Race and society

Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races, often with biologist tagging of particular 'racial' attributes beyond mere anatomy, as more socially and culturally determined than based upon biology. Some interpretations are often deconstructionist and poststructuralist in that they critically analyze the historical construction and development of racial categories. Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races, often with biologist tagging of particular 'racial' attributes beyond mere anatomy, as more socially and culturally determined than based upon biology. Some interpretations are often deconstructionist and poststructuralist in that they critically analyze the historical construction and development of racial categories. Marks (1995) argued that even as the idea of 'race' was becoming a powerful organizing principle in many societies, the shortcomings of the concept were apparent. In the Old World, the gradual transition in appearances from one racial group to adjacent racial groups emphasized that 'one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them,' as Blumenbach observed in his writings on human variation. In parts of the Americas, the situation was somewhat different. The immigrants to the New World came largely from widely separated regions of the Old World—western and northern Europe, western Africa, and, later, eastern Asia and southern and eastern Europe. In the Americas, the immigrant populations began to mix among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In the United States, for example, most people who self-identify as African American have some European ancestors—in one analysis of genetic markers that have differing frequencies between continents, European ancestry ranged from an estimated 7% for a sample of Jamaicans to ∼23% for a sample of African Americans from New Orleans. In a survey of college students who self-identified as white in a northeastern U.S. university, the west African and Native American genetic contribution were 0.7% and 3.2%. In the United States, social and legal conventions developed over time that forced individuals of mixed ancestry into simplified racial categories. An example is the 'one-drop rule' implemented in some state laws that treated anyone with a single known African American ancestor as black. The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States also created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into those categories. In other countries in the Americas, where mixing among groups was more extensive, social non racial categories have tended to be more numerous and fluid, with people moving into or out of categories on the basis of a combination of socioeconomic status, social class, ancestry. Efforts to sort the increasingly mixed population of the United States into discrete racial categories generated many difficulties. Additionally, efforts to track mixing between census racial groups led to a proliferation of categories (such as mulatto and octoroon) and 'blood quantum' distinctions that became increasingly untethered from self-reported ancestry. A person's racial identity can change over time. One study found differences between self-ascribed race and Veterans Affairs administrative data. The notion of a biological basis for race originally emerged through speculations surrounding the 'blood purity' of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition, eventually translating to a general association of one's biology with their social and personal characteristics. In the 19th century, this recurring ideology was intensified in the development of the racial sciences, eugenics and ethnology, which meant to further categorize groups of humans in terms of biological superiority or inferiority. While the field of racial sciences, also known as scientific racism, has expired in history, these antiquated conceptions of race have persisted throughout the 21st century. (See also: Historical origins of racial classification) Contrary to popular belief that the division of the human species based on physical variations is natural, there exists no clear, reliable distinctions that bind people to such groupings. According to the American Anthropological Association, '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.' While there is a biological basis for differences in human phenotypes, most notably in skin color, the genetic variability of humans is found not amongst, but rather within racial groups – meaning the perceived level of dissimilarity amongst the species has virtually no biological basis. Genetic diversity has characterized human survival, rendering the idea of a 'pure' ancestry as obsolete. Under this interpretation, race is conceptualized through a lens of artificiality, rather than through the skeleton of a scientific discovery. As a result, scholars have begun to broaden discourses of race by defining it as a social construct and exploring the historical contexts that led to its inception and persistence in contemporary society. Most historians, anthropologists, and sociologists describe human races as a social construct, preferring instead the term population or ancestry, which can be given a clear operational definition. Even those who reject the formal concept of race, however, still use the word race in day-to-day speech. This may either be a matter of semantics, or an effect of an underlying cultural significance of race in racist societies. Regardless of the name, a working concept of sub-species grouping can be useful, because in the absence of cheap and widespread genetic tests, various race-linked gene mutations (see Cystic fibrosis, Lactose intolerance, Tay–Sachs disease and Sickle cell anemia) are difficult to address without recourse to a category between 'individual' and 'species'. As genetic tests for such conditions become cheaper, and as detailed haplotype maps and SNP databases become available, identifiers of race should diminish. Also, increasing interracial marriage is reducing the predictive power of race. For example, babies born with Tay–Sachs disease in North America are not only or primarily Ashkenazi Jews, despite stereotypes to contrary; French Canadians, Louisiana Cajuns, and Irish-Americans also see high rates of the disease. Experts in the fields of genetics, law, and sociology have offered their opinions on the subject. Audrey Smedley and Brian D. Smedley of Virginia Commonwealth University Institute of Medicine discuss the anthropological and historical perspectives on ethnicity, culture, and race. They define culture as the habits acquired by a society. Smedley states 'Ethnicity and culture are related phenomena and bear no intrinsic connection to human biological variations or race' (Smedley 17). The authors state using physical characteristics to define an ethnic identity is inaccurate. The variation of humans has actually decreased over time since, as the author states, 'Immigration, intermating, intermarriage, and reproduction have led to increasing physical heterogeneity of peoples in many areas of the world' (Smedley 18). They referred to other experts and their research, pointing out that humans are 99% alike. That one percent is caused by natural genetic variation, and has nothing to do with the ethnic group of the subject. Racial classification in the United States started in the 1700s with three ethnically distinct groups. These groups were the white Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans. The concept of race was skewed around these times because of the social implications of belonging to one group or another. The view that one race is biologically different from another rose out of society's grasp for power and authority over other ethnic groups. This did not only happen in the United States but around the world as well. Society created race to create hierarchies in which the majority would prosper most. Another group of experts in sociology has written on this topic. Guang Guo, Yilan Fu, Yi Li, Kathleen Mullan Harris of the University of North Carolina department of sociology as well as Hedwig Lee (University of Washington Seattle), Tianji Cai (University of Macau) comment on remarks made by one expert. The debate is over DNA differences, or lack thereof, between different races. The research in the original article they are referring to uses different methods of DNA testing between distinct ethnic groups and compares them to other groups. Small differences were found, but those were not based on race. They were from biological differences caused from the region in which the people live. They describe that the small differences cannot be fully explained because the understanding of migration, intermarriage, and ancestry is unreliable at the individual level. Race cannot be related to ancestry based on the research on which they are commenting. They conclude that the idea of 'races as biologically distinct peoples with differential abilities and behaviors has long been discredited by the scientific community' (2338).