We explain what a race is in biology, what human races are called and what racism is. Additionally, differences between race and ethnicity.
What is race?
The term “race” is used in biology to distinguish, in certain species of living beings, the different groups into which the same species can be subdivided, taking into account its phenotypic traits (your physical appearance) transmitted by genetic inheritance.
It was a term widely used between the 16th and 19th centuries, being used as a synonym for subspecies, until In 1990 its use was ruled out in specialized areassurviving only in colloquial language.
In fact, the use of the term is today restricted to certain domestic animals such as dogs, cows or horses, for example, in whose evolution the human being has had a lot to do, through centuries of controlled reproduction and artificial insemination, to obtain animals with desired traits, such as dogs of a certain appearance, cows that produce more milk, etc. In botany, however, the term is not used.
Race in humans
Since ancient times, the complex social interactions of human beings have given rise to attempts to define or characterize the different human groups that exist, based mostly on their physical traits, although often also on social or cultural traits.
Many names were used to call each type of community, but it would be from the 16th century onwards that “race” arose, probably taken from Italian. razzawith which both the different strains of local wine and the people who shared occupations were named.
As a result of European expansionism and colonialism, interest arose in distinguishing in a rational and scientific way between the different cultures found on other continents. So, In the 17th century, the first attempts to categorize human beings by “race” were made..
The first book that proposed a “scientific” study of human groups was published in 1684 and was the New division of the land for the different species or races that inhabit it (“New division of the Earth by the different species or races that inhabit it”) by the French traveler and doctor Francois Bernier (1625-1688).
As the centuries passed, this racial perspective permeated the nascent social sciences. Thus, fields of study dedicated to “races” emerged, especially those considered exotic and, ultimately, primitive or inferior. Everything always measured against the standards of the social, cultural and political values of Europe.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, the first theories of racial anthropology arose, according to which everything was reduced to physical appearance: anthropological methods of racial distinction were even proposed based on the size of the skull, the type of hair and, of course, the color. of the skin.
The great work that formalized this biological-racist vision of humanity was the book by the French writer Joseph Arthur de Gobineau (1816-1882) titled Essay on the inequality of human races and published between 1853 and 1855. This work immensely influenced the racist and nationalist movements of the 20th century, such as German National Socialism.
The first to empirically question this racist anthropological legacy were American anthropologists. Franz Boas (1858-1942) and Ashley Montagu (1905-1999), who rejected “race” as equivalent to “subspecies,” relying on genetic data and the impact of the environment on the human phenotype.
Later studies in the 20th century demonstrated that the supposed racial variation corresponds in most cases to 5% of the total genome of the species, which means that They are not, in any case, different human subspecies.
The only exception to this legacy is the use of “human race” as an equivalent of “humanity”, that is, of the human species as a whole, without distinctions.
Racism
As we have seen, racism, that is, the discrimination of human beings based on their ethnicity, has a long and painful history that dates back to ancient times. However, it began to be formally called “racism” due to the use of the term “race” during European colonialism.
Therefore, This is a term that is strongly linked to historical and sociopolitical aspects of colonialist Europe.whose encounter with the cultures of Asia, Africa and America occurred in terms of exoticism, subjugation and exploitation.
For example, much of the need to distinguish between human “races” was due to the slave market, in which certain physical traits such as strength and endurance, or social traits such as docility, were exalted. This totally racist vision of humanity, according to which some were born to govern and others were born to be governedwas established over time and would be the basis of the colonial societies of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Finally, in the 19th century, the debate on races occupied a good part of the intellectual production of the West, based on biological interpretations, making these distinctions something supposedly natural, lasting and primordial, so that they could not be changed and any attempt to subvert them could not be changed. could be classified as “against nature.”
It is so The concept of “race” ended up being an ideological issuesince certain cultural, political or moral aspects could be attributed to each “race”, without taking into account the history of each culture or its own particularities.
According to this, for example, Africans were strong and resilient, with little capacity for inventiveness and intellect, which ultimately constituted a “scientific” justification for abuse history that they had suffered at the hands of the European conquerors.
Racism has not disappeared today, despite the fact that a good part of humanity lives in multicultural communities and that global migration is a phenomenon that is notoriously enriching for societies. However, the humanist and republican legacy of equality between men, inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution, could be the long-term solution to a social problem as old as racism.
Race and ethnicity
The current scientific consensus, at the beginning of the 21st century, considers that The category of “race” applied to human beings does not belong to the biological sphere.but of the social, that is, that it is a form of historical, arbitrary distinction, without support in the exact sciences, which does not mean that there are no genetic, cultural, social and all kinds of differences between the human groups that They populate the Earth.
However, An ethnicity is a group generally endowed with phenotypic characteristics that are heritable to their descendants, and with specific sociocultural traits. passed down from generation to generation. This term comes from Greek ethnos“people” or “nation”.
The virtue of this concept is that it emphasizes cultural traits rather than biological or anatomical distinctions, and therefore corresponds much better to the diverse and complex nature of humanity.
References
- “Race” on Wikipedia.
- “Race (classification of human beings)” on Wikipedia.
- “Racism” on Wikipedia.
- “Race” in the Language Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- “Should we continue to use the concept of race?” in El País (Spain).
- “Racism: how science dismantled the theory that there are different human races” on BBC News Mundo.
