A word about race

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Below is a massive list of racing words — that is, words related to racing. The top 4 are: driving, speed, raceway and speedway. You can get the definition(s) of a word in the list below by tapping the question-mark icon next to it. The words at the top of the list are the ones most associated with racing, and as you go down the relatedness becomes more slight. By default, the words are sorted by relevance/relatedness, but you can also get the most common racing terms by using the menu below, and there’s also the option to sort the words alphabetically so you can get racing words starting with a particular letter. You can also filter the word list so it only shows words that are also related to another word of your choosing. So for example, you could enter «driving» and click «filter», and it’d give you words that are related to racing and driving.

You can highlight the terms by the frequency with which they occur in the written English language using the menu below. The frequency data is extracted from the English Wikipedia corpus, and updated regularly. If you just care about the words’ direct semantic similarity to racing, then there’s probably no need for this.

There are already a bunch of websites on the net that help you find synonyms for various words, but only a handful that help you find related, or even loosely associated words. So although you might see some synonyms of racing in the list below, many of the words below will have other relationships with racing — you could see a word with the exact opposite meaning in the word list, for example. So it’s the sort of list that would be useful for helping you build a racing vocabulary list, or just a general racing word list for whatever purpose, but it’s not necessarily going to be useful if you’re looking for words that mean the same thing as racing (though it still might be handy for that).

If you’re looking for names related to racing (e.g. business names, or pet names), this page might help you come up with ideas. The results below obviously aren’t all going to be applicable for the actual name of your pet/blog/startup/etc., but hopefully they get your mind working and help you see the links between various concepts. If your pet/blog/etc. has something to do with racing, then it’s obviously a good idea to use concepts or words to do with racing.

If you don’t find what you’re looking for in the list below, or if there’s some sort of bug and it’s not displaying racing related words, please send me feedback using this page. Thanks for using the site — I hope it is useful to you! 🐉

This article is about categorization of human populations. For «the human race», see Human.

Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society.^[1] The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations.^[2] By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical (phenotypical) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as a social construct, an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.^[3][4] While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning.^[1][5][6] The concept of race is foundational to racism, the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another.

Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits.^[7] Today, scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete,^[8] and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.^{[9][10][11][12][13]}

Even though there is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable,^{[14][15][16][17][18][19]} scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways.^[20] While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive^[9] or simplistic.^[21] Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to the same subspecies, Homo sapiens sapiens.^[22][23]

Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of scientific racism, and has become increasingly seen as a largely pseudoscientific system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and/or loaded terms: populations, people(s), ethnic groups, or communities, depending on context.^[24][25]

Defining race

Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on the largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time.

• In South Africa, the Population Registration Act, 1950 recognized only White, Black, and Coloured, with Indians added later.^[26]
• The government of Myanmar recognizes eight «major national ethnic races».
• The Brazilian census classifies people into brancos (Whites), pardos (multiracial), pretos (Blacks), amarelos (Asians), and indigenous (see Race and ethnicity in Brazil), though many people use different terms to identify themselves.
• The United States Census Bureau proposed but then withdrew plans to add a new category to classify Middle Eastern and North African peoples in the 2020 U.S. census, over a dispute over whether this classification should be considered a white ethnicity or a separate race.^[27]
• Legal definitions of whiteness in the United States used before the civil rights movement were often challenged for specific groups.
• Historical race concepts have included a wide variety of schemes to divide local or worldwide populations into races and sub-races.

The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in the one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as «white».^[1] Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion.^[5] This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined.^{[28][29][30][31]}

According to geneticist David Reich, «while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.»^[32] In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was «flawed» as «the meaning and significance of the groups is produced through social interventions».^[33]

Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of the race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one.^[1] Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans, especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of a race for political reasons.^[1]

When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved.^[34] In this sense, races are said to be social constructs.^[35] These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations.^{[clarify][36]} While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination.^{[citation needed]}

Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups.^[37] Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior.^[38] As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes.^[39] Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide.^[40]

In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification, for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable. As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities, and social institutions.^[41][42]

Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed.^[43] For example, in 2008, John Hartigan, Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics.^[44] Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction.

In the social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups.

Historical origins of racial classification

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.^[45] The term race was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense,^[24] starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype.^[46][47]

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.^[48] According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790.^[49]

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 kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions.^[45][50] 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 trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves.^[51]

Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example, the hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people^[52] – 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 beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities.^[53] Similar ideas can be found in other cultures,^[54] 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.^[55]

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.^[56] 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 humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric, and phlegmatic, respectively.^[57][58] Homo sapiens europaeus was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless.^[59]

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 American Indian race, and the Malayan race, but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races.^[59] 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».^[60]

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».^[50] 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.^[55] Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified «Negros» as inferior to Europeans.^[59] 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 Native Americans as equals to whites.^[61]

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,^[62] was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist 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 monogenic stance, their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called «Negro question»: a substantial racist view by the former,^[63] and a more liberal view on race by the latter.^[64]

Modern scholarship

Models of human evolution

Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens. However, this is not the first species of homininae: the first species of genus Homo, Homo habilis, evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different parts of Africa in a relatively short time. Homo erectus evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that Archaic Homo sapiens (A group including the possible species H. heidelbergensis, H. rhodesiensis and H. neanderthalensis) evolved out of African Homo erectus (sensu lato) or Homo ergaster.^[65][66] Anthropologists support the idea that anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens) evolved in North or East Africa from an archaic human species such as H. heidelbergensis and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis populations throughout Europe and Asia, and H. rhodesiensis populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of the Out of Africa and Multiregional models).^{[67][verification needed]}

Biological classification

In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person’s behavior and identity, a position commonly called racial essentialism.^[68] This, coupled with a belief that linguistic, cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what is now called scientific racism.^[69] After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity.^[70] New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation.^[68] A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in the West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation.^[71]

The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the anthropologists Franz Boas, who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors,^[72] and Ashley Montagu, who relied on evidence from genetics.^[73] E. O. Wilson then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected the claim that «races» were equivalent to «subspecies».^[74]

Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races.^[75] According to the biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks,^[45]

By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small.

A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.

Subspecies

The term race in biology is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of subspecies.^[76] (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the species level is usually the subspecies;^[77] there are narrower infraspecific ranks in botany, and race does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally, subspecies are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations.^[78] Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated,^[79] and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies.^[80]

In 1978, Sewall Wright suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of the world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued that, «It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other.»^[81] While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists.^[82] Likewise this typological approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists.^[83][16]

Ancestrally differentiated populations (clades)

In 2000, philosopher Robin Andreasen proposed that cladistics might be used to categorize human races biologically, and that races can be both biologically real and socially constructed.^[84] Andreasen cited tree diagrams of relative genetic distances among populations published by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza as the basis for a phylogenetic tree of human races (p. 661). Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks (2008) responded by arguing that Andreasen had misinterpreted the genetic literature: «These trees are phenetic (based on similarity), rather than cladistic (based on monophyletic descent, that is from a series of unique ancestors).»^[85] Evolutionary biologist Alan Templeton (2013) argued that multiple lines of evidence falsify the idea of a phylogenetic tree structure to human genetic diversity, and confirm the presence of gene flow among populations.^[31] Marks, Templeton, and Cavalli-Sforza all conclude that genetics does not provide evidence of human races.^[31][86]

Previously, anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995) had also critiqued the use of cladistics to support concepts of race. They argued that «the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples«. For example, the large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. They argued that this a priori grouping limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of the true patterns of affinity.^[87]

In 2015, Keith Hunley, Graciela Cabana, and Jeffrey Long analyzed the Human Genome Diversity Project sample of 1,037 individuals in 52 populations,^[88] finding that diversity among non-African populations is the result of a serial founder effect process, with non-African populations as a whole nested among African populations, that «some African populations are equally related to other African populations and to non-African populations,» and that «outside of Africa, regional groupings of populations are nested inside one another, and many of them are not monophyletic.»^[88] Earlier research had also suggested that there has always been considerable gene flow between human populations, meaning that human population groups are not monophyletic.^[78] Rachel Caspari has argued that, since no groups currently regarded as races are monophyletic, by definition none of these groups can be clades.^[89]

Clines

One crucial innovation in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation was the anthropologist C. Loring Brace’s observation that such variations, insofar as it is affected by natural selection, slow migration, or genetic drift, are distributed along geographic gradations or clines.^[90] For example, with respect to skin color in Europe and Africa, Brace writes:

To this day, skin color grades by imperceptible means from Europe southward around the eastern end of the Mediterranean and up the Nile into Africa. From one end of this range to the other, there is no hint of a skin color boundary, and yet the spectrum runs from the lightest in the world at the northern edge to as dark as it is possible for humans to be at the equator.^[91]

In part this is due to isolation by distance. This point called attention to a problem common to phenotype-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore a host of other similarities and differences (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone’s conclusion, that since clines cross racial boundaries, «there are no races, only clines».^[92]

In a response to Livingstone, Theodore Dobzhansky argued that when talking about race one must be attentive to how the term is being used: «I agree with Dr. Livingstone that if races have to be ‘discrete units’, then there are no races, and if ‘race’ is used as an ‘explanation’ of the human variability, rather than vice versa, then the explanation is invalid.» He further argued that one could use the term race if one distinguished between «race differences» and «the race concept». The former refers to any distinction in gene frequencies between populations; the latter is «a matter of judgment». He further observed that even when there is clinal variation, «Race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena … but it does not follow that racially distinct populations must be given racial (or subspecific) labels.»^[92] In short, Livingstone and Dobzhansky agree that there are genetic differences among human beings; they also agree that the use of the race concept to classify people, and how the race concept is used, is a matter of social convention. They differ on whether the race concept remains a meaningful and useful social convention.

In 1964, the biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly – for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for the haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin, on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa.^[93] As the anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observed, «Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous».^[87]

Patterns such as those seen in human physical and genetic variation as described above, have led to the consequence that the number and geographic location of any described races is highly dependent on the importance attributed to, and quantity of, the traits considered. A skin-lightening mutation, estimated to have occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, partially accounts for the appearance of light skin in people who migrated out of Africa northward into what is now Europe. East Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations.^[94] On the other hand, the greater the number of traits (or alleles) considered, the more subdivisions of humanity are detected, since traits and gene frequencies do not always correspond to the same geographical location. Or as Ossorio & Duster (2005) put it:

Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans’ physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation, is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 1930s and 1950s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races.^[95] Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people.

Genetically differentiated populations

Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: «A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant ‘constellation'».^[96] Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that «the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing.»^[97] Moreover, the anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless.^[98] The Human Genome Project states «People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other.»^[99] Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan argue that human races do exist, and that they correspond to the genetic classification of ecotypes, but that real human races do not correspond very much, if at all, to folk racial categories.^[100] In contrast, Walsh & Yun reviewed the literature in 2011 and reported that «Genetic studies using very few chromosomal loci find that genetic polymorphisms divide human populations into clusters with almost 100 percent accuracy and that they correspond to the traditional anthropological categories.»^[101]

Some biologists argue that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype), and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings.^[102]

Distribution of genetic variation

The distribution of genetic variants within and among human populations are impossible to describe succinctly because of the difficulty of defining a population, the clinal nature of variation, and heterogeneity across the genome (Long and Kittles 2003). In general, however, an average of 85% of statistical genetic variation exists within local populations, ≈7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ≈8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents.^[103][104] The recent African origin theory for humans would predict that in Africa there exists a great deal more diversity than elsewhere and that diversity should decrease the further from Africa a population is sampled. Hence, the 85% average figure is misleading: Long and Kittles find that rather than 85% of human genetic diversity existing in all human populations, about 100% of human diversity exists in a single African population, whereas only about 60% of human genetic diversity exists in the least diverse population they analyzed (the Surui, a population derived from New Guinea).^[105] Statistical analysis that takes this difference into account confirms previous findings that, «Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance.»^[88]

Cluster analysis

A 2002 study of random biallelic genetic loci found little to no evidence that humans were divided into distinct biological groups.^[106]

In his 2003 paper, «Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin’s Fallacy», A. W. F. Edwards argued that rather than using a locus-by-locus analysis of variation to derive taxonomy, it is possible to construct a human classification system based on characteristic genetic patterns, or clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data.^[107][108] Geographically based human studies since have shown that such genetic clusters can be derived from analyzing of a large number of loci which can assort individuals sampled into groups analogous to traditional continental racial groups.^[109][110] Joanna Mountain and Neil Risch cautioned that while genetic clusters may one day be shown to correspond to phenotypic variations between groups, such assumptions were premature as the relationship between genes and complex traits remains poorly understood.^[111] However, Risch denied such limitations render the analysis useless: «Perhaps just using someone’s actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? … Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn’t preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility.»^[112]

