Race (anthropology) facts for kids

The word race often describes groups of people based on physical traits. These traits are usually thought to be common among people with shared family backgrounds. For a long time, the study of humans, called anthropology, looked at these differences. However, even after many years of ideas like scientific racism, scientists have shown that race is not a biological fact.

How Ideas About Race Developed

The idea of race often connects to skin color. Skin color is linked to how close a place is to the equator on Earth. The sun's rays affect how much melanin our bodies make. Melanin is the natural color in our skin. People living closer to the equator usually make more melanin. This gives them darker skin, which helps protect them from the strong sun.

In the past, some famous thinkers had different ideas about race. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), known for his theory of natural selection, believed there were different human races. He thought that human evolution meant some races, like white people, were more "evolved" than others.

Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) created a system to name and group animals. He placed humans in the group called primates. Linnaeus also thought there were four human "sub-species": European Whites, American Reds (Native Americans), Asian Browns, and African Blacks. These ideas are now known to be incorrect.

Early Anthropology and Race

The study of anthropology explores humans throughout history. Today, it has four main areas: physical (biological) anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. Anthropology first started because people wanted to understand human differences.

Some early anthropologists used their studies to support harmful ideas. Samuel Morton (1799-1851) was an early physical anthropologist. He collected human skulls and measured them. He tried to prove that white people had the largest brains and were therefore the most intelligent. This idea was wrong.

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) believed that traits like a strong work ethic could be passed down through families. He created the phrase "survival of the fittest." Spencer used these ideas to excuse bad working conditions and racism. These beliefs led to scientific racism. This is when people used science to try and prove their racist ideas, even though their science was later shown to be wrong.

Francis Galton (1822-1911) was an English anthropologist. He was interested in how intelligence was passed down. He came up with the term eugenics. This was the idea of only allowing people with "desirable" traits to have children. The goal was to increase these traits in the population. It was wrongly thought that non-white people were less intelligent. Because of this, laws were even passed to make marriages between different races illegal.

These harmful ideas lasted for a long time. They slowly began to change in the 1900s. Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) was an American anthropologist. He studied family systems and how societies changed over time. He became very interested in Native American groups and their struggles with colonialism. He worked with Ely S. Parker, a Seneca tribe member, to write The League of the Iroquois.

Sir Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) was a British anthropologist. He is often called the founder of cultural anthropology. He believed that cultures evolved from "primitive" to "modern." He thought that cultures considered "primitive" were just less evolved than Western cultures. This was similar to Darwin's ideas. Earnest Hooton (1887-1954) was an American physical anthropologist. He spent his career supporting eugenics. He tried to divide races into categories based on bone features and measurements.

Understanding That Race Is Not Biological

Franz Boas (1858-1942) was a German-born American anthropologist. He spent much of his career fighting against scientific racism. He was one of the first to question how humans were grouped based on physical differences. He also taught many students from minority groups, including people of color and women.

Since Boas's time, scientists have shown that race is a social construct. This means that race is an idea created by humans, not a biological fact. There is no scientific basis for race. Instead, humans created the idea of race to justify things like slavery, genocide, and oppression for hundreds of years.

Differences in skin color, bone structure, and even some diseases are mostly due to where people's ancestors lived. These differences are linked to geography, not to separate biological races.

Even with this progress, the work of many Black and Indigenous anthropologists has often been ignored. Scholars like W.E.B. DuBois, Antenor Firmin, Zora Neale Hurston, Ely Parker, and Francis LeFresche are just a few examples.

Race in Modern Anthropology

Even though we know race is not a biological fact, it is still used in some areas of anthropology. Forensic anthropology helps solve crimes by studying human remains. Forensic anthropologists still use the idea of "race" to help identify missing people.

The use of race continues because, while it has no biological basis, it has a strong social basis. This social aspect must be recognized. Scientists can use small genetic differences between groups from different places, known as ancestry, to help determine a possible "race." This can help find missing people or identify suspects.

See also

In Spanish: Raza (clasificación de los seres humanos) para niños