In this context, consider someone in the United States who has a white parent and a black parent. Today, of course, we call people from all three backgrounds white or European. The belief in their inferiority helped justify the harsh treatment they suffered in their new country. A century ago, for example, Irish, Italians, and Eastern European Jews who left their homelands for a better life in the United States were not regarded as white once they reached the United States but rather as a different, inferior (if unnamed) race (Painter, 2010). If clear racial differences ever existed hundreds or thousands of years ago (and many scientists doubt such differences ever existed), in today’s world these differences have become increasingly blurred.Īnother reason to question the biological concept of race is that an individual or a group of individuals is often assigned to a race on arbitrary or even illogical grounds. In fact it is estimated that about 80% of African Americans have some white (i.e., European) ancestry 50% of Mexican Americans have European or Native American ancestry and 20% of whites have African or Native American ancestry.
#Black and white 2 fixed aging skin#
Because of interracial reproduction going back to the days of slavery, African Americans also differ in the darkness of their skin and in other physical characteristics. Some whites have very straight hair, while others have very curly hair some have blonde hair and blue eyes, while others have dark hair and brown eyes. In fact, some “whites” have darker skin than some “blacks,” or African Americans. For example, some people we call “white” (or European), such as those with Scandinavian backgrounds, have very light skins, while others, such as those from some Eastern European backgrounds, have much darker skins. For one thing, we often see more physical differences within a race than between races. Using such physical differences as their criteria, scientists at one point identified as many as nine races: African, American Indian or Native American, Asian, Australian Aborigine, European (more commonly called “white”), Indian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian (Smedley, 1998).Īlthough people certainly do differ in the many physical features that led to the development of such racial categories, anthropologists, sociologists, and many biologists question the value of these categories and thus the value of the biological concept of race (Smedley, 2007). Some groups of people tend to be relatively tall, while others tend to be relatively short. Some have thin lips, while others have thick lips. Some people have very curly hair, while others have very straight hair. The most noticeable difference is skin tone: some groups of people have very dark skin, while others have very light skin. It is certainly easy to see that people in the United States and around the world differ physically in some obvious ways. Most people think of race in biological terms, and for more than 300 years, or ever since white Europeans began colonizing populations of color elsewhere in the world, race has indeed served as the “premier source of human identity” (Smedley, 1998, p. A key question about race is whether it is more of a biological category or a social category. Let’s start first with race, which refers to a category of people who share certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, and stature.
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