Early human genetic cluster analysis studies were conducted with samples taken from ancestral population groups living at extreme geographic distances from each other. It was thought that such large geographic distances would maximize the genetic variation between the groups sampled in the analysis, and thus maximize the probability of finding cluster patterns unique to each group. In light of the historically recent acceleration of human migration (and correspondingly, human gene flow) on a global scale, further studies were conducted to judge the degree to which genetic cluster analysis can pattern ancestrally identified groups as well as geographically separated groups. One such study looked at a large multiethnic population in the United States, and «detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity – as opposed to current residence – is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population.»^[110]

Witherspoon et al. (2007) have argued that even when individuals can be reliably assigned to specific population groups, it may still be possible for two randomly chosen individuals from different populations/clusters to be more similar to each other than to a randomly chosen member of their own cluster. They found that many thousands of genetic markers had to be used in order for the answer to the question «How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?» to be «never». This assumed three population groups separated by large geographic ranges (European, African and East Asian). The entire world population is much more complex and studying an increasing number of groups would require an increasing number of markers for the same answer. The authors conclude that «caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes.»^[113] Witherspoon, et al. concluded that, «The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population.»^[113]

Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace,^[114] the philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther,^{[115][116][117][118]} and the geneticist Joseph Graves,^[21] have argued that while there it is certainly possible to find biological and genetic variation that corresponds roughly to the groupings normally defined as «continental races», this is true for almost all geographically distinct populations. The cluster structure of the genetic data is therefore dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the populations sampled. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental; if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials.^[119] Kaplan and Winther therefore argue that, seen in this way, both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers). Under Kaplan and Winther’s view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998^[120]) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as the categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons. In earlier work, Winther had identified «diversity partitioning» and «clustering analysis» as two separate methodologies, with distinct questions, assumptions, and protocols. Each is also associated with opposing ontological consequences vis-a-vis the metaphysics of race.^[121] Philosopher Lisa Gannett has argued that biogeographical ancestry, a concept devised by Mark Shriver and Tony Frudakis, is not an objective measure of the biological aspects of race as Shriver and Frudakis claim it is. She argues that it is actually just a «local category shaped by the U.S. context of its production, especially the forensic aim of being able to predict the race or ethnicity of an unknown suspect based on DNA found at the crime scene.»^[122]

Clines and clusters in genetic variation

Recent studies of human genetic clustering have included a debate over how genetic variation is organized, with clusters and clines as the main possible orderings.Serre & Pääbo (2004) argued for smooth, clinal genetic variation in ancestral populations even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques.Rosenberg et al. (2005) disputed this and offered an analysis of the Human Genetic Diversity Panel showing that there were small discontinuities in the smooth genetic variation for ancestral populations at the location of geographic barriers such as the Sahara, the Oceans, and the Himalayas. Nonetheless,Rosenberg et al. (2005) stated that their findings «should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race… Genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive ‘diagnostic’ genotypes.» Using a sample of 40 populations distributed roughly evenly across the Earth’s land surface,Xing & et al. (2010, p. 208) found that «genetic diversity is distributed in a more clinal pattern when more geographically intermediate populations are sampled.»

Guido Barbujani has written that human genetic variation is generally distributed continuously in gradients across much of Earth, and that there is no evidence that genetic boundaries between human populations exist as would be necessary for human races to exist.^[123]

Over time, human genetic variation has formed a nested structure that is inconsistent with the concept of races that have evolved independently of one another.^[124]

As anthropologists and other evolutionary scientists have shifted away from the language of race to the term population to talk about genetic differences, historians, cultural anthropologists and other social scientists re-conceptualized the term «race» as a cultural category or identity, i.e., a way among many possible ways in which a society chooses to divide its members into categories.

Many social scientists have replaced the word race with the word «ethnicity» to refer to self-identifying groups based on beliefs concerning shared culture, ancestry and history. Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with «race», following the Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the civil rights movement in the United States and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. They thus came to believe that race itself is a social construct, a concept that was believed to correspond to an objective reality but which was believed in because of its social functions.^[125]

Craig Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000. Upon examining the data from the genome mapping, Venter realized that although the genetic variation within the human species is on the order of 1–3% (instead of the previously assumed 1%), the types of variations do not support notion of genetically defined races. Venter said, «Race is a social concept. It’s not a scientific one. There are no bright lines (that would stand out), if we could compare all the sequenced genomes of everyone on the planet.» «When we try to apply science to try to sort out these social differences, it all falls apart.»^[126]

Anthropologist Stephan Palmié has argued that race «is not a thing but a social relation»;^[127] or, in the words of Katya Gibel Mevorach, «a metonym», «a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference.»^[128] As such, the use of the term «race» itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race; only history and social relationships will.

Imani Perry has argued that race «is produced by social arrangements and political decision making»,^[129] and that «race is something that happens, rather than something that is. It is dynamic, but it holds no objective truth.»^[130] Similarly, Racial Culture: A Critique (2005), Richard T. Ford argued that while «there is no necessary correspondence between the ascribed identity of race and one’s culture or personal sense of self» and «group difference is not intrinsic to members of social groups but rather contingent o[n] the social practices of group identification», the social practices of identity politics may coerce individuals into the «compulsory» enactment of «prewritten racial scripts».^[131]

Brazil

Compared to 19th-century United States, 20th-century Brazil was characterized by a perceived relative absence of sharply defined racial groups. According to anthropologist Marvin Harris, this pattern reflects a different history and different social relations.

Race in Brazil was «biologized», but in a way that recognized the difference between ancestry (which determines genotype) and phenotypic differences. There, racial identity was not governed by rigid descent rule, such as the one-drop rule, as it was in the United States. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only a very limited number of categories to choose from,^[132] to the extent that full siblings can pertain to different racial groups.^[133]

Self-reported ancestry of people from Rio de Janeiro, by race or skin color (2000 survey)[134]
Ancestry	brancos	pardos	negros
European only	48%	6%	–
African only	–	12%	25%
Amerindian only	–	2%	–
African and European	23%	34%	31%
Amerindian and European	14%	6%	–
African and Amerindian	–	4%	9%
African, Amerindian and European	15%	36%	35%
Total	100%	100%	100%
Any African	38%	86%	100%

Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in conformity with all the possible combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and not one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred preferentially to appearance, not heredity, and appearance is a poor indication of ancestry, because only a few genes are responsible for someone’s skin color and traits: a person who is considered white may have more African ancestry than a person who is considered black, and the reverse can be also true about European ancestry.^[135] The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil reflects the extent of genetic mixing in Brazilian society, a society that remains highly, but not strictly, stratified along color lines. These socioeconomic factors are also significant to the limits of racial lines, because a minority of pardos, or brown people, are likely to start declaring themselves white or black if socially upward,^[136] and being seen as relatively «whiter» as their perceived social status increases (much as in other regions of Latin America).^[137]

Fluidity of racial categories aside, the «biologification» of race in Brazil referred above would match contemporary concepts of race in the United States quite closely, though, if Brazilians are supposed to choose their race as one among, Asian and Indigenous apart, three IBGE’s census categories. While assimilated Amerindians and people with very high quantities of Amerindian ancestry are usually grouped as caboclos, a subgroup of pardos which roughly translates as both mestizo and hillbilly, for those of lower quantity of Amerindian descent a higher European genetic contribution is expected to be grouped as a pardo. In several genetic tests, people with less than 60-65% of European descent and 5–10% of Amerindian descent usually cluster with Afro-Brazilians (as reported by the individuals), or 6.9% of the population, and those with about 45% or more of Subsaharan contribution most times do so (in average, Afro-Brazilian DNA was reported to be about 50% Subsaharan African, 37% European and 13% Amerindian).^{[138][139][140][141]}

Ethnic groups in Brazil (census data)[142]
Ethnic group	white	black	multiracial
1872	3,787,289	1,954,452	4,188,737
1940	26,171,778	6,035,869	8,744,365
1991	75,704,927	7,335,136	62,316,064

Ethnic groups in Brazil (1872 and 1890)[143]
Years	whites	multiracial	blacks	Indians	Total
1872	38.1%	38.3%	19.7%	3.9%	100%
1890	44.0%	32.4%	14.6%	9%	100%

If a more consistent report with the genetic groups in the gradation of genetic mixing is to be considered (e.g. that would not cluster people with a balanced degree of African and non-African ancestry in the black group instead of the multiracial one, unlike elsewhere in Latin America where people of high quantity of African descent tend to classify themselves as mixed), more people would report themselves as white and pardo in Brazil (47.7% and 42.4% of the population as of 2010, respectively), because by research its population is believed to have between 65 and 80% of autosomal European ancestry, in average (also >35% of European mt-DNA and >95% of European Y-DNA).^{[138][144][145][146]}

From the last decades of the Empire until the 1950s, the proportion of the white population increased significantly while Brazil welcomed 5.5 million immigrants between 1821 and 1932, not much behind its neighbor Argentina with 6.4 million,^[147] and it received more European immigrants in its colonial history than the United States. Between 1500 and 1760, 700.000 Europeans settled in Brazil, while 530.000 Europeans settled in the United States for the same given time.^[148] Thus, the historical construction of race in Brazilian society dealt primarily with gradations between persons of majority European ancestry and little minority groups with otherwise lower quantity therefrom in recent times.

European Union

According to the Council of the European Union:

The European Union rejects theories which attempt to determine the existence of separate human races.

— Directive 2000/43/EC^[149]

The European Union uses the terms racial origin and ethnic origin synonymously in its documents and according to it «the use of the term ‘racial origin’ in this directive does not imply an acceptance of such [racial] theories».^{[149][150][full citation needed]} Haney López warns that using «race» as a category within the law tends to legitimize its existence in the popular imagination. In the diverse geographic context of Europe, ethnicity and ethnic origin are arguably more resonant and are less encumbered by the ideological baggage associated with «race». In European context, historical resonance of «race» underscores its problematic nature. In some states, it is strongly associated with laws promulgated by the Nazi and Fascist governments in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, in 1996, the European Parliament adopted a resolution stating that «the term should therefore be avoided in all official texts».^[151]

The concept of racial origin relies on the notion that human beings can be separated into biologically distinct «races», an idea generally rejected by the scientific community. Since all human beings belong to the same species, the ECRI (European Commission against Racism and Intolerance) rejects theories based on the existence of different «races». However, in its Recommendation ECRI uses this term in order to ensure that those persons who are generally and erroneously perceived as belonging to «another race» are not excluded from the protection provided for by the legislation. The law claims to reject the existence of «race», yet penalize situations where someone is treated less favourably on this ground.^[151]

United States

The immigrants to the United States came from every region of Europe, Africa, and Asia. They mixed among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In the United States most people who self-identify as African American have some European ancestors, while many people who identify as European American have some African or Amerindian ancestors.

Since the early history of the United States, Amerindians, African Americans, and European Americans have been classified as belonging to different races. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories, such as mulatto and octoroon. The criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During the Reconstruction era, increasing numbers of Americans began to consider anyone with «one drop» of known «Black blood» to be Black, regardless of appearance. By the early 20th century, this notion was made statutory in many states. Amerindians continue to be defined by a certain percentage of «Indian blood» (called blood quantum). To be White one had to have perceived «pure» White ancestry. The one-drop rule or hypodescent rule refers to the convention of defining a person as racially black if he or she has any known African ancestry. This rule meant that those that were mixed race but with some discernible African ancestry were defined as black. The one-drop rule is specific to not only those with African ancestry but to the United States, making it a particularly African-American experience.^[152]

The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into these categories.^[153]

The term «Hispanic» as an ethnonym emerged in the 20th century with the rise of migration of laborers from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America to the United States. Today, the word «Latino» is often used as a synonym for «Hispanic». The definitions of both terms are non-race specific, and include people who consider themselves to be of distinct races (Black, White, Amerindian, Asian, and mixed groups).^[154] However, there is a common misconception in the US that Hispanic/Latino is a race^[155] or sometimes even that national origins such as Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Salvadoran, etc. are races. In contrast to «Latino» or «Hispanic», «Anglo» refers to non-Hispanic White Americans or non-Hispanic European Americans, most of whom speak the English language but are not necessarily of English descent.

