Anthropology

Ethnicity and Race

What is Race?

• Race and the study of race has a complex history behind it

• Early academia

• Darwin and Natural selection

• Social Darwinism: idea of social evolution where non- industrial societies were technologically, mentally, and biologically inferior.

• By 1800’s, early understanding of race was linked with the concept of “survival of the fittest” and carried very powerful social meanings.

• Science links biology to behavior, mental capacity, and race.

• Is race biological?

• A particular race should represent the genetic material that is shared and passed down from common ancestors

• Race-Population of species that differ genetically or geographically

•Early scholars focused on a several of very many phenotypical traits to determine race

•Scientists emphasized skin color as a main indicator of race

Natural Selection

• Larger portions and concentration of melanin results in darker skin color

• Melanin has a very important function: protection against ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun

• Protection against skin cancer and sun burns

• It is not possible to categorize race from a purely biological point of view

• Cultural constructions of race are a possibility

Franz Boas

Society/culture is a complex of meaning.

•Cultural relativity: idea that each culture/society must be understood on its own terms.

• Genetic evidence and “race”.

• Race: A flawed system of classification, with no biological basis, that uses certain physical characteristics to divide the human population into discrete groups.

Similar problems are solved in different ways.

For Boas, this could be explained by differences in culture not differences in biology.

Ethnicity

• Members of an ethnic group share beliefs, values, habits, customs, and norms because of some common background

• Ethnicity: identification with a group based on set of values and exclusion from other groups based on differences in those values

• Minority groups and majority groups

• In many societies, ethnic, racial, and caste status corresponds to a position in social-political hierarchy.

• American popular discourse often does not draw a clear line between ethnicity and race.

• Probably more clear in most cases to use term “ethnic group” rather than “race” – e.g. Asian American, European American, etc..

Social Construction of Race

• Race is a symbol

• Inequality and hypodescent – placing the child of a union between members of different groups in the minority group

• Susie Guillory Phipps and Louisiana's 1/32 rule

• The Bell Curve 1994

Diversity and Tolerance

• Assimilation into society – culture, language, beliefs, norms, rules of minority group change as another culture dominates

• Multiculturalism – opposite of assimilation model that views diversity as a positive (U.S.)

Conflict • Prejudice: devaluing a group because of its assumed

behavior, values, capabilities, or attributes

• Discrimination: Policies and specific practices that aim to harm a group and its members

• De facto: treatment that is not legal but occurs anyway

(Unfair treatment by legal system and police force, Stop and Frisk)

• De jure: legal policies enabling public discrimination

(Jim Crow Laws)

1992 Los Angeles Riots

Genocide, Ethnocide, Cultural Colonialism

• Genocide: most extreme form of discrimination

• Ethnocide: cultures of particular ethnic groups are eradicated

• Cultural colonialism: internal domination by one group over others in terms of culture, language, etc