Talk:Historical race concepts/Archive 1

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Archive 1 Archive 2


This page needs

This page needs:

  • Some acknowledgment of the ways in which 16th-18th century definitions of race varied considerably with 19th-century definitions
  • 18th-century definitions of race (and the role of colonialism and slavery in the simplifying of the categories)
  • The arguments over monogeny vs polygeny (are races different species or not) which was very important up through the late 19th century
  • Citations and references!

I'll try and patch some of this together at some point, but if anybody else can work on any of this, it would be appreciated. --Fastfission 03:10, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I absolutely second your caveats. I will also try to put some work into this, but there is much to do. For now, I will just include a few references as a starting point. --Jottce 07:50, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

POV?

User:Agurzil deleted the following paragraphs on Carleton Coon on the grounds that he/she thought they were POV:

Coon assigned even some populations on the northern fringe of sub-Saharan Africa to a broadly defined Caucasoid race, leading to charges that peoples with recorded ancient civilizations were being defined out of the black race, in order to depict the remaining "Congoid" race as lacking in culture.
Coon and his work were widely accused, even at the time, of obsolete thinking or outright racism, but some of his terminology continues in use to a lesser degree even today, even though the "-oid" terms now have offensive connotations [1] (http://www.bartleby.com/64/C006/057.html#RACE), perhaps because his liberal opponents who de-emphasized the significance and definability of race, naturally did not introduce any superseding classification to drive them out of use. In addition to references in legitimate scientific discussion, Coon's macro-racial classification, as well as his detailed list of European "subraces", is popular with racist groups who agree with the existence of distinct racial types, and is widely reproduced on "white nationalist" websites.

I don't see what's POV enough about them to warrant total deletion -- it explains that Coon's theory was pretty controversial in its day and is currently used by white nationalists in particular. All of these statements as quite true and attribute opinions to their sources, generally speaking. A little better attribution could be warranted, and the paragraphs could be a little better written, but that's not really the question here. --Fastfission 01:34, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • 1st POV statement : "Coon assigned even some populations on the northern fringe of sub-Saharan Africa to a broadly defined Caucasoid race (...) n order to depict the remaining "Congoid" race as lacking in culture."
  • 2nd POV statement : "European "subraces", is popular with racist groups who agree with the existence of distinct racial types, and is widely reproduced on "white nationalist" websites."--Agurzil 19:16, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • If *some* people people thought that his work was racist, it does not mean that his writing were "idely accused, even at the time, of obsolete thinking or outright racism". That's a POV statement, *many anthropologists use his work, if some retarded people use it for other puroposes it's not important. I personally use his his work for entertainment puroposes, should that be included in the article? no, the one who added white nationalists into the article had an agenda.
I don't understand why you find those statements to be a non-neutral POV -- they seem pretty straightforward to me. Please explain a bit further about the bias you think they contain.
Coon was widely accused of being backwards in his racial theories in his time and especially now. Are you disputing this? I'd be happy to provide some quotes from prominent anthropological works on the subject, both current and contemporary. There's even a nice little article on the controversy about Coon within and outside the scientific community at [1].
--Fastfission 21:15, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Focus and structure of the article

The article seems to me to go in two directions:

  1. History of the usage of the word "race" in the English language;
  2. History of scientific race theories in the West

The two are, of course related, but by no means identical. I am not sure how one could sort this out. The article was actually started by just dumping in one historical definition (the 1913 Webster's) verbatim without commentary. I just removed this section, because the rest of the article seemed to go in direction (2). However, the introductory paragraph still mostly refers to word usage. I am not sure how one could deal with this. It might be best to move the History of scientific race theories into a separate article and refer word usage to the Wiktionary (?) or to a more fleshed-out article on the etymology of the word. It seems to me that some of the material that is still in race (which is much too long anyways) could be transfered to an article devoted to the history of race as a concept in science and related fields.