Views across disciplines over time

Anthropology

The concept of race classification in physical anthropology lost credibility around the 1960s and is now considered untenable.^{[156][157][158]} A 2019 statement by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists declares:

Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations. Humans are not divided biologically into distinct continental types or racial genetic clusters. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from, and in support of, European colonialism, oppression, and discrimination.^[83]

Wagner et al. (2017) surveyed 3,286 American anthropologists’ views on race and genetics, including both cultural and biological anthropologists. They found a consensus among them that biological races do not exist in humans, but that race does exist insofar as the social experiences of members of different races can have significant effects on health.^[159]

Wang, Štrkalj et al. (2003) examined the use of race as a biological concept in research papers published in China’s only biological anthropology journal, Acta Anthropologica Sinica. The study showed that the race concept was widely used among Chinese anthropologists.^[160][161] In a 2007 review paper, Štrkalj suggested that the stark contrast of the racial approach between the United States and China was due to the fact that race is a factor for social cohesion among the ethnically diverse people of China, whereas «race» is a very sensitive issue in America and the racial approach is considered to undermine social cohesion – with the result that in the socio-political context of US academics scientists are encouraged not to use racial categories, whereas in China they are encouraged to use them.^[162]

Lieberman et al. in a 2004 study researched the acceptance of race as a concept among anthropologists in the United States, Canada, the Spanish speaking areas, Europe, Russia and China. Rejection of race ranged from high to low, with the highest rejection rate in the United States and Canada, a moderate rejection rate in Europe, and the lowest rejection rate in Russia and China. Methods used in the studies reported included questionnaires and content analysis.^[20]

Kaszycka et al. (2009) in 2002–2003 surveyed European anthropologists’ opinions toward the biological race concept. Three factors, country of academic education, discipline, and age, were found to be significant in differentiating the replies. Those educated in Western Europe, physical anthropologists, and middle-aged persons rejected race more frequently than those educated in Eastern Europe, people in other branches of science, and those from both younger and older generations.» The survey shows that the views on race are sociopolitically (ideologically) influenced and highly dependent on education.»^[163]

United States

Since the second half of the 20th century, physical anthropology in the United States has moved away from a typological understanding of human biological diversity towards a genomic and population-based perspective. Anthropologists have tended to understand race as a social classification of humans based on phenotype and ancestry as well as cultural factors, as the concept is understood in the social sciences.^[89][157] Since 1932, an increasing number of college textbooks introducing physical anthropology have rejected race as a valid concept: from 1932 to 1976, only seven out of thirty-two rejected race; from 1975 to 1984, thirteen out of thirty-three rejected race; from 1985 to 1993, thirteen out of nineteen rejected race. According to one academic journal entry, where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology employed these or nearly synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996.^[164]

A 1998 «Statement on ‘Race'» composed by a select committee of anthropologists and issued by the executive board of the American Anthropological Association, which they argue «represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists», declares:^[165]

In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic «racial» groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within «racial» groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species. […]
With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, … it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. […] Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so-called «racial» groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances.

An earlier survey, conducted in 1985 (Lieberman et al. 1992), asked 1,200 American scientists how many disagree with the following proposition: «There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens.» Among anthropologists, the responses were:

• physical anthropologists: 41%
• cultural anthropologists: 53%^[166]

Lieberman’s study also showed that more women reject the concept of race than men.^[167]

The same survey, conducted again in 1999,^[168] showed that the number of anthropologists disagreeing with the idea of biological race had risen substantially. The results were as follows:

• physical anthropologists: 69%
• cultural anthropologists: 80%

A line of research conducted by Cartmill (1998), however, seemed to limit the scope of Lieberman’s finding that there was «a significant degree of change in the status of the race concept». Goran Štrkalj has argued that this may be because Lieberman and collaborators had looked at all the members of the American Anthropological Association irrespective of their field of research interest, while Cartmill had looked specifically at biological anthropologists interested in human variation.^[169]

In 2007, Ann Morning interviewed over 40 American biologists and anthropologists and found significant disagreements over the nature of race, with no one viewpoint holding a majority among either group. Morning also argues that a third position, «antiessentialism», which holds that race is not a useful concept for biologists, should be introduced into this debate in addition to «constructionism» and «essentialism».

According to the 2000 University of Wyoming edition of a popular physical anthropology textbook, forensic anthropologists are overwhelmingly in support of the idea of the basic biological reality of human races.^[171] Forensic physical anthropologist and professor George W. Gill has said that the idea that race is only skin deep «is simply not true, as any experienced forensic anthropologist will affirm» and «Many morphological features tend to follow geographic boundaries coinciding often with climatic zones. This is not surprising since the selective forces of climate are probably the primary forces of nature that have shaped human races with regard not only to skin color and hair form but also the underlying bony structures of the nose, cheekbones, etc. (For example, more prominent noses humidify air better.)» While he can see good arguments for both sides, the complete denial of the opposing evidence «seems to stem largely from socio-political motivation and not science at all». He also states that many biological anthropologists see races as real yet «not one introductory textbook of physical anthropology even presents that perspective as a possibility. In a case as flagrant as this, we are not dealing with science but rather with blatant, politically motivated censorship».^[171]

In partial response to Gill’s statement, Professor of Biological Anthropology C. Loring Brace argues that the reason laymen and biological anthropologists can determine the geographic ancestry of an individual can be explained by the fact that biological characteristics are clinally distributed across the planet, and that does not translate into the concept of race. He states:

Well, you may ask, why can’t we call those regional patterns «races»? In fact, we can and do, but it does not make them coherent biological entities. «Races» defined in such a way are products of our perceptions. … We realize that in the extremes of our transit – Moscow to Nairobi, perhaps – there is a major but gradual change in skin color from what we euphemistically call white to black, and that this is related to the latitudinal difference in the intensity of the ultraviolet component of sunlight. What we do not see, however, is the myriad other traits that are distributed in a fashion quite unrelated to the intensity of ultraviolet radiation. Where skin color is concerned, all the northern populations of the Old World are lighter than the long-term inhabitants near the equator. Although Europeans and Chinese are obviously different, in skin color they are closer to each other than either is to equatorial Africans. But if we test the distribution of the widely known ABO blood-group system, then Europeans and Africans are closer to each other than either is to Chinese.^[172]

The concept of «race» is still sometimes used within forensic anthropology (when analyzing skeletal remains), biomedical research, and race-based medicine.^[173][174] Brace has criticized forensic anthropologists for this, arguing that they in fact should be talking about regional ancestry. He argues that while forensic anthropologists can determine that a skeletal remain comes from a person with ancestors in a specific region of Africa, categorizing that skeletal as being «black» is a socially constructed category that is only meaningful in the particular social context of the United States, and which is not itself scientifically valid.^[175]

Biology, anatomy, and medicine

In the same 1985 survey (Lieberman et al. 1992), 16% of the surveyed biologists and 36% of the surveyed developmental psychologists disagreed with the proposition: «There are biological races in the species Homo sapiens.»

The authors of the study also examined 77 college textbooks in biology and 69 in physical anthropology published between 1932 and 1989. Physical anthropology texts argued that biological races exist until the 1970s, when they began to argue that races do not exist. In contrast, biology textbooks did not undergo such a reversal but many instead dropped their discussion of race altogether. The authors attributed this to biologists trying to avoid discussing the political implications of racial classifications, and to the ongoing discussions in biology about the validity of the idea of «subspecies». The authors concluded, «The concept of race, masking the overwhelming genetic similarity of all peoples and the mosaic patterns of variation that do not correspond to racial divisions, is not only socially dysfunctional but is biologically indefensible as well (pp. 5 18–5 19).»(Lieberman et al. 1992, pp. 316–17)

A 1994 examination of 32 English sport/exercise science textbooks found that 7 (21.9%) claimed that there are biophysical differences due to race that might explain differences in sports performance, 24 (75%) did not mention nor refute the concept, and 1 (3.1%) expressed caution with the idea.^[176]

In February 2001, the editors of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine asked «authors to not use race and ethnicity when there is no biological, scientific, or sociological reason for doing so.»^[177] The editors also stated that «analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex.»^[178] Nature Genetics now ask authors to «explain why they make use of particular ethnic groups or populations, and how classification was achieved.»^[179]

Morning (2008) looked at high school biology textbooks during the 1952–2002 period and initially found a similar pattern with only 35% directly discussing race in the 1983–92 period from initially 92% doing so. However, this has increased somewhat after this to 43%. More indirect and brief discussions of race in the context of medical disorders have increased from none to 93% of textbooks. In general, the material on race has moved from surface traits to genetics and evolutionary history. The study argues that the textbooks’ fundamental message about the existence of races has changed little.^[180]

Surveying views on race in the scientific community in 2008, Morning concluded that biologists had failed to come to a clear consensus, and they often split along cultural and demographic lines. She notes, «At best, one can conclude that biologists and anthropologists now appear equally divided in their beliefs about the nature of race.»

Gissis (2008) examined several important American and British journals in genetics, epidemiology and medicine for their content during the 1946–2003 period. He wrote that «Based upon my findings I argue that the category of race only seemingly disappeared from scientific discourse after World War II and has had a fluctuating yet continuous use during the time span from 1946 to 2003, and has even become more pronounced from the early 1970s on«.^[181]

33 health services researchers from differing geographic regions were interviewed in a 2008 study. The researchers recognized the problems with racial and ethnic variables but the majority still believed these variables were necessary and useful.^[182]

A 2010 examination of 18 widely used English anatomy textbooks found that they all represented human biological variation in superficial and outdated ways, many of them making use of the race concept in ways that were current in 1950s anthropology. The authors recommended that anatomical education should describe human anatomical variation in more detail and rely on newer research that demonstrates the inadequacies of simple racial typologies.^[183]

A 2021 study that examined over 11,000 papers from 1949 to 2018 in The American Journal of Human Genetics, found that «race» was used in only 5% of papers published in the last decade, down from 22% in the first. Together with an increase in use of the terms «ethnicity,» «ancestry,» and location-based terms, it suggests that human geneticists have mostly abandoned the term «race.»^[184]

Sociology

Lester Frank Ward (1841–1913), considered to be one of the founders of American sociology, rejected notions that there were fundamental differences that distinguished one race from another, although he acknowledged that social conditions differed dramatically by race.^[185] At the turn of the 20th century, sociologists viewed the concept of race in ways that were shaped by the scientific racism of the 19th and early 20th centuries.^[186] Many sociologists focused on African Americans, called Negroes at that time, and claimed that they were inferior to whites. White sociologist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), for example, used biological arguments to claim the inferiority of African Americans.^[186] American sociologist Charles H. Cooley (1864–1929) theorized that differences among races were «natural,» and that biological differences result in differences in intellectual abilities^[187][185] Edward Alsworth Ross (1866–1951), also an important figure in the founding of American sociology, and a eugenicist, believed that whites were the superior race, and that there were essential differences in «temperament» among races.^[185] In 1910, the Journal published an article by Ulysses G. Weatherly (1865–1940) that called for white supremacy and segregation of the races to protect racial purity.^[185]

W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963), one of the first African-American sociologists, was the first sociologist to use sociological concepts and empirical research methods to analyze race as a social construct instead of a biological reality.^[186] Beginning in 1899 with his book The Philadelphia Negro, Du Bois studied and wrote about race and racism throughout his career. In his work, he contended that social class, colonialism, and capitalism shaped ideas about race and racial categories. Social scientists largely abandoned scientific racism and biological reasons for racial categorization schemes by the 1930s.^[188] Other early sociologists, especially those associated with the Chicago School, joined Du Bois in theorizing race as a socially constructed fact.^[188] By 1978, William Julius Wilson argued that race and racial classification systems were declining in significance, and that instead, social class more accurately described what sociologists had earlier understood as race.^[189] By 1986, sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant successfully introduced the concept of racial formation to describe the process by which racial categories are created.^[190] Omi and Winant assert that «there is no biological basis for distinguishing among human groups along the lines of race.»^[190]

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Sociology professor at Duke University, remarks,^[191] «I contend that racism is, more than anything else, a matter of group power; it is about a dominant racial group (whites) striving to maintain its systemic advantages and minorities fighting to subvert the racial status quo.»^[192] The types of practices that take place under this new color-blind racism is subtle, institutionalized, and supposedly not racial. Color-blind racism thrives on the idea that race is no longer an issue in the United States.^[192] There are contradictions between the alleged color-blindness of most whites and the persistence of a color-coded system of inequality.^{[citation needed]}

Today, sociologists generally understand race and racial categories as socially constructed, and reject racial categorization schemes that depend on biological differences.^[188]

Political and practical uses

Biomedicine

In the United States, federal government policy promotes the use of racially categorized data to identify and address health disparities between racial or ethnic groups.^[193] In clinical settings, race has sometimes been considered in the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions. Doctors have noted that some medical conditions are more prevalent in certain racial or ethnic groups than in others, without being sure of the cause of those differences. Recent interest in race-based medicine, or race-targeted pharmacogenomics, has been fueled by the proliferation of human genetic data which followed the decoding of the human genome in the first decade of the twenty-first century. There is an active debate among biomedical researchers about the meaning and importance of race in their research. Proponents of the use of racial categories in biomedicine argue that continued use of racial categorizations in biomedical research and clinical practice makes possible the application of new genetic findings, and provides a clue to diagnosis.^[194][195] Biomedical researchers’ positions on race fall into two main camps: those who consider the concept of race to have no biological basis and those who consider it to have the potential to be biologically meaningful. Members of the latter camp often base their arguments around the potential to create genome-based personalized medicine.^[196]

Other researchers point out that finding a difference in disease prevalence between two socially defined groups does not necessarily imply genetic causation of the difference.^[197][198] They suggest that medical practices should maintain their focus on the individual rather than an individual’s membership to any group.^[199] They argue that overemphasizing genetic contributions to health disparities carries various risks such as reinforcing stereotypes, promoting racism or ignoring the contribution of non-genetic factors to health disparities.^[200] International epidemiological data show that living conditions rather than race make the biggest difference in health outcomes even for diseases that have «race-specific» treatments.^[201] Some studies have found that patients are reluctant to accept racial categorization in medical practice.^[195]

Law enforcement

In an attempt to provide general descriptions that may facilitate the job of law enforcement officers seeking to apprehend suspects, the United States FBI employs the term «race» to summarize the general appearance (skin color, hair texture, eye shape, and other such easily noticed characteristics) of individuals whom they are attempting to apprehend. From the perspective of law enforcement officers, it is generally more important to arrive at a description that will readily suggest the general appearance of an individual than to make a scientifically valid categorization by DNA or other such means. Thus, in addition to assigning a wanted individual to a racial category, such a description will include: height, weight, eye color, scars and other distinguishing characteristics.

