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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]
The word "race", interpreted to mean an identifiable group of people who share a common descent, was introduced into English in the 16th century from the Old French rasse (1512), from Italian razza: the Oxford English Dictionary cites the earliest example around the mid-16th century and defines its early meaning as a "group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ...
Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races. Race is often culturally understood to be rigid categories (Black, White, Pasifika, Asian, etc) in which people can be classified based on biological markers or physical traits such as skin colour or facial features. This rigid definition of race is ...
Three dominant ecological factors emerged from Renn's research: physical appearance, cultural knowledge, and peer culture. Physical appearance is the most influential factor and is described as how a biracial and multiracial person looks (i.e.: skin tone, hair texture, hair color, eye and nose shape, etc.).
The concept of "race" as a classification system of humans based on visible physical characteristics emerged over the last five centuries, influenced by European colonialism. [ 12 ] [ 18 ] However, there is widespread evidence of what would be described in modern terms as racial consciousness throughout the entirety of recorded history .
According to this view, culture is the physical manifestation created by ethnic groupings, as such fully determined by racial characteristics. Culture and race became considered intertwined and dependent upon each other, sometimes even to the extent of including nationality or language to the set of definition.
Nathaniel Shaler, a prominent geologist at Harvard University from 1869 to 1906, published the book Man and the Earth in 1905 describing the physical geography of different continents and linking these geologic settings to the intelligence and strength of human races that inhabited these spaces. Shaler argued that North American climate and ...
The concept of biologically distinct races has been rendered obsolete by modern genetics. [25] Different methods of categorizing humans yield different groups, making them non-concordant. [26] [27] [obsolete source] Neither will the craniofacial method pin-point geographic origins reliably, due to variation in skulls within a geographic region.