerance, Tay-Sachs Disease and Sickle cell
   anaemia) are difficult to address without recourse to a category
   between "individual" and "species". The most well-known examples of
   genetically-determined disorders that vary in incidence between ethnic
   groups would be sickle cell disease and thalassaemia among black and
   Mediterranean populations and Tay-Sachs disease among people of
   Ashkenazi Jewish descent. Some fear that the use of racial labels in
   biomedical research runs the risk of unintentionally exacerbating
   health disparities, so they suggest alternatives to the use of racial
   taxonomies.

Case studies in the social construction of race

Race in the United States

   In the United States since its early history, Native Americans,
   African-Americans and European-Americans were classified as belonging
   to different races. For nearly three centuries, the criteria for
   membership in these groups were similar, comprising a person’s
   appearance, his fraction of known non-White ancestry, and his social
   circle.^2 But the criteria for membership in these races diverged in
   the late 19th century. During Reconstruction, increasing numbers of
   Americans began to consider anyone with " one drop" of "Black blood" to
   be Black.^3 By the early 20th century, this notion of invisible
   blackness was made statutory in many states and widely adopted
   nationwide.^4 In contrast, Amerindians continue to be defined by a
   certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called blood quantum) due in
   large part to American slavery ethics. Finally, for the past century or
   so, to be White one had to have "pure" White ancestry. (Utterly
   European-looking Americans of Hispanic or Arab ancestry are exceptions
   in being seen as White by most Americans despite traces of known
   African ancestry.)

   Efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States
   into discrete categories generated many difficulties (Spickard 1992).
   By the standards used in past censuses, many millions of children born
   in the United States have belonged to a different race than have one of
   their biological parents. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to
   a proliferation of categories (such as "mulatto" and "octoroon") and
   "blood quantum" distinctions that became increasingly untethered from
   self-reported ancestry. A person's racial identity can change over
   time, and self-ascribed race can differ from assigned race (Kressin et
   al. 2003). Until the 2000 census, Latinos were required to identify
   with a single race despite the long history of mixing in Latin America;
   partly as a result of the confusion generated by the distinction, 32.9%
   (U.S. census records) of Latino respondents in the 2000 census ignored
   the specified racial categories and checked "some other race". (Mays et
   al. 2003 claim a figure of 42%)

   The difference between how Native American and Black identities are
   defined today (blood quantum versus one-drop) has demanded explanation.
   According to anthropologists such as Gerald Sider, the goal of such
   racial designations was to concentrate power, wealth, privilege and
   land in the hands of Whites in a society of White hegemony and White
   privilege (Sider 1996; see also Fields 1990). The differences have
   little to do with biology and far more to do with the history of racism
   and specific forms of White supremacy (the social, geopolitical and
   economic agendas of dominant Whites vis-à-vis subordinate Blacks and
   Native Americans) especially the different roles Blacks and Amerindians
   occupied in White-dominated nineteenth-century America. The theory
   suggests that the blood quantum definition of Native American identity
   enabled Whites to acquire Amerindian lands, while the one-drop rule of
   Black identity enabled Whites to preserve their agricultural labor
   force. The contrast presumably emerged because as peoples transported
   far from their land and kinship ties on another continent, Black labor
   was relatively easy to control, thus reducing Blacks to valuable
   commodities as agricultural laborers. In contrast, Amerindian labor was
   more difficult to control; moreover, Amerindians occupied large
   territories that became valuable as agricultural lands, especially with
   the invention of new technologies such as railroads; thus, the blood
   quantum definition enhanced White acquisition of Amerindian lands in a
   doctrine of Manifest Destiny that subjected them to marginalization and
   multiple episodic localized campaigns of extermination.

   The political economy of race had different consequences for the
   descendants of aboriginal Americans and African slaves. The
   19th-century blood quantum rule meant that it was relatively easier for
   a person of mixed Euro-Amerindian ancestry to be accepted as White. The
   offspring of only a few generations of intermarriage between
   Amerindians and Whites likely would not have been considered Amerindian
   at all—at least not in a legal sense. Amerindians could have treaty
   rights to land, but because an individual with one Amerindian
   great-grandparent no longer was classified as Amerindian, they lost any
   legal claim to Amerindian land. According to the theory, this enabled
   Whites to acquire Amerindian lands. The irony is that the same
   individuals who could be denied legal standing because they were "too
   White" to claim property rights, might still be Amerindian enough to be
   considered as "breeds," stigmatized for their Native American ancestry.

