Race (human categorization)

=== 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" />