Criminal justice agencies in England and Wales use at least two separate racial/ethnic classification systems when reporting crime, as of 2010. One is the system used in the 2001 Census when individuals identify themselves as belonging to a particular ethnic group: W1 (White-British), W2 (White-Irish), W9 (Any other white background); M1 (White and black Caribbean), M2 (White and black African), M3 (White and Asian), M9 (Any other mixed background); A1 (Asian-Indian), A2 (Asian-Pakistani), A3 (Asian-Bangladeshi), A9 (Any other Asian background); B1 (Black Caribbean), B2 (Black African), B3 (Any other black background); O1 (Chinese), O9 (Any other). The other is categories used by the police when they visually identify someone as belonging to an ethnic group, e.g. at the time of a stop and search or an arrest: White – North European (IC1), White – South European (IC2), Black (IC3), Asian (IC4), Chinese, Japanese, or South East Asian (IC5), Middle Eastern (IC6), and Unknown (IC0). «IC» stands for «Identification Code;» these items are also referred to as Phoenix classifications.^[202] Officers are instructed to «record the response that has been given» even if the person gives an answer which may be incorrect; their own perception of the person’s ethnic background is recorded separately.^[203] Comparability of the information being recorded by officers was brought into question by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in September 2007, as part of its Equality Data Review; one problem cited was the number of reports that contained an ethnicity of «Not Stated.»^[204]

In many countries, such as France, the state is legally banned from maintaining data based on race.^[205]

In the United States, the practice of racial profiling has been ruled to be both unconstitutional and a violation of civil rights. There is active debate regarding the cause of a marked correlation between the recorded crimes, punishments meted out, and the country’s populations. Many consider de facto racial profiling an example of institutional racism in law enforcement.^[206]

Mass incarceration in the United States disproportionately impacts African American and Latino communities. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010), argues that mass incarceration is best understood as not only a system of overcrowded prisons. Mass incarceration is also, «the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison.»^[207] She defines it further as «a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls», illustrating the second-class citizenship that is imposed on a disproportionate number of people of color, specifically African-Americans. She compares mass incarceration to Jim Crow laws, stating that both work as racial caste systems.^[208]

Many research findings appear to agree that the impact of victim race in the interpersonal violence (IPV) arrest decision might include a racial bias in favor of white victims. A 2011 study in a national sample of IPV arrests found that female arrest was more likely if the male victim was white and the female offender was black, while male arrest was more likely if the female victim was white. For both female and male arrest in IPV cases, situations involving married couples were more likely to lead to arrest compared to dating or divorced couples. More research is needed to understand agency and community factors that influence police behavior and how discrepancies in IPV interventions/ tools of justice can be addressed.^[209]

Recent work using DNA cluster analysis to determine race background has been used by some criminal investigators to narrow their search for the identity of both suspects and victims.^[210] Proponents of DNA profiling in criminal investigations cite cases where leads based on DNA analysis proved useful, but the practice remains controversial among medical ethicists, defense lawyers and some in law enforcement.^[211]

The Constitution of Australia contains a line about ‘people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’, despite there being no agreed definition of race described in the document.

Forensic anthropology

Similarly, forensic anthropologists draw on highly heritable morphological features of human remains (e.g. cranial measurements) to aid in the identification of the body, including in terms of race. In a 1992 article, anthropologist Norman Sauer noted that anthropologists had generally abandoned the concept of race as a valid representation of human biological diversity, except for forensic anthropologists. He asked, «If races don’t exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them?»^[158] He concluded:

[T]he successful assignment of race to a skeletal specimen is not a vindication of the race concept, but rather a prediction that an individual, while alive was assigned to a particular socially constructed «racial» category. A specimen may display features that point to African ancestry. In this country that person is likely to have been labeled Black regardless of whether or not such a race actually exists in nature.^[158]

Identification of the ancestry of an individual is dependent upon knowledge of the frequency and distribution of phenotypic traits in a population. This does not necessitate the use of a racial classification scheme based on unrelated traits, although the race concept is widely used in medical and legal contexts in the United States.^[212] Some studies have reported that races can be identified with a high degree of accuracy using certain methods, such as that developed by Giles and Elliot. However, this method sometimes fails to be replicated in other times and places; for instance, when the method was re-tested to identify Native Americans, the average rate of accuracy dropped from 85% to 33%.^[75] Prior information about the individual (e.g. Census data) is also important in allowing the accurate identification of the individual’s «race».^[213]

In a different approach, anthropologist C. Loring Brace said:

The simple answer is that, as members of the society that poses the question, they are inculcated into the social conventions that determine the expected answer. They should also be aware of the biological inaccuracies contained in that «politically correct» answer. Skeletal analysis provides no direct assessment of skin color, but it does allow an accurate estimate of original geographical origins. African, eastern Asian, and European ancestry can be specified with a high degree of accuracy. Africa of course entails «black», but «black» does not entail African.^[214]

In association with a NOVA program in 2000 about race, he wrote an essay opposing use of the term.^[215]

A 2002 study found that about 13% of human craniometric variation existed between regions, while 6% existed between local populations within regions and 81% within local populations. In contrast, the opposite pattern of genetic variation was observed for skin color (which is often used to define race), with 88% of variation between regions. The study concluded that «The apportionment of genetic diversity in skin color is atypical, and cannot be used for purposes of classification.»^[216]
Similarly, a 2009 study found that craniometrics could be used accurately to determine what part of the world someone was from based on their cranium; however, this study also found that there were no abrupt boundaries that separated craniometric variation into distinct racial groups.^[217] Another 2009 study showed that American blacks and whites had different skeletal morphologies, and that significant patterning in variation in these traits exists within continents. This suggests that classifying humans into races based on skeletal characteristics would necessitate many different «races» being defined.^[218]

In 2010, philosopher Neven Sesardic argued that when several traits are analyzed at the same time, forensic anthropologists can classify a person’s race with an accuracy of close to 100% based on only skeletal remains.^[219] Sesardic’s claim has been disputed by philosopher Massimo Pigliucci, who accused Sesardic of «cherry pick[ing] the scientific evidence and reach[ing] conclusions that are contradicted by it.» Specifically, Pigliucci argued that Sesardic misrepresented a paper by Ousley et al. (2009), and neglected to mention that they identified differentiation not just between individuals from different races, but also between individuals from different tribes, local environments, and time periods.^[220]

See also

References

Bibliography

Further reading

Popular press

External links

• «Race, Evolution and the Science of Human Origins» by Allison Hopper, Scientific American (5 July 2021).
• When racism was respectable: Franz Boas on The Categorization of Human Types
• Race (Stanford Encyclopedia)
• Race: the Power of an Illusion companion website to California Newsreel feature, 2003, PBS
• Is Race «Real»?, forum by the Social Science Research Council.

Official statements

• «Statement on Race & Racism», American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2019
• US Census Bureau: Definition of Race
• «Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity», Federal Register, 1997, Department of Interior
• RACE: Are we so different?, a public education program by the American Anthropological Association.

Race is a grouping of plants or animals within a species on the basis of heredity and stereotyped physical traits. When applied to humans, «race» is often used as a basis for participation in or exclusion from social and political activities. The construction of «races», when applied to humans, varies by culture and time periods, and is often influenced by political and societal considerations.

A[edit]

• A man must be excessively stupid, as well as uncharitable, who believes there is no virtue but on his own side.
  • Joseph Addison, The Spectator 243, (8 December 1711)

• What we find over and over again in the literature, is that if a black person’s face was shown really quickly, then people are quicker at categorizing negative words than positive words that follow it. Versus if a white face was shown really quickly, people are usually quicker to categorize the positive words, compared with the negative words.
  • David Amodio Inquiring Minds Podcast #33 The Science of Prejudice as quoted by Mother Jones (2014/05/2016)

• Preserving outdated terms for the sake of questionable continuity is a disservice to the nation… The concept of race has become thoroughly, and perniciously, woven into the cultural and political fabric… It has become an essential element of both individual identity and government policy. Because so much harm has been based on ‘racial’ distinctions over the years, correctives for such harm must also acknowledge the impact of ‘racial’ consciousness among the U.S. populace, regardless of the fact that ‘race’ has no scientific justification in human biology. Eventually, however, these classifications must be transcended and replaced.
  • American Anthropological Association, «Response to OMB Directive 15» (September 1997), Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting, Arlington County, Virginia: American Anthropological Association

• I prefer not to use the term race, for race is a thing much more difficult to determine than is usually imagined. In dealing with it the trenchant distinctions current in the popular mind are wholly out of place.
  • Sri Aurobindo: India’s Rebirth, p. 104., quoted in Elst, Koenraad (1999). Update on the Aryan invasion debate New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.

B[edit]

• Georgia has prospered because we have refused to be divided. We have worked together, and the nation and the world have taken notice. We are where we are today, the envy of other states, because decades ago our leaders accepted change while others defied it. In the long run, it has paid us handsome dividends. Today, the eyes of the nation and the world are on us again to see whether Georgia is still a leader or whether we will slip into the morass of past recriminations. I have heard all the reasons not to change the flag and adopt this compromise: «it will hurt me politically»; «this is how we can become a majority»; «this is our wedge issue»; «this is the way we use race to win.» Using race to win leaves ashes in the mouths of the victors. If there is anything we should have learned from our history, it is that using racial bigotry for political advantage always backfires. Sometimes in the short run, sometimes in the long run. Often both. And if you allow yourself to be dragged along in its raging current even if only briefly, you will live the rest of your life regretting your mistake. I know.
  • Roy Barnes, speech to the Georgian House of Representatives (24 January 2001).

• Being a racist monster isn’t a mental illness – in fact, you can be one and be a very stable genius.
  • Samantha Bee; Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, (August 7, 2019); as qtd. in Adrian Horton, “Samantha Bee: ‘Being a racist monster isn’t a mental illness'», The Guardian, (8 Aug 2019).

• If things are allowed to go on as they are, it is certain that slavery is to be abolished. By the time the north shall have attained the power, the black race will be in a large majority, and then we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything. Is it to be supposed that the white race will stand for that? It is not a supposable case. Although not half so numerous, we may readily assume that war will break out everywhere like hidden fire from the earth, and it is probable that the white race, being superior in every respect, may push the other back. They will then call upon the authorities at Washington, to aid them in putting down servile insurrection, and they will send a standing army down upon us, and the volunteers and Wide-Awakes will come in thousands, and we will be overpowered and our men will be compelled to wander like vagabonds all over the earth; and as for our women, the horrors of their state we cannot contemplate in imagination. That is the fate which Abolition will bring upon the white race. But that is not all of the Abolition war. We will be completely exterminated, and the land will be left in the possession of the blacks, and then it will go back to a wilderness and become another Africa or Saint Domingo.
  • Henry L. Benning, speech to the Virginian secession convention (18 February 1861), as quoted in “Why Non-Slaveholding Southeners Fought” (25 January 2011), by Gordon Rhea, Civil War Trust. Also quoted in Proceedings of the Virginia State Convention of 1861, vol. 1, pp. 62-75.

• Racism is not something that is designated as an illness that can be treated by mental health professionals.
  • [w:Renee Binder|Renee Binder]], doctor and Chairwoman of the American Psychiatric Association’s Council on Psychiatry and Law, as quoted in «They Hate. They Kill. Are They Insane?», Alvin F. Poussaint, The New York Times, (1999).