--Jottce 16:16, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Map key

The map key is very visually distracting when viewing the rest of the page. Perhaps something usch as:

  1. European, North African, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American race (shown as white)
  2. East Asian, Southeast Asian, and Central Asian race (shown as blue)
  3. Sub-Saharan African race (shown as red)
  4. Lapp race (shown as green)

would work better. It's not perfect (calling anything shown as white on a page about race makes me uneasy) but currently it is far too tacky. Thoughts? --Lunar Jesters (talk) 21:46, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

The maps are tacky and unnecessary IMHO. Also looks like someone is playing at racial parody too on some maps with reference to an "Orang-utang race." Allegedly Edward Long, a former British colonial administrator with strong anti-black views, in Jamaica in the 1700s, made the following joke sometime: 'Ludicrous as the opinion may seem I do not think that an orangutang husband would be any dishonour to a Hottentot female.' Apparently someone with a lot of time on their hands and a graphics program, felt moved to convert this marginal garbage into a "map" of "races" with reference to "orangutangs." Such nonsense is typical of what makes many Wikipedia articles so poor.Enriquecardova 23:18, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

Sanskrit etymology

The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens (clan, stock, people) and genus (birth, descent, origin, race, stock, family) which in turn comes from the Greek γένος (race, stock, or family), and is a cognate of Sanskrit jAti (caste).

"Jati"?! For the life of me, I can't see the relation between that and "gens" or "genos". Can anyone confirm/refute with a source?... FilipeS 21:57, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

here's a source: [[2]]. but what bothers me in this section is that the first part is about the word "race" and the second part about the word "genus", but it's written like if it was about the same word. Varpho'?! 03:24, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree, the jump from Arabic "ra's" to Latin "gens" is nonsensical. Given that this is an article about the history of race as a concept, the etymology of the word "race" is germane, but I don't see why it segues to the term "genus," which isn't used to refer to human races, and it certainly shouldn't try to conflate the two etymologies. Moreover, I don't find the connection between Italian "razza" and Arabic "ra's" plausible given their unrelated meanings and the fact that Italian words don't normally derive from Arabic, and no source is provided for this claim. Since the above comments were posted, no one has provided any response supporting the existing etymology, so I'll trim it accordingly. If anyone has a credible source, they can add it back with a reference. 153.31.113.24 (talk) 12:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)

Sanskrit etymology

The etymology can be further traced back to Latin gens (clan, stock, people) and genus (birth, descent, origin, race, stock, family) which in turn comes from the Greek γένος (race, stock, or family), and is a cognate of Sanskrit jAti (caste).

"Jati"?! Mind boggling. What is the relation between that and "gens" or "genos". Can anyone confirm/refute with a source?... Electromagnolia 22:14, 16 July 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.201.155.14 (talk)

Is any of this cited?

I have never seen so much original research in my life. This page needs to be deleted ASAP. There's no such thing as an Africoid race. It's called negroid. And who the hell created these images? And how can you create an article about historical definitions of race without including the most common 3 race model: Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid? Removeor

The term "africoid" was created here year or two ago, when someone decided that the term "negroid" is not noble enough. This is an example where Wiki fails: if you have an agenda and lot of time you push it through eventually. Pavel Vozenilek 22:35, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

There's a lot of misinformative crap on this page.

Maps and "historical definition"

See Map key subsection above. I agree that the maps are distracting and do not provide any real value to the article. I think the user who put them did that with the good intent of demonstrating the sillyness of such theories by showing their diversity and contradiction. But I find the text in red, green, blue, not very pretty, and surely one or two of these maps is enough to make the point. IMO, they should be moved to Mediawiki, and a link provided here with "More media wiki" available, if anyone wants to compare them. Right now, it is just impossible to concentrate on the article and see something else than these maps. Another question I have regards the title of this article itself: what is "historical definition" supposed to mean? Shouldn't this simply be merged to scientific racism? If "historical definition" is supposed to refer to the biological conception of race, I am all too afraid that this one survives to this day (via modern racial theories which claims to find scientific proofs in genetics). If this is the case, then it should be named Race (biological definition). Tazmaniacs 02:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


