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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 ...
A new English-language version The Inequality of Human Races, translated by Adrian Collins, was published in Britain and the US in 1915 and remains the standard English-language version. It continues to be republished in the US.
The author says the idea of race is not just a matter of biology but also includes "concepts of labor, gender, class, and images of personal beauty". [1] The earliest European societies, including the Greeks and Romans, had no concept of race and classified people by ethnicity and social class, with the lowest class being slaves. [1]
The term Hispanic has in recent years in the United States been given racial value with the perception of a racial Hispanic look being that of Native American race or of the mixed races, usually mestizo or mulatto, as the majority of the people who immigrate from Spanish-speaking countries to the United States are of that racial origin.
In 1856, two American "race scientists", Josiah C. Nott and Henry Hotze, both ardent white supremacists, translated Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines into English. Champions of slavery, they found in Gobineau's anti-black writings a convenient justification for the "peculiar institution". [72]
Prominent European pseudoscientists writing about human and natural difference included a White or West Eurasian race among a small set of human races and imputed physical, mental, or aesthetic superiority to this White category. These ideas were discredited by twentieth-century scientists.
Raciolinguistics examines how language is used to construct race and how ideas of race influence language and language use. [1] Although sociolinguists and linguistic anthropologists have previously studied the intersections of language, race, and culture, raciolinguistics is a relatively new focus for scholars trying to theorize race throughout language studies.