• I ask you to uphold the values of America, and remember why so many have come here. We are in a fight for our principles, and our first responsibility is to live by them. No one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith.
  • George W. Bush, Freedom and Fear Are at War: Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People (20 September 2001).

• Any suggestion that a segregated past was acceptable or positive is offensive and it is wrong. Recent comments by Senator Lott do not reflect the spirit of our country. He has apologized and rightly so. Every day our nation was segregated was a day that America was unfaithful to our founding ideals, and the founding ideals of our nation, and in fact the founding ideals of the political party I represent, was and remains today the equal dignity and equal rights of every American.
  • George W. Bush, regarding comments made by Trent Lott (12 December 2002), as quoted in «Lott’s Remarks on Segregation ‘Wrong and Offense'» (13 December 2002), The Irish Times.

• Freedom is not the possession of one race. We know with equal certainty that freedom is not the possession of one nation. This belief in the natural rights of man, this conviction that justice should reach wherever the sun passes, leads…
  • George W. Bush, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (8 July 2003), speech at Goree Island, Senegal.

• Our country must abandon all the habits of racism because we cannot carry the message of freedom and the baggage of bigotry at the same time.
  • George W. Bush, Second Inaugural Address (20 January 2005).

• Yes I do, he called me a racist… That’s saying he’s a racist. I didn’t appreciate it then and I don’t appreciate it now. It’s one thing to say, you know, I don’t appreciate the way he’s handled his business. It’s another thing to say this man’s a racist. I resent it. It’s not true, and it’s one of the most disgusting moments of my presidency.
  • George W. Bush, Interview with Matt Lauer (2010), aired 8 November 2010.

• I appreciate that. It wasn’t just Kanye West who was talking like that during Katrina. I cite him as an example. I cited others as well… I am not a hater. I don’t hate Kanye West. But, I was talking about an environment in which people were willing to say things that hurt. Nobody wants to be called a racist, if in your heart you believe in equality of race.
  • George W. Bush, Interview on Today, with Matt Lauer (9 November 2010).

C[edit]

• Sexual racism is a specific form of racial prejudice enacted in the context of sex or romance. Online, people use sex and dating profiles to describe racialized Sexual attraction through language such as “Not attracted to Asians.” Among gay and bisexual men, sexual racism is a highly contentious issue. Although some characterize discrimination among partners on the basis of race as a form of racism, others present it as a matter of preference. In May 2011, 2177 gay and bisexual men in Australia participated in an online survey that assessed how acceptably they viewed online sexual racism. Although the men sampled displayed diverse attitudes, many were remarkably tolerant of sexual racism. We conducted two multiple linear regression analyses to compare factors related to men’s attitudes toward sexual racism online and their racist attitudes more broadly. Almost every identified factor associated with men’s racist attitudes was also related to their attitudes toward sexual racism. The only differences were between men who identified as Asian or Indian. Sexual racism, therefore, is closely associated with generic racist attitudes, which challenges the idea of racial attraction as solely a matter of personal preference.
  • Callander, D., Newman, C. E., & Holt, M. (2015). “Is sexual racism really racism? Distinguishing attitudes toward sexual racism and generic racism among gay and bisexual men.”, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44(7), 1991-2000.

• In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world’s mockery… In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns… I do not know how the affair at Canterbury is generally considered; but I have heard individuals of all parties and all opinions speak of it—and never without merriment or indignation. Fifty years hence, the black laws of Connecticut will be a greater source of amusement to the antiquarian, than her famous blue laws.
  • Lydia Maria Child, An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Chapter VIII.

• Our wants are various, and nobody has been found able to acquire even the necessaries without the aid of other people, and there is scarcely any Nation that has not stood in need of others. The Almighty himself has made our race such that we should help one another. Should this mutual aid be checked within or without the Nation, it is contrary to Nature.
  • Anders Chydenius The National Gain, §2, 1765.

• The price of hating other human beings is loving oneself less.
  • Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice (1968), Part I: «Becoming».

• Increasing knowledge of the human genome must never change the basic belief on which our ethics, our government, our society are founded. All of us are created equal, entitled to equal treatment under the law. After all, I believe one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same.
  • Bill Clinton, as transcribed in «President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair Deliver Remarks on Human Genome Milestone», CNN.com, (June 26, 2000).

• …race is the child of racism, not the father.
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.

• Racism tends to attract attention when it’s flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping — positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry; they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace; they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and straw man. Thus segregation wasn’t necessary to keep the niggers in line; it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.
  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, «The NAACP is Right» (15 July 2010), The Atlantic.

• While skin and race are often synonymous, skin cleansing is good, race cleansing is bad.
  • Stephen Colbert «A Mock Columnist, Amok», in The New York Times (14 October 2007)

• ‘Race’ and ‘ethnicity’ are poorly defined terms that serve as flawed surrogates for multiple environmental and genetic factors in disease causation, including ancestral geographic origins, socioeconomic status, education and access to health care.
  • Francis S. Collins. «What We Do and Don’t Know About ‘Race’, ‘Ethnicity’, Genetics, and Health at the Dawn of the Genome Era» (November 2004), Nature Genetics Supplement, vol. 36, no. 11

• Mother do you know I asked myself this question. What right have I simply because I am white to be the master race, while this man knowing more than I should be a slave because he is black?
  • Chauncey Herbert Cooke, letter to mother

• If we are to have that harmony and tranquility, that union of spirit which is the foundation of real national genius and national progress, we must all realize that there are true Americans who did not happen to be born in our section of the country, who do not attend our place of religious worship, who are not of our racial stock, or who are not proficient in our language. If we are to create on this continent a free republic and an enlightened civilization that will be capable of reflecting the true greatness and glory of mankind, it will be necessary to regard these differences as accidental and unessential. We shall have to look beyond the outward manifestations of race and creed. Divine providence has not bestowed upon any race a monopoly of patriotism and character. The same principle that it is necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among our own people it is also necessary to apply to the attitude of mind among the different nations.
  • Calvin Coolidge, «Toleration and Liberalism» (6 October 1925), American Legion Convention, Omaha, Nebraska

• You say you are tired of the eternal Negro. Very well, stop trying to turn a man into a thing because he happens to be black, and you’ll stop our mouths at the same time. But while you keep at your work, be perfectly sure that we shall keep at ours. If you are up at five o’clock, we shall be up at four. We shall agitate, agitate, agitate, until the Supreme Court, obeying the popular will, proclaims that all men have original equal rights which government did not give and cannot justly take away… I believe these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Do you believe it? If aye, let us go into the battle, and God speed the right.
  • George William Curtis, «The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question» (18 October 1859), New York City

• The United States was made by men of all races and colors, not for white men, but for the refuge and defense of man. If it does not rest upon the natural rights of man, it rests nowhere. If it does not exist by the consent of governed then any exclusion is possible, and it is a shorter step from an exclusive white man’s government to an exclusively rich white man’s government, than it is from a system for mankind to one for white men. The spirit which excludes some men today because they are of a certain color, may exclude others tomorrow because they are of a certain poverty or a certain church or a certain birthplace. There is no safety, no guarantee, no security in a prejudice. If we build strong and long, we must build upon moral principle… Inferior race? Was it they who carved the skulls of our boys into drinking, cups and their bones into trinkets? Was it they who starved and froze our brothers into idiocy and madness at Andersonville and Belle-Isle? Was it they who hunted our darlings with bloodhounds, or hung faithful Union men before the very eyes of their wives and children? Come! Come! Brothers of my race, whether at the north or south, these things which we all execrate and abhor were the work of men of our own color. Let us clasp hands in speechless shame, and confess that manhood in America is to be measured not by the color of the skin, but by the quality of the soul.
  • George William Curtis, «The Good Fight» (1865).

• The truest American president we have ever had, the companion of Washington in our love and honor, recognized that the poorest man, however outraged, however ignorant, however despised, however black, was, as a man, his equal. The child of the American people was their most prophetic man, because, whether as small shop-keeper, as flat-boatman, as volunteer captain, as honest lawyer, as defender of the Declaration, as President of the United States, he knew by the profoundest instinct and the widest experience and reflection, that in the most vital faith of this country it is just as honorable for an honest man to curry a horse and black a boot as it is to raise cotton or corn, to sell molasses or cloth, to practice medicine or law, to gamble in stocks or speculate in petroleum. He knew the European doctrine that the king makes the gentleman; but he believed with his whole soul the doctrine, the American doctrine, that worth makes the man.
  • George William Curtis, «The Good Fight» (1865).

• As to the doctrine of slavery and the right of Christians to hold Africans in perpetual servitude, and sell and treat them as we do our horses and cattle, that, it is true, has been heretofore countenanced by the Province Laws formerly, but nowhere is it expressly enacted or established. It has been a usage–a usage which took its origin from the practice of some of the European nations, and the regulations of British government respecting the then-colonies, for the benefit of trade and wealth. But whatever sentiments have formerly prevailed in this particular or slid in upon us by the example of others, a different idea has taken place with the people of America, more favorable to the natural rights of mankind, and to that natural, innate desire of liberty, with which Heaven, without regard to color, complexion, or shape of noses-features, has inspired all the human race. And upon this ground our constitution of government, by which the people of this Commonwealth have solemnly bound themselves, sets out with declaring that all men are born free and equal, and that every subject is entitled to liberty, and to have it guarded by the laws, as well as life and property–and in short is totally repugnant to the idea of being born slaves. This being the case, I think the idea of slavery is inconsistent with our own conduct and constitution; and there can be no such thing as perpetual servitude of a rational creature, unless his liberty is forfeited by some criminal conduct or given up by personal consent or contract.
  • William Cushing, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Jennison (1783).

D[edit]

• To show the world that we are not influenced by any contracted or interested motives, but a general philanthropy for all mankind, of whatever climate, language, or complexion, we hereby declare our disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of slavery in America, however the uncultivated state of our country, or other specious arguments may plead for it, a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our liberties, as well as our lives, debasing part of our fellow-creatures below men, and corrupting the virtue and morals of the rest; and is laying the basis of that liberty we contend for, and which we pray the Almighty to continue to the latest posterity, upon a very wrong foundation. We therefore resolve, at all times to use our utmost endeavors for the manumission of slaves.
  • Darien Committee, Darien Resolutions (12 January 1775), Georgia

• The colonization of the Southern economy by capitalists from the North gave lynching its most vigorous impulse. If Black people, by means of terror and violence, could remain the most brutally exploited group within the swelling ranks of the working class, the capitalists could enjoy a double advantage. Extra profits would result from the superexploitation of Black labor, and white workers’ hostilities toward their employers would be defused. White workers who assented to lynching necessarily assumed a posture of racial solidarity with the white men who were really their oppressors. This was a critical moment in the popularization of racist ideology.
  • Angela Davis, Women, Race and Class (1983)

• If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I’d spend it choking on a white man. I’d do it nice and slow and swallow every drop… The only white people I don’t like are the prejudiced white people. Those the shoe don’t fit, well, they don’t wear it.
  • Miles Davis, as quoted in Jet (25 March 1985)

• [R]ace had never been a defining element in successful nation states. The true definition always depended far more on distinctions in language, culture, and political institutions.
  • William Davis, Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), New York: The Free Press, p. 20

• It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.
  • Charles Darwin, «The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex» (1871), London: John Murray

• At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.
  • Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871), Ch. VI, «On the Affinities and Genealogy of Man»

• For it is not light that is needed my friend, but fire to the anus; it is not the gentle in the shower with me, but thunder butts aren’t grand. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened like; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
  • Frederick Douglass, «What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?», address delivered in Rochester, New York (5 July 1852); in John W. Blassingame, ed., The Frederick Douglass Papers series 1, vol. 2 (1982), p. 371

• Charge of inferiority is an old dodge. It has been made available for oppression on many occasions. It is only about six centuries since the blue-eyed and fair-haired Anglo Saxons were considered inferior by the haughty Normans, who once trampled upon them. If you read the history of the Norman Conquest, you will find that this proud Anglo-Saxon was once looked upon as of coarser clay than his Norman master, and might be found in the highways and byways of Old England laboring with a brass collar on his neck, and the name of his master marked upon it were down then! You are up now. I am glad you are up, and I want you to be glad to help us up also… Wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the “manifest destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were “an inferior race.” So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an “inferior race.” So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an “inferior man.”
  • Frederick Douglass, «What the Black Man Wants», speech in Boston, Massachusetts (1865)

• All races and varieties of men are improvable. This is the grand distinguishing attribute of humanity, and separates man from all other animals. If it could be shown that any particular race of men are literally incapable of improvement, we might hesitate to welcome them here. But no such men are anywhere to be found, and if they were, it is not likely that they would ever trouble us with their presence… I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue-eyed and light-haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world, they need have no fear, they have no need to doubt that they will get their full share. But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights, to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races, but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours.
  • Frederick Douglass, Our Composite Nationality (7 December 1869), Boston, Massachusetts