   The 20th-century one-drop rule, on the other hand, made it relatively
   difficult for anyone of known Black ancestry to be accepted as White.
   The child of an African-American sharecropper and a White person was
   considered Black. And, significant in terms of the economics of
   sharecropping, such a person also would likely be a sharecropper as
   well, thus adding to the employer's labor force.

   In short, this theory suggests that in a 20th-century economy that
   benefited from sharecropping, it was useful to have as many Blacks as
   possible. Conversely, in a 19th-century nation bent on westward
   expansion, it was advantageous to diminish the numbers of those who
   could claim title to Amerindian lands by simply defining them out of
   existence.

   It must be mentioned, however, that although some scholars of the Jim
   Crow period agree that the 20th-century notion of invisible Blackness
   shifted the color line in the direction of paleness, thereby swelling
   the labor force in response to Southern Blacks' great migration
   northwards, others (Joel Williamson, C. Vann Woodward, George M.
   Fredrickson, Stetson Kennedy) see the one-drop rule as a simple
   consequence of the need to define Whiteness as being pure, thus
   justifying White-on-Black oppression. In any event, over the centuries
   when Whites wielded power over both Blacks and Amerindians and widely
   believed in their inherent superiority over people of colour, it is no
   coincidence that the hardest racial group in which to prove membership
   was the White one.

   The identification of Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas as
   "Latin America" was first promoted by supporters of Maximilian, who had
   been installed as emperor of Mexico in 1864 by the French emperor
   Napoleon III, as a way of extending French influence in the Americas.
   Since French and Spanish are both languages derived from Latin, the
   French identified Spanish-speakers as "Latin" in order to emphasize a
   fictive kinship with the French, and in the — unfulfilled — hope of
   legitimizing Maximilian.

   The term "Hispanic" as an ethnonym emerged in the twentieth century
   with the rise of migration of laborers from Spanish-speaking countries
   to the United States; it thus includes people who had been considered
   racially distinct (Black, White, Amerindian) in their home countries.
   Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". In
   contrast to "Latino," "Anglo" is now used in a similar way to refer to
   the descendants of British colonists, and values and practices derived
   from British culture.

Race Definitions in the United States

   The United States government has provided definitions regarding race
   (see for example Race (U.S. Census)). Racial classification in the U.S.
   2000 census was based solely on self-identification, did not
   pre-suppose disjointedness, and included a category "Hispanic," which
   is considered an ethnicity, rather than a race, by the U.S. Census. The
   concept of race as used by the Census Bureau reflects
   self-identification by people according to the race or races with which
   they most closely identify. These categories are sociopolitical
   constructs and should not be interpreted as being scientific or
   anthropological in nature. They change from one census to another, and
   the racial categories include both racial and national-origin groups .

   On the other hand, the EEOC explicitly defines Hispanics as a separate
   and distinct "race."

Race in Brazil

   Compared to 19th-century United States, 20th-century Brazil was
   characterized by a relative absence of sharply defined racial groups.
   According to anthropologist Marvin Harris (1989) this pattern reflects
   a different history and different social relations. Basically, race in
   Brazil was "biologized," but in a way that recognized the difference
   between ancestry (which determines genotype) and phenotypic
   differences. There, racial identity was not governed by a rigid descent
   rule. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the
   racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only two categories
   to choose from. Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in
   conformity with the combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye
   color, and skin colour. These types grade into each other like the
   colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly
   isolated from the rest. That is, race referred to appearance, not
   heredity.