Agree, there are too many maps. futurebird 02:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Following the many criticisms of these maps on the talk page, I removed them and kept the one that hadn't stuff written in all colours. I do still wonder if this page should not be merged in scientific racism, or be renamed to race (biological definition) (which could lead to an opposition between scientific racism of the 19th century, based on a biological conception of race, and modern racism, such as supported by the Nouvelle Droite and others proponents, which has admitted cultural relativism theories exposed by Claude Lévi-Strauss and others but adapted them to their discourses - which mainly states that some cultures are superior than others and that they should not mix together, claiming in the same time that they totally respect others cultures). Tazmaniacs 02:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, let's propose a merge and see how others feel about it. futurebird 02:28, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the maps. They further advance a view not supported by the citations in this article. They present roundly debunked and discredited 'research' into racialism as factually based, like a bus time table or parhaps the distibution of language. The lead of the article is also factually incorrect, species contain races, maybe. This article should be about the the biological idea of race as it applies to species, and the history of that still contentious proposition.
As for humans, and the sociological implications of the term, this article entangles any ideas and formulations of otherness and presents various conceptions of 'race' as a discovered fact. It can not be so. Fred ☻ 18:42, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge from Race (classification of human beings)

Just merged a bunch of info from Race (classification of human beings). Please take a look and feel free to make any changes, as I'm not an expert in this field. Cheers =) --slakr\ talk / 00:13, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Large graphical box

I took this quote out:

"Thus human beings of whatever nationality, "race," or creed are representatives of the species Homo sapiens, of the family Hominidae, of the genus Homo," Lancelot T. Hogben, Principles of Animal Biology, p. 261. Christophers: London (1930).Submitted by Drdavidh, David Hogben, Ph.D.

because it was in a huge box that was necessitating a lot of side scrolling. I run 1280x800. I couldn't figure out why it was in that box. When I went to edit it, it was just pasted in there like that above. So, I took it out.

Tjshermer (talk) 03:08, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

George Buffon section

This is my first time looking at or editing a Talk page, so please forgive (and correct) me if I'm not following proper conventions. I just added an 'incoherent' tag (another first) towards the end of the George Buffon section. There's a sentence that currently reads:

"Because humankind was one species in concert with his rejection that climate was the primary cause in producing racial differences and disagreement with the idea of organic evolution in essential features, he introduced the notion that human species may have either improved or degenerated from original creation."

"his rejection that climate was the primary cause in producing racial differences"?? Right above this quote is: "Buffon reasoned that climate was the “chief cause of the different colours of men”" ... So Is "rejection" supposed to be .. "conjecture"? I don't know. I don't get this silly run-on sentence. I started to rewrite it, but I'm not qualified--I learned everything I know about this subject from this article. As it stands now though, in this humble layman's opinion, this sentence is gibberish. Just thought I could bring it to someone's attention.

--Ryran (talk) 12:41, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Medieval theories

I've looked at the original book by Cooley and am unsure why there is such a lengthy quote from Khaldun in this section- to show he thought Ghana was a great civilization? (Is this meant to refute Europeans who thought blacks were inferior?) I don't think all of this is necessary even to make that point, and the editor should be using other sources to make the point more clearly. In addition, the last argument about historians not being able to find evidence to support Khaldun's suggestion that the Muslim takeover of Ghana, does not seem to belong to the same article about race, but rather to one about the historiography of Africa. I am deleting the last two sentences in the section - if an editor wants them in, the reasoning will have to be better justified.Parkwells (talk) 22:02, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Changing title from "Historical definitions of race" to "Concepts of race"

This was done without any previous discussion. It is inappropriate since we already have a similar article: Race (classification of humans). The edit summary states: "Concept is a better term than definition, which implies that there is a definite meaning" If that was the case, then it would have been appropriate to change the article to "Historical concepts of race". I propose changing the title to this.Miradre (talk) 11:13, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

I realize that we are all brought up with "Elements of Style" simplicity in naming, but "Historical concepts of race" would have been more objective IMO. Student7 (talk) 16:09, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Merger proposal