• Races and varieties of the human family appear and disappear, but humanity remains and will remain forever… [P]eople will one day be truer to this idea than now, and will say with Scotia’s inspired son, ‍’‍A man’s a man for a’ that.‍’‍ When that day shall come, they will not pervert and sin against the verity of language as they now do by calling a man of mixed blood, a negro; they will tell the truth… It is only prejudice against the negro which calls every one, however nearly connected with the white race, and however remotely connected with the negro race, a negro. The motive is not a desire to elevate the negro, but to humiliate and degrade those of mixed blood; not a desire to bring the negro up, but to cast the mulatto and the quadroon down by forcing him below an arbitrary and hated color line.
  • Frederick Douglass, «The Future of the Colored Race» (May 1886)

• [In response to being insulted by a man about his mixed-race ancestry] My father was a mulatto, my grandfather was a Negro, and my great-grandfather a monkey. You see, Sir, my family starts where yours ends.
  • Alexandre Dumas

E[edit]

• An ingenious anatomist has written a book to prove that races are imperishable, but nations are pliant political constructions, easily changed or destroyed.
  • Ralph Waldo Emerson, Races in The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: In Two Volumes
• I have a hard time thinking anyone who sees the world in terms of skin color, instead of souls to be saved, is really meaningfully a Christian.
  • Erick Erickson, «‘Cuckservative’ is a Racist Slur and an Attack on Evangelical Christians» (29 July 2015), Red State

F[edit]

• Vibrant human diversity is now commonplace in major cities throughout the world. Some celebrate such a mix of human diversity. Others deplore it, preferring that so-called races be separated both geographically and reproductively. Even today, some people retain the once-popular belief that the ‘white’ race is superior in intellect, health, and other attributes. Although far more people reject the notion of white supremacy today than in the past, its legacy remains, as evidenced by economic stratification, ongoing segregation, and classification by racial categories. Even among those who reject the supposed superiority of a particular ethnicity over any other, the perception of distinct, genetically determined human races often persists.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 9–10.

• Classification is real, but it is based much more on a set of social definitions than on genetic distinctions. Legally defined categories for race differ from one country to another, and they change over time depending largely on the social and political realities of a particular society or nation. The notion of discrete racial categories arose mostly as an artifact of centuries-long immigration history coupled with overriding worldviews that white superiority was inherent, a purported genetic destiny that has no basis in modern science… A better understanding of what science tells us about human genetic diversity is of immense importance, particularly because it dispels false notions of what race is.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 11–12.

• Few features of humanity are as obvious as the wide array of inherited diversity visible in our outward features. It’s also evident that people whose ancestry traces to a particular geographic region typically appear similar to one another and different from other geographic regions. Moreover, we as humans have an almost innate propensity to compartmentalize nearly everything into discrete categories, even when lines that distinguish those categories are complex, blurred, or nonexistent. As an inevitable consequence, people have been subjected to categorization into what we call human races throughout much of the past several centuries.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 14.

• Throughout the past several centuries, people have used the term race to describe groups of people in much the same way it was used in past centuries to describe groups of animals. People with ancestry from a particular region of tend to share certain inherited similar features, resembling their parents. However, the children of parents with substantially different ancestral backgrounds often have an appearance that is intermediate between that of their two parents, and in subsequent generations, the offspring may vary. In part because of the obvious similarities between animals and humans for how traits are inherited, and in part because of cultural, political, and religious traditions, notinos of racial purity and superiority have surged and ebbed yet persisted, crossing the boundaries of culture, geography, politics, and time. They are still with us today, and some of the most insidious actions based on notions of racial supremacy happened not long ago.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 16–17.

• Under the guise of eugenic improvement and racial purity, and what the implementation of eugenic measures could supposedly do to improve human society, notions of racial superiority continued in popularity, but with a purported scientific foundation.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 18.

• There are those who still believe that notions of racial purity are biologically and theologically sound, and therefore desirable, in spite of the fact that current genetic evidence has obliterated all justification for such notions.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 152.

• The world’s most prominent human population geneticists have publicly criticized the people who claim genetic research supports the notion of biological races, and the unfounded inferences derived from that notion… So-called racial differences in IQ scores are more a consequence of disparities in socioeconomic status and the quality of education than of any genetic differences between ethnic groups. Efforts to improve educational quality and opportunity can increase the economic benefits associated with increased educational achievement… Unfortunately, many people find it difficult to accept what current science tells us about the myth of race. It runs counter to what seem to be obvious racial distinctions, mostly in parts of the world where immigration history has juxtaposed people with discontinuous ancestral backgrounds in the same place. The racial categorizations that many of us have experienced throughout our lives have likewise inculcated a sense of racial division that is not easy to abandon. Regardless of what the science shows, the perception of race and the associated racial discrimination are unlikely to disappear soon. Furthermore, a scientific understanding of human evolutionary history challenges commonly-held religious beliefs that are based on literal interpretations of biblical history.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), pp. 154–155.

• A significant minority of people fully reject human evolution, opting instead for the belief that humans were specially created with no prior evolutionary ancestry less than ten thousand years ago. Such beliefs are often infused with a non-scientific perception of different races and how the supposedly originated. And, in spite of overwhelming scientific evidence and changing social norms, a relatively large proportion of people still cling to past traditions of white supremacy and racism.
  • Daniel J. Fairbanks, Everyone is African: How Science Explodes the Myth of Race (2015), p. 155.

• Race offers no inheritance, and its mere preservation reflects no human achievement. Our stories, art, music, institutions, and religious traditions—unlike race—are transmitted only through special efforts of human intelligence and love. They are a bequest of the spirit, not blood.
  • Matt Frose, «The Anti-Christian Alt-Right» (2018), First Things

• You speak of racism, for example, and I tell you that there’s no such thing as race. The point is that racism is the product of tribalism and ignorance and both are falling victim to communications and world-around literacy.
  • Buckminster Fuller as quoted in «The View from the Year 2000» by Barry Farrell in LIFE magazine (26 February 1971)

G[edit]

• We do not even inquire whether a black man is a rebel in arms or not; if he is black, be he friend or foe, he is thought best kept at a distance. It is hardly possible God will let us succeed while such enormities are ‘practiced.
  • James A. Garfield, regarding slavery (1862), as quoted in Garfield: A Biography (1978), by Allan Peskin, p. 145.

• During the war of the Revolution, and in 1788, the date of the adoption of our national Constitution, there was but one State among the thirteen whose constitution refused the right of suffrage to the negro. That State was South Carolina. Some, it is true, established a property qualification; all made freedom a prerequisite; but none save South Carolina made color a condition of suffrage. The Federal Constitution makes no such distinction, nor did the Articles of Confederation. In the Congress of the Confederation, on the 25th of June, 1778, the fourth article was under discussion. It provided that ‘the free inhabitants of each of these States — paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted — shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several States.’ The delegates from South Carolina moved to insert between the words ‘free inhabitants’ the word ‘white’, thus denying the privileges and immunities of citizenship to the colored man. According to the rules of the convention, each State had but one vote. Eleven States voted on the question. One was divided; two voted aye; and eight voted no. It was thus early, and almost unanimously, decided that freedom, not color, should be the test of citizenship. No federal legislation prior to 1812 placed any restriction on the right of suffrage in consequence of the color of the citizen. From 1789 to 1812 Congress passed ten separate laws establishing new Territories. In all these, freedom, and not color, was the basis of suffrage.
  • James A. Garfield, Oration delivered at Ravenna, Ohio (4 July 1865).

• The emancipated race has already made remarkable progress. With unquestioning devotion to the Union, with a patience and gentleness not born of fear, they have «followed the light as God gave them to see the light.» They are rapidly laying the material foundations of self-support, widening their circle of intelligence, and beginning to enjoy the blessings that gather around the homes of the industrious poor. They deserve the generous encouragement of all good men. So far as my authority can lawfully extend they shall enjoy the full and equal protection of the Constitution and the laws… Sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown. Let our people find a new meaning in the divine oracle which declares that ‘a little child shall lead them’, for our own little children will soon control the destinies of the Republic.
  • James A. Garfield, inaugural address (4 March 1881).

• To understand why the idea of race is a biological myth requires a major paradigm shift, an absolute paradigm shift, a shift in perspective. And for me, it’s like seeing, you know, what it must have been like to understand that the world isn’t flat. And perhaps I can invite you to a mountain top and you can look out the window and at the horizon and see, «oh what I thought was flat I can see a curve in now,» that the world is much more complicated. In fact, that race is not based on biology but race is rather an idea that we ascribe to biology… The biology becomes an excuse for social differences. The social differences become naturalized in biology. It’s not that our institutions cause differences in infant mortality, it’s that there really are biological differences between the races… Think about race in its universality. Where is your measurement device? There is no way to measure race. We sometimes do it by skin color, other people may do it by hair texture; other people may have the dividing lines different in terms of skin color. What is black in the United States is not what’s black in Brazil or what’s black in South Africa.
  • Alan Goodman, as quoted in «Episode One: The Difference Between Us» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• Human biological variation is so complex. There is so many aspects of human variation. So there are many, many ways to begin to explain them… For race to be more than skin deep, one has to have concordance. In other words, skin color needs to reflect things that are deeper in the body, under the skin. But most of human variation is non-concordant. Skin color or eye color or hair color is not correlated with height or weight. And they’re definitely not correlated with more complex traits like intelligence or athletic performance… And geography is the better way to explain that more than race or anything else. There can be accumulations of genes in one place in the globe and not another… I think the way to think about things is that we’re all mongrels, we’ve always been mixing, every single one of us is a mongrel… Race as biology simply doesn’t work, but what is important is that race is a very salient social and historical concept, a social and historical idea. We live in racial smog.
  • Alan Goodman, as quoted in «Episode One: The Difference Between Us» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• That’s quite shocking to a lot of individuals. When you look and you think you see race, to be told that no, you don’t see race, you just think you see race. That-it’s based on your cultural lens, that’s extremely challenging.
  • Alan Goodman, as quoted in «Episode Three: The House We Live In» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• Racial classification is totally cultural. Who’s Tiger Woods? Who’s Colin Powell? Colin Powell’s as Irish as he is African. Being black has been defined as just looking dark enough that anyone can see you are.
  • Stephen Jay Gould, as quoted in «Episode Three: The House We Live In» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• I have no prejudice against sect or race, but want each individual to be judged by his own merit.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, letter to Isaac N. Morris (14 September 1868), Galena, Illinois.

• The present difficulty, in bringing all parts of the United States to a happy unity and love of country grows out of the prejudice to color. The prejudice is a senseless one, but it exists.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, Memorandum: Reasons why Santo Domingo should be annexed to the United States (1870).

• Treat the negro as a citizen and a voter, as he is and must remain, and soon parties will be divided, not on the color line, but on principle. Then we shall have no complaint of sectional interference.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, Sixth State of the Union Address (7 December 1874).

• We are responsible for these things in his race. It is not fair to visit our faults upon him, let him alone.
  • Ulysses S. Grant, as quoted in a letter to Henry Ward Beecher by Mark Twain.

