ANTHROP 1AB3 Lecture 7: Anthropology 1AB3 - Lessons 7-13
13 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Anthropology of Race and Racism 18-06-13 4:07 PM
Identity
- How you perceive yourself as an individual and as a collective member of
society
- We all have a variety of identities: gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion
(or lack thereof), national identity, and so on…
What is Race?
- Academic understanding of race is different that what pop culture makes it
Race refers to...
- The presumed hereditary characteristics of a group of people
- A culturally constructed identity
Race is also...
- A form of social stratification and legal classification
• The idea that certain values are greater than others
Race:
- We think of race as an ASCRIBED STATUS
• Assigned at birth and cannot be changed
- BUT, race is a CULTURAL concept, not a biological one, and therefore, it is
important for us to study as anthropologists
Race as a cultural construction...
- Conrad Kottak – race in Brazil; race as a continuum rather than a fixed
category (a concept known as “colourism”)
• “Whiteness” is valued ! privilege, prestige, money, success
• Different categories of race
- Susie Phipps – Louisiana
Guest Speaker:
- Stephanie Marciniak, Biological anthropologist, McMaster
- Why isn’t race biological??
“Race” in antiquity
- Egyptians
• Classified based on skin colour
- Greeks
• All non-Greeks were barbarians
“Race” and Anthropology
- Social concept, not biological
- No biologically distinct human groups
- Concept of race persists
• Biomedicine, forensic anthropology
Key questions to address
- What does human variation mean in the concept of race?
- Should we even try to classify humans into racial categories?
- What are the implications of racial classification?
- Can the concept of race ever be used legitimately?
What is “race”?
- Classification for subspecies
- Humans divisible into discrete populations
- Social construct
- But, humans are complex
- “Race is not an accurate or productive way to describe human biological
variation” (Edgar and Hunley, 2009:2)
Race, place, and face
- Classification of the natural world
- 17th-18th century
• Human biology tied to geography
- European contact with far away populations
• Observable differences basis for classification
- Linnaeus (1758) and Blumenbach (1781)
Challenges to the concept of race
1) Human populations aren’t alike
• Traits vary from one group to another
• Eg. Sickle cell
• Adaptive response to malaria burden
o Aids survival
o Not “race-specific” disease
• Sickle cell disease distribution
o Many factors influence pattern, expression, frequency
2) Most human traits vary independently (eg. Not connected to “race”)
• NO discrete “racial clusters”
• Broad geographic patterns
o Local populations differ
• Clinal variation (gene flow, drift, natural selection)
o Gradual change
• Example: red hair distribution
o Red hair genes aren’t exclusive to one population
3) Human variation is regulated by many genes
• Polygenic traits
o Many genes, many chromosomes
o Vary continuously
• Too complex to quantify
• B blood type cline
• Human spectrum of skin colour
4) No set number of traits define any particular human population as
belonging to a “race”
• Impossible to unambiguously assign someone to a “race”
• Tay-Sachs
o High frequency in Ashkenazi
o Small French Canadian groups, Cajuns, Pennsylvania Dutch
o No specific group of origin
5) Human genetic variation shows that there are no biologically “unique”
races
Key points on “race” as a concept
- Genetics does not support the classification of humans into discrete races
• Many genes = variations of a trait
• Continuous variation, not discrete “racial clustes”
• No set traits define a “race”
• NO biological basis (arbitrary, not fact)
- But… the concept of race persists
Biomedicine
- How to talk about disease risk and occurrence?
- How to disentangle “race”?
Problematic terminology
- Language used to convey disease risk
- Racial vs. ethnic groups
- No biological basis
- Real life consequences
BiDil – “Race in a bottle”
- Controversial
- “Race-specific” susceptibility
- But, underlying causes
Document Summary
How you perceive yourself as an individual and as a collective member of society. We all have a variety of identities: gender, class, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), national identity, and so on . Academic understanding of race is different that what pop culture makes it. The presumed hereditary characteristics of a group of people. A form of social stratification and legal classification: the idea that certain values are greater than others. We think of race as an ascribed status: assigned at birth and cannot be changed. But, race is a cultural concept, not a biological one, and therefore, it is important for us to study as anthropologists. Conrad kottak race in brazil; race as a continuum rather than a fixed category (a concept known as colourism : whiteness is valued ! privilege, prestige, money, success, different categories of race. Egyptians: classified based on skin colour. Concept of race persists: biomedicine, forensic anthropology.