This article and the scientific racism article have contents that often overlap and duplicate one another. This is not surprising since historically the concept of different races, the concept of races being superior/inferior, and support for racist policies almost always were expressed together. Authors who expressed such ideas would usually also do so because they thought them correct, and when the term come in common use, scientific. As such it will be very difficult to separate the subjects which is reflected in the often duplicated article contents. Therefore, I suggest that the article should be merged under a new name "Historical race concepts and racism".Miradre (talk) 11:01, 24 March 2011 (UTC)

I oppose that proposal. There is clearly basis for two separate article on these topics.Overlap is not necessarily problematic, and if it is it can be taken care of by improving both articles to treat their particular topic more focusedly.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:28, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
If we are going to have two articles we need to differentiate them somewho so we do not have massively duplicated contents. "Science" as currently understood was not used before around 1725 and even then "philosophy" continued to be a common term.[3] To make matter simple I suggest that material after the French revolution should go to the scientific rasism article.Miradre (talk) 21:40, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
No, not all historical concepts of race developed after 1725 have anything to do with scientific racism. The article on historical concepts of race should be focused on describing how scientific and public discourses about race have changed historically. The article on scientific racism should treat how racial discrimination has been promoted through ostensibly scientific endeavors. The two topics are separate.·Maunus·ƛ· 21:49, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
That would seem to remove even physical anthropology from the scientific racism article unless there is a source for that some claimed results there were used to promote racial discrimination and then only those results should be included in the scientific racism article.Miradre (talk) 22:15, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
I don't think that is a problem first of all an article on Scientific racism would obviously need to include the mainstream non-racists views as well to conform with NPOV. Secondly it is not going to be difficult to cite the relations between scientific racism (and opposition to scientific racism) and physical anthropology.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:18, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Very well. When I get the time I will start moving all the pre-physical anthropology material to the other article unless sources can be given that they were used for racist policies.Miradre (talk) 22:42, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
You mean move from there to this article right? Looking at the scientific racism article I actually don't see any pre-scientific material. Only enough to establish the historical background on which it emerged. There is no reason to remove material from this article - it covers scientific and non-scientific concepts of race throughout history ·Maunus·ƛ· 22:46, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Obviously an article called "scientific rasism" is just about that. If you have a source for that these view were used for racistic purposes then we can include it. Otherwise they should be in this article. No reason to have large scale duplication of material.Miradre (talk) 22:51, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Which views are you talking about? I don't see reduplicated content I see overlap which is obviously neccesary. You should wait for more input before doing anything rash.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:00, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Many of the names and views are the same before 1850. No need to have massively duplicated contents. If you have a source for that the views of these persons caused racism, then we can keep that person, while of course keeping the bulk of the persons views regarding the race concept in this article.Miradre (talk) 23:15, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
You have stated your point. I have stated my disagreement.·Maunus·ƛ· 23:56, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

I have sorted it out, have a look at what i have done. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 01:22, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Not acceptable. This information is also an integral part of the histopry of concepts of race it cannot lack here.·Maunus·ƛ· 01:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree with the changes. The articles should not contain large scale duplications.Miradre (talk) 01:30, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Ok fair play, but all the material from the enlighenment era on the historical race page, is all found on the scientific racism page in the origins section, the origins of scientific racism first popped up around 1500 just before the enlightenment, so we have the same material on both pages, i have no problem with this, but i can see other uses want to merge it all together. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 01:32, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I just want to avoid large scale duplication. The word "science" was not in use around 1500 but if this can avoid duplication then using this time as a divider between the articles would work also.Miradre (talk) 01:38, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
There is no duplication there are two topics that have an overlap. You are making a very large change with a very small consensus. This will be reverted as soon as more editors become aware of this article. The two articles are not perfect but removing history from the history article does not help. Rather better sources should be used to focus the scientific racism article specifically on the topic of scientific racism. Secondary and tertiary sources should be used for this. That article is not supposed to simply be a list of thinkers contributing to the development of scientific racism. ·Maunus·ƛ· 01:41, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
There were large scale duplications with much or all (not checked everything) being identical word-for-word in the two articles.Miradre (talk) 01:45, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
There is still much duplication and overlap between the articles. This is confusing to both readers and editors. Some clear distinction should be made, like a certain year, for how to sort the material.Miradre (talk) 01:49, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