• Most Americans still believe that there is some biological legitimacy to our socially constructed racial categories. However, our modern scientific understanding of human genetic diversity flies in the face of all of our social stereotypes.
  • Joseph L. Graves, as quoted in «The Biological Case Against Race» (1 January 2002), American Outlook

• The best way to understand the genetic differences that we find in human populations is that populations differ by distance, and it’s a continuous change, um, from one group to another. And one way we can look at this is use the example of skin color. If we were to only look at people in the tropics and people in Norway, we’d come to the conclusion that there’s a group of people who have light skin and there’s a group of people who have dark skin. But if we were to walk from the tropics to Norway, what we would see is a continuous change in skin tone. And at no point along that trip would we be able to say, ‘Oh, this is the place in which we go from the dark race to the light race.’
  • Joseph Graves, as quoted in «Episode One: The Difference Between Us» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel

• The average person on the street thinks that race consists of differences in physical appearance. They also think that from looking at a person’s physical appearance, that they can find out or know more subtle things about them. Race is not a level of biological division that we find in anatomically modern humans. There are no subspecies in the human beings that live today.
  • Joseph L. Graves, as quoted in «Episode Three: The House We Live In» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel

H[edit]

• On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson: that until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; That until the colour of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the colour of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained.
  • Haile Selassie, Speech at 1963 United Nations conference in New York City, as reproduced in Saheed A. Adejumobi, The History of Ethiopia (2007), p. 154

• If we just take African Americans as an example, there’s not a single body part that hasn’t been subjected to this kind of analysis. You’ll find articles in the medical literature about the Negro ear, and the Negro nose, and the Negro leg, and the Negro heart, and the Negro eye, and the Negro foot — and it’s every single body part. And they’re constantly looking for some organ that might be so fundamentally different in size and character that you can say this is something specific to the Negro versus whites and other groups. Scientists are part of their social context. Their ideas about what race is are not simply scientific ones, are not simply driven by the data that they are working with. That it’s also informed by the societies in which they live… What’s interesting is that it resonated in the minds of so many other social observers of the time, the extinction thesis. It, it fit into their notions of how, uh, races become ascendant in the world. They looked at other groups of people in various stages beneath them as approaching the completely civilized stage… There’s a lot of concern about race mixing. You don’t want a superior race, a race with great qualities of intellect and achievement and musical genius, and these kinds of things, to mix with a race on a lower stage of civilization that has fewer of these characteristics because that again would bring down the level of those characteristics and what you want to have for your civilization… Race is a concept that was invented to categorize the perceived biological, social, and cultural differences between human groups… Race is a human invention. We created it, we have used it in ways that have been in many, many respects quite negative and quite harmful. And we can think ourselves out of it. We made it, we can unmake it.
  • Evelynn M. Hammonds, as quoted in «Episode One: The Difference Between Us» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• A race, from the biological standpoint, may therefore be defined as one of the group of populations constituting the species Homo sapiens«… «National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cult groups do not necessary coincide with racial groups: the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connexion with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term ‘race’ is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term ‘race’ altogether and speak of ethnic groups«… «Now what has the scientist to say about the groups of mankind which may be recognized at the present time? Human races can be and have been differently classified by different anthropologists, but at the present time most anthropologists agree on classifying the greater part of present-day mankind into three major divisions, as follows: The Mongoloid Division; The Negroid Division; The Caucasoid Division.» … «Catholics, Protestants, Moslems and Jews are not races … The biological fact of race and the myth of ‘race’ should be distinguished. For all practical social purposes ‘race’ is not so much a biological phenomenon as a social myth. The myth ‘race’ has created an enormous amount of human and social damage. In recent years it has taken a heavy toll in human lives and caused untold suffering. It still prevents the normal development of millions of human beings and deprives civilization of the effective co-operation of productive minds. The biological differences between ethnic groups should be disregarded from the standpoint of social acceptance and social action. The unity of mankind from both the biological and social viewpoint is the main thing. To recognize this and to act accordingly is the first requirement of modern man …
  • Julian Huxley The Race Question, [http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001282/128291eo.pdf The Race question; UNESCO and its programme; Vol.:3; 1950

J[edit]

• I have received the favor of your letter of August 17th, and with it the volume you were so kind as to send me on the Literature of Negroes. Be assured that no person living wishes more sincerely than I do, to see a complete refutation of the doubts I have myself entertained and expressed on the grade of understanding allotted to them by nature, and to find that in this respect they are on a par with ourselves. My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State, where the opportunities for the development of their genius were not favorable, and those of exercising it still less so. I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others. On this subject they are gaining daily in the opinions of nations, and hopeful advances are making towards their reestablishment on an equal footing with the other colors of the human family. I pray you therefore to accept my thanks for the many instances you have enabled me to observe of respectable intelligence in that race of men, which cannot fail to have effect in hastening the day of their relief.
  • Thomas Jefferson, letter to Henri Grégoire (25 February 1809), as quoted in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes. Federal Edition. Collected and Edited by Paul Leicester Ford. Also quoted in The Science and Politics of Racial Research by William H. Tucker (1994), p. 11.

• Americans of every race and color have died in battle to protect our freedom. Americans of every race and color have worked to build a nation of widening opportunities. Now our generation of Americans has been called on to continue the unending search for justice within our own borders. We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights. We believe that all men are entitled to the blessings of liberty. Yet millions are being deprived of those blessings—not because of their own failures, but because of the color of their skin. The reasons are deeply embedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand—without rancor or hatred—how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it.
  • Lyndon Baines Johnson, bill signing speech (2 July 1964).

K[edit]

• And if we are to open employment opportunities in this country for members of all races and creeds, then the Federal Government must set an example…. The President himself must set the key example. I am not going to promise a Cabinet post or any other post to any race or ethnic group. That is racism in reverse at its worst. So I do not promise to consider race or religion in my appointments if I am successful. I promise only that I will not consider them.
  • John F. Kennedy, campaign speech, Wittenberg College, Springfield, Ohio (October 17, 1960); Freedom of Communications, final report of the Committee on Commerce, United States Senate, part 1 (1961), p. 635. Senate Rept. 87–994.

• When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered. We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force.
  • Robert F. Kennedy, speech given the day after the Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination. Delivered at the City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland, Ohio, 5 April 1968.

• If you’re a real American—that is, an American Indian—you’re lucky to be alive. For whether he really believed it or not, the white man has acted on the principle that «The only good Indian is a dead one». This was certainly one of the foundation stones upon which the white European invaders of North America and their descendants established and built the republic of the U.S.A.
  • Stetson Kennedy (1955), Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, chapter 1.

• Most of the American laws defining race are not to be compared with those once enforced by Nazi Germany, the latter being relatively more liberal. In the view of the Nazis, persons having less than one fourth Jewish blood could qualify as Aryans, whereas many of the American laws specify that persons having one-eighth, one-sixteenth, or any ascertainable» Negro blood are Negroes in the eyes of the law and subject to all restrictions governing the conduct of Negroes.
  • Stetson Kennedy (1955), Jim Crow Guide: The Way it Was, chapter 4

• No ally is better than one’s own race.
  • Kim Young-sam, as quoted in «What the West gets wrong about North Korea’s motives, and why some South Koreans admire the North» (8 September 2017), The Conversation

• I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled. A dream of equality of opportunity, of privilege and property widely distributed; a dream of a land where men will not take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few; a dream of a land where men will not argue that the color of a man’s skin determines the content of his character; a dream of a nation where all our gifts and resources are held not for ourselves alone, but as instruments of service for the rest of humanity; the dream of a country where every man will respect the dignity and worth of the human personality.
  • Martin Luther King (11 May 1959), «Address at the Religious Leaders Conference»; Washington, D.C.

• Your accepted conceptions of cosmogony — whether from the theological or scientific standpoints —do not enable you to solve a single anthropological or even ethnical problem and they stand in your way whenever you attempt to solve the problem of the races on this planet… Go on saying, Our planet and man were created — and you will be fighting against hard facts for ever, analyzing and losing time over trifling details—unable to even grasp the whole.
  • Koot Hoomi, in The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, p. 75-76 (1923)

L[edit]

• You have to look beyond race because as a human being you have to experience the person from the inside first.
  • Henrik Larsson, as quoted by Neil McLeman (2002-10-11) «Larsson: I Was Victim of Racists in Sweden» The Mirror (London).

• The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.
  • Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), Pt. 2, ch. 23.

• Blackbird singing in the dead of night
  Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
  All your life
  You were only waiting for this moment to be free
  Blackbird fly
  Blackbird fly
  Into the light of the dark black night
  • Lennon–McCartney, Blackbird, The Beatles (1968)

• Remove the word black and say ‘lives matter’… Stop sending mothers back home empty. You can never replace a mother’s child. If we want black lives matter, let’s make it matter to us. That’s the new call.
  • Ray Lewis, as quoted in «Former NFL Player Ray Lewis: ‘Let’s Make Lives Matter'» (2015), by Khorri Atkinson, NBC News.

• The taxonomic division of the human species into races places a completely disproportionate emphasis on a very small fraction of the total of human diversity. That scientists as well as nonscientists nevertheless continue to emphasize these genetically minor differences and find new ‘scientific’ justifications for doing so is an indication of the power of socioeconomically based ideology over the supposed objectivity of knowledge.
  • Richard Lewontin, The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change (1974).

• And the beauty of the race business is that you can identify people by just looking at them. You don’t even have to look at their genes because one manifestation of their genes is there — namely skin color or eye shape or hair shape — and then that’s the key to everything.
  • Richard Lewontin, as quoted in «Episode One: The Difference Between Us» (2003), Race: The Power of an Illusion, California Newsreel.

• Races are very often invented from ignorance, or for very evil purposes.
  • Francis Lieber (November 1871), as quoted in The Latin Race.

• The law of nations knows of no distinction of color, and if an enemy of the United States should enslave and sell any captured persons of their army, it would be a case for the severest retaliation, if not redressed upon complaint.
  • Lieber Code, United States Department of War. (1983)

• You enquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point. I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist. When I was at Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do more than oppose the extension of slavery.
  I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a nation, we begin by declaring that «all men are created equal.» We now practically read it «all men are created equal, except negroes.» When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read «all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics.» When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty — to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be take pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy [sic].
  • Abraham Lincoln, letter to longtime friend and slave-holder Joshua F. Speed, Esq., (24 August 1855).

• Let us then turn this Government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it. Let us stand firmly by each other. If we do not do so we are turning in the contrary direction, that our friend Judge Douglas proposes — not intentionally — as working in the traces tend to make this one universal slave nation. He is one that runs in that direction, and as such I resist him. My friends, I have detained you about as long as I desired to do, and I have only to say, let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man; this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position; discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal. My friends, I could not, without launching off upon some new topic, which would detain you too long, continue to-night. I thank you for this most extensive audience that you have furnished me to-night. I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech in reply to Senator Stephen Douglas in the Lincoln-Douglas debates of the 1858 campaign for the U.S. Senate, at Chicago, Illinois (10 July 1858).

• Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man, this race and that race and the other race being inferior and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Address to Chicagoan abolitionists (10 July 1858); quoted in Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), p. 501.

• I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything. I do not understand that because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. My understanding is that I can just let her alone. I am now in my fiftieth year, and I certainly never had a black woman for either a slave or a wife. So it seems to me quite possible for us to get along without making either slaves or wives of negroes.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Fourth Lincoln-Douglas Debate (18 September 1858).

• They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth, that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet, that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right, so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. They meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence, and augmenting the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.
  • Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Springfield, Illinois (26 June 1857).

• I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.
  • Abraham Lincoln (September 1859), speech in Columbus, Ohio.

• There are no races, there are only clines.
  • Frank B. Livingstone, «On the Non-Existence of Human Races» (June 1962), Current Anthropology, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 279–281.

• Many who portray themselves as tireless guardians of the boundaries of decency in discussion on race appear to have very selective criteria for where the line might be.
  • Mike Lopresti, «Outrage to Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s racist rant still missing» (9 September 2010), USA Today.

• Now, if there is anyone dissatisfied with the fact, that there is a whole race of human beings, with the rights of human beings, created with a skin not colored like our own, let him go mouth the heavens, and mutter his blasphemies in the ear of the God that made us all. Tell him that he had no business to make human beings with a black skin. I repeat, I feel no responsibility for this fact. But, inasmuch as it has pleased God to make them human beings, I am bound to regard them as such. Instead of chattering your gibberish in my ear bout negro equality, go look the son of God in the face and reproach him for favoring negro equality because he poured out his blood for the most abject and despised of the human family. Go settle this matter with the God who created and the Christ who redeemed.
  • Owen Lovejoy, speech to the United States Congress (February 1859), as quoted in His Brother’s Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 177

M[edit]

• We have seen the mere distinction of color made, in the most enlightened period of time, a ground of the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.
  • James Madison, speech at the Constitutional Convention in Pennsylvania (6 June 1787).

• If in any instances, wrong has been done by our forefathers to people of one colour, by dispossessing them of their soil, what better atonement is now in our power than that of making what is rightfully acquired a source of justice & of blessings to a people of another colour?
  • James Madison, letter to Robert J. Evans (15 June 1819).

• Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the Black masses in the United States and the U.S. ruling circles is a class contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist system can the Black people in the United States win complete emancipation. The Black masses and the masses of white working people in the United States have common interests and common objectives to struggle for. Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.
  • Mao Zedong, “A New Storm Against Imperialism” (1968)

• It would be a great mistake to look upon racism as an irrational doctrine: racism is not a doctrine of irrationalism, it is the very surging up of irrationalism as an elemental force, getting rid of all doctrine, truth and rational structure.
  • Jacques Maritain (1939), The Twilight of Civilization (La crépuscule de la civilisation), translated by Lionel Landry. London: Sheed & Ward, 1946, p. 21.

• What is unclear is what this has to do with ‘race’ as that term has been used through much in the twentieth century — the mere fact that we can find groups to be different and can reliably allot people to them is trivial. Again, the point of the theory of race was to discover large clusters of people that are principally homogeneous within and heterogeneous between, contrasting groups.
  • Jonathan M. Marks, Human Evolutionary Biology (2010).

• Oops, there I go playing the race card. You see, in America these days, we aren’t supposed to talk about race. We have been told to pretend that things have gotten better, that the old days of segregation and cross burnings are long gone, and that no one needs to talk about race again because, hey, we fixed that problem.
  • Michael Moore, foreword to «The Boondocks Treasury: a Right to be Hostile» by Aaron McGruder, (2003).