   Through this system of racial identification, parents and children and
   even brothers and sisters were frequently accepted as representatives
   of opposite racial types. In a fishing village in the state of Bahia,
   an investigator showed 100 people pictures of three sisters and asked
   them to identify the races of each. In only six responses were the
   sisters identified by the same racial term. Fourteen responses used a
   different term for each sister. In another experiment nine portraits
   were shown to a hundred people. Forty different racial types were
   elicited. It was found, in addition, that a given Brazilian might be
   called by as many as thirteen different terms by other members of the
   community. These terms are spread out across practically the entire
   spectrum of theoretical racial types. A further consequence of the
   absence of a descent rule was that Brazilians apparently not only
   disagreed about the racial identity of specific individuals, but they
   also seemed to be in disagreement about the abstract meaning of the
   racial terms as defined by words and phrases. For example, 40% of a
   sample ranked moreno claro ("light" person of primarily European
   ancestry with dark hair) as a lighter type than mulato claro ("light"
   person of mixed European and African ancestry), while 60% reversed this
   order. A further note of confusion is that one person might employ
   different racial terms to describe the same person over a short time
   span. [For a solid discussion of Brazilian racial terms, see Livio
   Sansone's Blackness Without Ethnicity (2003) and France Winddance
   Twine's Racism in a Racial Democracy (1998).] The choice of which
   racial description to use may vary according to the relationship (be it
   personal, class-based, or otherwise) between the speaker and the person
   concerned and moods of the individuals involved. The Brazilian census
   lists one's race according to the preference of the person being
   interviewed. As a consequence, hundreds of races appeared in the census
   results, ranging from blue (which is blacker than the usual black) to
   green (which is whiter than the usual white).

   So, although the identification of a person by race is far more fluid
   and flexible in Brazil than in the U.S., there still are racial
   stereotypes and prejudices. African features have been considered less
   desirable; Blacks have been considered socially inferior, and Whites
   superior. These white supremacist values seem to be an obvious legacy
   of European colonization and the slave-based plantation system (Some
   people argues that in Brazil the racial prejudice is linked to social
   prejudice). The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil is
   reflective of the extent of miscegenation in Brazilian society, which
   remains highly, but not strictly, stratified along colour lines.
   Henceforth, the Brazilian narrative of a perfect "post-racist" country,
   composed of the " cosmic race" celebrated in 1925 by José Vasconcelos,
   must be met with caution, as sociologist Gilberto Freyre demonstrated
   in 1933 in Casa Grande e Senzala.

Race in politics and ethics

   During the Enlightenment, racial classifications were used to justify
   enslavement of those deemed to be of "inferior", non-White races, and
   thus supposedly best fitted for lives of toil under White supervision.
   These classifications made the distance between races seem nearly as
   broad as that between species, easing unsettling questions about the
   appropriateness of such treatment of humans. The practice was at the
   time generally accepted by both scientific and lay communities.

   Arthur Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races
   (1853-1855) was one of the milestone in the new racist discourse, along
   with Vacher de Lapouge's "anthroposociology." They posited the
   historical existence of national races such as German and French,
   branching from basal races supposed to have existed for millennia, such
   as the Aryan race, and believed political boundaries should mirror
   these supposed racial ones.

   Later, one of Hitler's favorite sayings was, "Politics is applied
   biology". It appears he knew a certain amount about politics, but
   considerably less about biology. Hitler's ideas of racial purity led to
   unprecedented atrocities in Europe. Hitler and others enacted race laws
   used to persecute and murder millions of Jews, who were seen as a race.
   Since then, ethnic cleansing has occurred in the Balkans and Rwanda. In
   one sense, ethnic cleansing is another name for the tribal warfare and
   mass murder that has afflicted human society for ages, but these crimes
   seem to gain intensity when believed to be scientifically sanctioned,
   although this may be purely an unjustified assertion arising from
   anti-scientific prejudice.

   Racial inequality has been a concern of United States politicians and
   legislators since the country's founding. In the 19th century most
   White Americans (including abolitionists) explained racial inequality
   as an inevitable consequence of biological differences. Since the
   mid-20th century, political and civic leaders as well as scientists
   have debated to what extent racial inequality is cultural in origin.
   Some argue that current inequalities between Blacks and Whites are
   primarily cultural and historical, the result of past racism, slavery
   and segregation, and could be redressed through such programs as
   affirmative action and Head Start. Others work to reduce tax funding of
   remedial programs for minorities. They have based their advocacy on
   aptitude test data that, according to them, shows that racial ability
   differences are biological in origin and cannot be leveled even by
   intensive educational efforts. In electoral politics, many more ethnic
   minorities have won important offices in Western nations than in
   earlier times, although the highest offices tend to remain in the hands
   of Whites.