All of the scientists from the enlightenment era were all racialists, they all believed in white superiority, both the monogenists and the polygenists put the white european at the top, have a look at the list, all of them were racialists, look at some of their quotes, it's clear that the stuff that was in the enlightenment era section on the historical race page actually does belong on the scientific racism page in the origins section, the scientists from the enlightenment era were the pioneers of scientific racism. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 01:52, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

That seems fine with me. I just want to avoid large scale duplication of material in two articles. That never works well. It is confusing to editors and readers. Usually only the material on one page is updated by a new editor. And so on. So some clear demarcation regarding how to sort the material between the articles should be made. 1500 would work for me but then all material after this date should preferable be in the scientific racism article.Miradre (talk) 01:59, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

There is many pages on wikipedia with the same material on, the Physical Anthropology page seems pointless, it should also be merged with the scientific racism page aswell, but that is another matter i do not not want to get involved in. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 02:08, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Physical anthropology or today Biological anthropology is still a field of anthropology and certainly not racist today. So such a merger would be inappropriate. Maybe some material from that article would be better in the scientific racism article but that is another matter. In my opinion it would still be best to merge "Historical race concepts" and "Scientific racism" to one article in order to avoid confusion and overlap. Is that your opinion also?Miradre (talk) 02:13, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Yes i agree, i believe the historical race concepts article should be merged with the scientific racism article so in total there is just one big article. Makes it easier, and more clear, then it's altogether on one page, and perhaps the new article name should be history of race. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 03:09, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

History of race is not bad but I think it might be mistaken for history of actual populations. Like Population history of indigenous peoples of the Americas. Better may be "History of race concepts and racism". Thoughts? Miradre (talk) 03:26, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I 'strongly oppose such a merger. I do however think that duplicated content that does not specifically adress scientific racism should be moved from the racism article and inserted here. The scientific racism article should be based on the ways in which science has been used to prommote racism - it is not supposed to be a general review of te history of racial theories - only as they relate to scientific racism. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:15, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I have looked over this and i don't think we can merge the scientific racism page with the historical race page, many users will object to it, and if we start moving stuff about there will be an edit war and alot of of problems, the only thing we can do, to all agree on is to take some of the stuff off the historical race page which is racist based and put it on the scientific racism page, for example the racial anthropology and some of the nazi stuff is not really needed on the historical defintions of race page, it belongs on the scientific racism page.86.10.119.131 (talk) 12:57, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I have found three references that all state that scientific racism is a product of the 19th century and in one case it is described as a mid 20th century American phenomenon. I think it is safe to reduce the coverage pre 1800 racial theories in the article on scientific racism to a general overview of the historic background of the topic. The material removed from here should be reinserted.·Maunus·ƛ· 15:55, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
Here is an article that describes it as existing in the eighteenth century or earlier: http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/foutz-racism.shtml Miradre (talk) 16:01, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I guess the jury is out on when to begin calling racism scientific. In any case that article (Scientific racism) needs to be pruned down to contain only content that is described as related specifically to scientific racism in reliable secondary and tertiary sources. I will not oppose removing content from that article that is not directly related to scientific racism, related meaning treated in sources that explicitly mention it in relation to scientific racism. The following sources look like a good place to start to get the article back on track: The retreat of scientific racism, E Barkan - 1992 - Cambridge University Press; Legacy of Malthus: the social cost of the new scientific racism