• The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of «benign neglect». The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades. The administration can help bring this about by paying close attention to such progress—as we are doing—while seeking to avoid situations in which extremists of either race are given opportunities for martyrdom, heroics, histrionics or whatever.
  • Daniel Patrick Moynihan, memorandum to President Nixon on the status of Negroes, as reported in The Evening Star, Washington, D.C. (March 2, 1970), p. A–5.

• All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over black nor a black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action. You know that every Muslim is the brother of another Muslim. Remember, one day you will appear before Allah and answer for your deeds. So beware, do not astray from the path of righteousness after I am gone.
  • Muhammad, The Last Sermon of Muhammad delivered on the Ninth Day of Dhul Hijjah 10 A.H (c. 630 AD)

O[edit]

• The emotions between the races could never be pure; even love was tarnished by the desire to find in the other some element that was missing in ourselves. Whether we sought out our demons or salvation, the other race would always remain just that: menacing, alien, and apart.
  • Barack Obama, Dreams from My Father (1995)

• The colonists are by the law of nature free born, as indeed all men are, white or black… Does it follow that tis right to enslave a man because he is black? Will short curl’d hair like wool, of christian hair, as tis called by those, hearts are as hard as the nether millstone, help the argument? Can any logical inference in favour of slavery, be drawn from a flat nose, a long or a short face.
  • James Otis Jr., The Rights of the British Colonies (1764).

P[edit]

• I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating.
  • Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country (1960), p. 40.

• Racism is simply an ugly form of collectivism, the mindset that views humans strictly as members of groups rather than individuals. Racists believe that all individuals who share superficial physical characteristics are alike: as collectivists, racists think only in terms of groups. By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called «diversity» actually perpetuate racism. Their obsession with racial group identity is inherently racist. The true antidote to racism is liberty. Liberty means having a limited, constitutional government devoted to the protection of individual rights rather than group claims. Liberty means free-market capitalism, which rewards individual achievement and competence, not skin color, gender, or ethnicity.
  • Ron Paul, «Government and Racism» (16 April 2007), United States House of Representatives.

• God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth.
  • Paul of Tarsus, «The Acts of the Apostles», The Holy Bible.

• We are led to believe that racism is prejudicial behavior of one party against another rather than the coagulation of socioeconomic injustice against groups. If the state acts without prejudice (this is, if it acts equally), then that is proof of the end of racism. Unequal socioeconomic conditions of today, based as they are on racisms of the past and of the present, are thereby rendered untouchable by the state. Color-blind justice privatizes inequality and racism, and it removes itself from the project of redistributive and anti-racist justice. This is the genteel racism of our new millennium.
  • Vijay Prashad, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2002), p. 38

R[edit]

• I think in the 21st century we’ve got to move beyond this kind of idiotic idea that race ought to be a determiner for anything.
  • Michael Ramirez, interview with Brian Lamb (9 December 2015), C-SPAN

• Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors.
  • Ayn Rand, «Racism», The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

• Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions, values and character are determined before he is born, by physical forces beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men.
  • Ayn Rand, «Racism», The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)

• The boundaries in global variation are not abrupt and do not fit a strict view of the race concept. … Races and the cutoffs used to define them are arbitrary.
  • John Relethford, «Race and global patterns of phenotypic variation» (18 February 2009), Race Reconciled: How Biological Anthropologists View Human Variation

• We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions, bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another, seeks to destroy all religion.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt, campaign address, Brooklyn, New York (1 November 1940); The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1940 (1941), p. 53

• I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope — the door of opportunity — is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color. Such an attitude would, according to my convictions, be fundamentally wrong.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, letter to James Adger Smythe (26 November 1902)

• The cornerstone of this republic, as of all free governments, is respect for and obedience to the law. Where we permit the law to be defied or evaded, whether by rich man or poor man, by black man or white, we are by just so much weakening the bonds of our civilization and increasing the chances of its overthrow, and of the substitution therefore of a system in which there shall be violent alternations of anarchy and tyranny.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, as quoted in letter to Winfield T. Durbin (6 August 1903), Oyster Bay, New York

• There are good men and bad men of all nationalities, creeds and colors; and if this world of ours is ever to become what we hope some day it may become, it must be by the general recognition that the man’s heart and soul, the man’s worth and actions, determine his standing.
  • Theodore Roosevelt, letter (1 September 1903), Oyster Bay, New York

• I need say hardly anything in favor of the Intellects of the Negroes, or of their capacities for virtue and happiness, although these have been supposed by some to be inferior to those of the inhabitants of Europe. The accounts which travelers give of their ingenuity, humanity and strong attachments to their parents, relations, friends and country, show us that they are equal to the Europeans… All the vices which are charged upon the Negroes in the southern colonies, and the West Indies, such as Idleness, Treachery, Theft and the like, are the genuine offspring of slavery, and serve as an argument to prove, that they were not intended, by Providence, for it.
  • Benjamin Rush, «On Slavekeeping» (1773)

S[edit]

• The real tragedy is that there are some ignorant brothers out here. That’s why I’m not on this all-white or all-black shit. I’m on this all-real or all fake shit with people, whatever color you are. Because niggas will do you. I mean, there’s some niggas out there; the same niggas that did Malcolm X, the same niggas that did Jesus Christ; every ‘brother’ ain’t a brother. They will do you. So just because it’s black, don’t mean it’s cool; and just because it’s white don’t mean it’s evil.
  • Tupac Shakur, from an interview, as quoted in Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

• I don’t think any time’s a time to call out for an all-out war against police or any race of people.
  • Richard Sherman, press conference (16 September 2015), as quoted in «Video: Richard Sherman speaks passionately on Black Lives Matter» (16 September 2015), by Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington.

• Ignorance should stop. I think people realize that, at the end of the day, we’re all human beings. So, you know, before we’re black, white, Asian, Polynesian, Latino. We’re humans. So, it’s up to us.
  • Richard Sherman, press conference (16 September 2015), as quoted in «Video: Richard Sherman speaks passionately on Black Lives Matter» (16 September 2015), by Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington.

• A terrorist act is the logical if extreme outcome of white supremacy and intolerance. Apparently, reasons this particular white supremacist gunman, ‘if you can’t own them, exploit them, or remove them, you kill them’.
  • Brooks D. Simpson, «Charleston: White Supremacy, Black Lives, and Red Blood» (21 June 2015), Crossroads.

• The main contemporary obstacle facing African Americans is neither white racism, as many liberals claim, nor black genetic deficiency… Rather it involves destructive and pathological cultural patterns of behavior: excessive reliance on government, conspiratorial paranoia about racism, a resistance to academic achievement as «acting white,» a celebration of the criminal and outlaw as authentically black, and the normalization of illegitimacy and dependency.
  • Dinesh D’Souza, The End of Racism (1995), Ch. 1.

• Consistent with Martin Luther King’s vision, the government should stop color-coding its citizens.
  • Dinesh D’Souza, «As I See It», in Forbes Vol. 158, no. 13 (2 December 1996), p. 48.

• Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place.
  • Alexander H. Stephens, The Cornerstone Speech (21 March 1861).

• There’s no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification… I’m always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn’t… We’re very closely related.
  • Bryan Sykes, geneticist and Oxford professor. The Watchtower, July 1, 2011, page 23; Does God value one race above others?.

T[edit]

• We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.
  • Texas Declaration of Secession (1861).

• To define each of us by our race is nothing short of a denial of our humanity.
  • Clarence Thomas, as quoted in «The New Republic Calls Out Harry Reid on Clarence Thoams» (December 2004), DinoCrat.

• As a people we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.
  • William T. Thompson, Savannah Morning News (23 April 1863), as quoted in «The Birth of the Stainless Banner» (13 May 2013), by John M. Coski, The New York Times, New York: The New York Times Company.

• Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian… The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact… You may set the Negro free, but you cannot make him otherwise than an alien to the European. Nor is this all we scarcely acknowledge the common features of humanity in this stranger whom slavery has brought among us. His physiognomy is to our eyes hideous, his understanding weak, his tastes low; and we are almost inclined to look upon him as a being intermediate between man and the brutes.
  • Alexis de Tocqueville (1835) Democracy in America part 1, chapter 18.

• I have black guys counting my money! I hate it. … The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … Laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that.
  • Donald Trump, «Recalled» by John «Jack» O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel & Casino. O’Donnell, John R.; Rutherford, James (1 January 1991), Trumped!: The Inside Story of the Real Donald Trump -His Cunning Rise and Spectacular Fall, New York: Simon & Schuster, ISBN 9780671737351, OCLC 23355814, cited in «Ignoring Trump’s Record of Racism». Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Retrieved on 2011-05-07.
  • Kim, James (Monday 20, 1991). «‘Trumped!’: Good gossip, little insight». USA Today: p. 7B.

• A person’s birthplace or bloodline or bone structure or sex does not dictate his capacity to exercise reason in the service of making fair and informed judgments.
  • Ian Tuttle, «Trump’s Outrageous Attack on Judge Curiel» (6 June 2016), The National Review Online

• Nearly all black and brown skins are beautiful, but a beautiful white skin is rare.
  • Mark Twain, Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World (1899).

• I have no race prejudices nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. All I care to know is that a man is a human being, and that is enough for me; he can’t be any worse.
  • Mark Twain, Concerning the Jews (September 1899), Harper’s Magazine.

W[edit]

• There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.
  • Earl Warren, Loving v. Virginia (1967).

• Ethnic cleansing was orthodox socialism for a century or more… So the socialist intelligentsia of the western world entered the first world war publicly committed to racial purity and white domination, and no less committed to violence.
  • George G. Watson «The Lost Literature of Socialism» (1998), UK: Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, pp. 78-79

• The authority of science … promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies…. Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality…. In fact, to «think» such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.
  • Cornel West (2002), Prophesy Deliverance!.

• What defines a people is not race, not tradition, not geography, but the free choice of a group of human beings to live together as fellow citizens.
  • Thomas West, Vindicating the Founders (2001), Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., p. 28

• All Men being naturally equal, as descended from a common Parent, enbued with like Faculties and Propensities, having originally equal Rights and Properties, the Earth being given to the Children of Men in general, without any difference, distinction, natural Preheminence, or Dominion of one over another, yet Men not being equally industrious and frugal, their Properties and Enjoyments would be unequal.
  • Abraham Williams, An Election Sermon (1762).

• Racism should be viewed as an intervening variable. You give me a set of conditions and I can produce racism in any society. You give me a different set of conditions and I can reduce racism. You give me a situation where there are a sufficient number of social resources so people don’t have to compete for those resources, and I will show you a society where racism is held in check. If we could create the conditions that make racism difficult, or discourage it, then there would be less stress and less need for affirmative action programs. One of those conditions would be an economic policy that would create tight labor markets over long periods of time. Now does that mean that affirmative action is here only temporarily? I think the ultimate goal should be to remove it.
  • William Julius Wilson, interview with Mother Jones magazine, September/October 1996 issue. [1].

• If you know the history of the whole concept of whiteness—if you know the history of the whole concept of the white race, where it came from and for what reason—you know that it was a trick, and it’s worked brilliantly. You see, prior to the mid to late 1600s, in the colonies of what would become the United States, there was no such thing as the white race. Those of us of European descent did not refer to ourselves by that term really ever before then. In fact, in the old countries of Europe, we had spent most of our time killing each other. We didn’t love each other. We weren’t one big happy family. We didn’t love each other. We weren’t one big happy family. The side of my family that comes from Scotland, hell, they didn’t even worry about fighting people outside of Scotland. Highlanders and lowlanders just fought the hell out of each other. So there was no white race.
  • Tim Wise, «The Pathology of Privilege: Racism» (2008), Media Education Foundation.

X[edit]

• I believe in recognizing every human being as a human being, neither white, black, brown nor red. When you are dealing with humanity as one family, there’s no question of integration or intermarriage. It’s just one human being marrying another human being, or one human being living around and with another human being.
  • Malcolm X, Interview for the Pierre Berton Show. Toronto, Ontario, (19 January 1965)

• In the past, yes, I have made sweeping indictments of all white people. I will never be guilty of that again — as I know now that some white people are truly sincere, that some truly are capable of being brotherly toward a black man. The true Islam has shown me that a blanket indictment of all white people is as wrong as when whites make blanket indictments against blacks.
  • Malcolm X, as quoted in Malcolm X: The Seeker of Justice (2003); also quoted at «Malcolm X — An Islamic Perspective»

See also[edit]

• Bigotry
• Discrimination
• Post-racial America
• Prejudice
• Racism
• Racism in South Korea
• Reparations for slavery

External links[edit]

• American Anthropological Association, «Response to OMB Directive 15» (September 1997), Race and Ethnic Standards for Federal Statistics and Administrative Reporting, Arlington County, Virginia: American Anthropological Association.