   In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
   King Jr. observed:

          History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged
          groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals
          may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust
          posture; but as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups are
          more immoral than individuals.

   Dr. King's hope, expressed in his I Have a Dream speech, was that the
   civil rights struggle would one day produce a society where people were
   not "judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their
   character."

   Because of the identification of the concept of race with political
   oppression, many natural and social scientists today are wary of using
   race to describe human variation. Some, however, argue that race is
   nevertheless of continuing utility and validity in scientific research.
   Science and politics frequently take opposite sides in debates that
   relate to human intelligence and biomedicine.

   The concept of race is also based on mere conventions, traditions,
   statistics, and an arbitrary number of categories. Often the partially
   unique individual human being is ignored. The criteria used to divide
   up the human species is also arbitrary, and often only focuses on skin
   color, geographical area, and a very few genes. The varied expression
   of the same mix of genes is rarely studied. The exact percentage of
   exceptions to any probable group, or the margin of error can also be
   overlooked. Other possible criteria of height, eye color, hair color,
   size of feet, and so on indicate the primary and customary use of skin
   colour to determine groups.

Race in law enforcement

   In the U.S., the FBI identifies fugitives to categories they define as
   sex, physical features, occupation, nationality, and race. From left to
   right, the FBI assigns the above individuals to the following races:
   White, Black, Hispanic, Asian. Top row males, bottom row females.
   Enlarge
   In the U.S., the FBI identifies fugitives to categories they define as
   sex, physical features, occupation, nationality, and race. From left to
   right, the FBI assigns the above individuals to the following races:
   White, Black, Hispanic, Asian. Top row males, bottom row females.

   In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the
   job of law enforcement officers seeking to apprehend suspects, the
   United States FBI employs the term "race" to summarize the general
   appearance (skin colour, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily
   noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to
   apprehend. From the perspective of law enforcement officers, it is
   generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily
   suggest the general appearance of an individual than to make a
   scientifically valid categorization. Thus in addition to assigning a
   wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will
   include: height, weight, eye colour, scars and other distinguishing
   characteristics, etc. Scotland Yard use a classification based in the
   ethnic background of British society: W1 (White-British), W2
   (White-Irish), W9 (Any other white background); M1 (White and black
   Caribbean), M2 (White and black African), M3 (White and Asian), M9 (Any
   other mixed background); A1 (Asian-Indian), A2 (Asian-Pakistani), A3
   (Asian-Bangladeshi), A9 (Any other Asian background); B1 (Black
   Caribbean), B2 (Black African), B3 (Any other black background); O1
   (Chinese), O9 (Any other).

   In many countries, the state is legally banned from maintaining data
   based on race, which often makes the police issue wanted notices to the
   public that include labels like "dark skin complexion", etc. There is
   controversy over the actual relationship between crimes, their assigned
   punishments, and the division of people into the so called "races." In
   the United States, the practice of racial profiling has been ruled to
   be both unconstitutional and also to constitute a violation of civil
   rights. There is active debate regarding the cause of a marked
   correlation between the recorded crimes, punishments meted out, and the
   country's "racially divided" people. Many consider de facto racial
   profiling an example of institutional racism in law enforcement.

   More recent work in racial taxonomy based on DNA cluster analysis (See
   Lewontin's Fallacy) has led law enforcement to pursue suspects based on
   their racial classification as derived from their DNA evidence left at
   the crime scene . While controversial, DNA analysis has been successful
   in helping police identify the race of both victims and perpetrators. .
   In an attempt to be less subjective, this classification is called
   "biogeographical ancestry" rather than "race" , but the terms for the
   BGA categories are the same. The difference is that
   ancestry-informative DNA markers identify continent-of-ancestry
   admixture, not ethnic self-identity. Hence, they cannot match the U.S.
   "races". For example, the DNA of an Arab-American, an African-American,
   and a Hispanic of precisely the same Afro-European genetic admixture
   would be "racially" indistinguishable. And a "White" woman with, say,
   25% African ancestry such as Carol Channing would show exactly the same
   BGA as a "Black" man of the same admixture (like Gregory Howard
   Williams).

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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