Race (human categorization)

== Historical origins of racial classification ==
{{See also|Historical race concepts|Scientific racism}}

[[File:Meyers b11 s0476a.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|The "three great races" according to ''[[Meyers Konversations-Lexikon]]'' of 1885–90.
The subtypes are:
{{blist|[[Mongoloid]] race, shown in [[yellow]] and [[Orange (color)|orange]] tones
|[[Caucasoid]] race, in light and medium [[gray]]ish [[Spring green (color)|spring green]]-[[cyan]] tones
|[[Negroid]] race, in [[brown]] tones
|[[Dravidians]] and [[Sinhalese people|Sinhalese]], in [[olive green]] and their classification is described as uncertain}}
The Mongoloid race sees the widest geographic distribution, including all of the [[Americas]], [[North Asia]], [[East Asia]], [[Southeast Asia]], and the entire inhabited [[Arctic]] as well as most of [[Central Asia]] and the [[Pacific Islands]].]]
[[File:Races-humaines.jpg|thumb|upright=1.35|"Races humaines" according to Pierre Foncins ''La deuxième année de géographie'' of 1888.
[[White race]], shown in [[Rose (color)|rose]], Yellow (Mongoloid) race, shown in yellow, Negroid race, shown in brown, "Secondary races" ([[Indigenous peoples of the Americas]], [[Australian aboriginals]], [[Samoyedic peoples]], [[Hungarians]], [[Malayans]] and others) are shown in orange]]
Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during the historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences.<ref name="Marks 2008" /> The term ''race'' was often used in a general [[Race (biology)|biological taxonomic sense]],<ref name="Oxford Dict. race2" /> starting from the 19th century, to denote [[Genetic divergence|genetically differentiated]] human [[population]]s defined by phenotype.<ref name="Lie; Thompson; et al." /><ref name="Keita1"/>

The modern concept of race emerged as a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification.<ref name="Kennedy Intro">{{cite book |last=Kennedy |first=Rebecca F. |title=Race and Ethnicity in the Classical world: An Anthology of Primary Sources in Translation |date=2013 |publisher=Hackett Publishing Company |isbn=978-1-60384-994-4 |page=xiii |chapter=Introduction |quote=The ancients would not understand the social construct we call 'race' any more than they would understand the distinction modem scholars and social scientists generally draw between race and 'ethnicity.' The modern concept of race is a product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries that identified race in terms of skin color and physical difference. In the post-Enlightenment world, a 'scientific,' biological idea of race suggested that human difference could be explained by biologically distinct groups of humans, evolved from separate origins, who could be distinguished by physical differences, predominantly skin color&nbsp;.... Such categorizations would have confused the ancient Greeks and Romans.}}</ref> According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790.<ref name="Invent Race Intro">{{cite book |editor-last1=Bancel |editor-first1=Nicolas |editor-last2=David |editor-first2=Thomas |editor-last3=Thomas |editor-first3=Dominic |title=The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations. |publisher=[[Routledge]] |isbn=978-0-367-20864-6 |page=11 |chapter=Introduction: The Invention of Race: Scientific and Popular Representations of Race from Linnaeus to the Ethnic Shows |quote='The Invention of Race' has assisted us in the process of locating the 'epistemological moment,' somewhere between 1730 and 1790, when the concept of race was invented and rationalized. A "moment" that was accompanied by a revolution in the way in which the human body was studied and observed in order to formulate scientific conclusions relating to human variability. |date=23 May 2019}}</ref>

=== Colonialism ===
According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the [[scientific revolution]], which introduced and privileged the study of [[natural kind]]s, and the age of [[European imperialism]] and [[colonization]] which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political [[traditions]].<ref name="Marks 2008" /><ref name="Smedley 1999" /> As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the [[world]], they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the [[Atlantic slave trade]], which gradually displaced an earlier [[History of slavery|trade in slaves]] from throughout the world, created a further [[incentive]] to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African [[slave]]s.<ref name="meltzer" />

Drawing on sources from [[classical antiquity]] and upon their own internal interactions&nbsp;– for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people<ref name="takaki" />&nbsp;– Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of [[folk belief]]s took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to [[Race and intelligence|inherited intellectual]], [[behavioral]], and [[moral]] qualities.<ref name="banton" /> Similar ideas can be found in other cultures,<ref name="Lewis; Dikötter" /> for example in [[China]], where a concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the [[Yellow Emperor]], and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world.<ref name="REGWG" />

=== Early taxonomic models ===
The first post-[[Graeco-Roman]] 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.<ref name="todorov" /> In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of [[Carl Linnaeus]], inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species ''[[Homo sapiens]]'' into continental varieties of ''europaeus'', ''asiaticus'', ''americanus'', and ''afer'', each associated with a different [[humorism|humour]]: [[sanguine]], [[Melancholia|melancholic]], [[choleric]], and [[phlegmatic]], respectively.<ref name="brace2" />{{sfn|Slotkin|1965|page=177}} ''Homo sapiens europaeus'' was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas ''Homo sapiens afer'' was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless.<ref name="Graves 2001 p. 39" />

The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind", by [[Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]] proposed five major divisions: the [[Caucasoid race]], the [[Mongoloid race]], the Ethiopian race (later termed ''[[Negroid]]''), the [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|American Indian race]], and the [[Malayan race]], but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races.<ref name="Graves 2001 p. 39" /> Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them".<ref name="Marks 1995" />

From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an "[[ideology]] of race".<ref name="Smedley 1999" /> According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups.<ref name="REGWG" /> Subsequent influential classifications by [[Georges Buffon]], [[Petrus Camper]] and [[Christoph Meiners]] all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans.<ref name="Graves 2001 p. 39" /> In the [[United States]] the racial theories of [[Thomas Jefferson]] were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described [[Indigenous peoples of the Americas|Native Americans]] as equals to whites.<ref name="Graves 2001 pp. 43–43" />

=== Polygenism vs monogenism ===
In the last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of [[polygenism]], the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor,<ref name="stocking" /> was advocated in England by historian [[Edward Long (colonial administrator)|Edward Long]] and anatomist [[Charles White (physician)|Charles White]], in [[Germany]] by ethnographers [[Christoph Meiners]] and [[Georg Forster]], and in [[France]] by [[Julien-Joseph Virey]]. In the US, [[Samuel George Morton]], [[Josiah Nott]] and [[Louis Agassiz]] promoted this theory in the mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the [[Anthropological Society of London]] (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the [[Ethnological Society of London]] and its [[monogenism|monogenic stance]], their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called "Negro question": a substantial racist view by the former,{{r|Hunt1863_3}} and a more liberal view on race by the latter.{{r|Desmond09_332}}