Race and Ethnicity

credit: apa.org

Let us begin with race, which refers to a group of people who share inherited physical characteristics such as skin color, facial features, and stature. One critical question about race is whether it is a biological or a social category. Most people think of race in biological terms, and race has indeed served as the “premier source of human identity” for more than 300 years, or since white Europeans began colonizing populations of color elsewhere in the world. It is undeniable that people all over the world differ physically in some obvious ways. The most obvious difference is skin tone: some people have very dark skin, while others have very light skin. Other distinctions exist as well. Some people have extremely curly hair, whereas others have extremely straight hair. Some people have thin lips and others have thick lips. Some groups of people are relatively tall, whereas others are relatively short. Using physical differences as criteria, scientists identified as many as nine races: African, American Indian or Native American, Asian, Australian Aborigine, European (more commonly referred to as "white"), Indian, Melanesian, and Sri Lankan. To better understand this issue, we must examine the very definitions of race and ethnicity in today's society. These concepts may appear simple to define at first glance, but they are far more complex than their definitions suggest.

Race as a Social Construction

The reasons for doubting the biological basis for racial categories imply that race is a social category rather than a biological one. Another way to put it is that race is a social construction, a concept that has no objective reality but is defined by people. According to this viewpoint, race has no real existence other than what and how people perceive it. Historical examples of attempts to classify people into racial categories highlight the social constructionism of race.

During the time of slavery in the South, the skin tone of slaves lightened over time as babies were born from the union, often through rape, of slave owners and other whites with slaves. Many court battles over people's racial identity occurred as it became difficult to tell who was "black" and who was not. In order to avoid enslavement or other problems, people accused of having black ancestry would go to court to prove they were white. Although race is a social construct, it is also true, as stated in an earlier chapter, that things perceived as real have real consequences. Because people perceive race to be real, it has real ramifications. Despite the fact that so little of DNA accounts for the physical differences associated with racial differences, this small amount leads us not only to classify people into different races, but also to treat them differently; and, more importantly, unequally, based on their classification.