A Chase - 1977; Scientific racism in modern South Africa S Dubow - 1995; Scientific racism: The cloak of objectivity, Fairchild - Journal of social issues, 1991; The funding of scientific racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund WH Tucker - 2002; " Scientific" Racism Again? J Comas - Current Anthropology, 1961; Blood Will Tell: Scientific Racism and the Legal Prohibitions Against Miscegenation KE Sealing - Mich. J. Race & L., 1999; The anatomy of scientific racism: Racialist responses to black athletic achievement, PB Miller - Journal of Sport History, 1998; WEB DuBois's Challenge to Scientific Racism CM Taylor - Journal of Black Studies, 1981; Social Darwinism, scientific racism, and the metaphysics of race RM Dennis - The Journal of Negro Education, 1995; Scientific racism and ideology: The IQ racket from Galton to Jensen S Rose - Ideology of/in the Natural Sciences, 1980; The ending of the slave trade and the evolution of European scientific racism S Drescher - Social Science History, 1990; A return to scientific racism in medical social sciences G Bibeau… - … : essays in honour of Charles Leslie, 2002; A Horse Breeder's Perspective. Scientific Racism in Germany, 1870-1933 A Krüger - … , D.(Hg.): Identity and Intolerance. Nationalism, Racism, …, ; Scientific Racism and the British Theory of Empire PD Curtin - Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria, 1960; Racism and physical anthropology: Brues's review of Barkan's The retreat of scientific racism GJ Armelagos - American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1994; Petrus Camper's Angle. The Grandfather of Scientific Racism Has Gotten a Bumps Rap SJ Gould - Natural history, 1987; Scientific racism and the biological concept of race ML Blakey - Literature and Psychology, 1999; A disappearing race before we came here'. Doctor Alfred Kingcome Newman, the Dying Maori, and Victorian Scientific Racism J Stenhouse - New Zealand Journal of History, 1996; Scientific racism in contemporary psychology. F Weizmann, NI Wiener, DL Wiesenthal… - 1989; Scientific racism in modern America, 1870s–1990s H Cravens - Prospects, 1996 - Cambridge Univ Press ; Genes, genomes and genealogies: the return of scientific racism? R Carter - Ethnic and racial studies, 2007.·Maunus·ƛ· 16:58, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

I hope you can improve the articles. Unfortunately I do not think I can. Personally I see too many problems with the current articles with large scale duplicated contents and unclear differentiation between the articles. Editors and readers will be confused. Only one version will be updated by new editors. And so on. I will limit myself to adding some npov material so that doing research on racial group differences, and the living persons doing the research, are not mistaken for racism and racists.Miradre (talk) 18:33, 28 March 2011 (UTC)
I agree that specific scientists (especially living ones) should not be associated with Scientific racism unless that association can be reliably sourced and attributed to the person who made the association.·Maunus·ƛ· 19:28, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

i think we should just leave the pages as they are. both pages are obviously needed, do you want to delete the merger suggestion which appears on both articles? i think we should close it now, no merge is gonna happen, i think its best that both articles stay seperate. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 23:17, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

I will remove the merger suggestion.Miradre (talk) 23:20, 29 March 2011 (UTC)

UNESCO statement

Maunus, I suggest you read the statement. What you reinserted is not mentioned in the statement or preamble. The suggestion to drop race for ethnic groups was criticized and dropped in the revised version next year. The statement itself, both the first and revised version, argued that races exist and the first even mentioned 3 large ones, the Mongoloid, the Negroid, and the Caucasoid. Eugenics is not mentioned.Miradre (talk) 17:30, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Furthermore, the UNESCO constitution does not mention Nazism or genocide. It mentions war, and the recent war in particular, but that is all.Miradre (talk) 17:42, 26 March 2011 (UTC)
The 1978 declarations statement on how nation states should treat migrant communities has no relevance for the topic of "historical race concepts"·Maunus·ƛ· 02:09, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
Obviously the question if it was a political/ideological statement or a scientific statement regarding the race concept has relevance. I have instead included that it also demanded that many policies and laws should be implemented.Miradre (talk) 02:19, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
I disagree, but will leave it for others to correct for now.·Maunus·ƛ· 02:40, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

Racial anthropology

Is the Racial anthropology section really needed on the Historical race concepts article? Racial anthropology is Scientific racism, and on the Scientific racism article there is already most of that material covered. It seems better to move it to the Scientific racism article. 86.10.119.131 (talk) 21:53, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Of course it is - anthropology has been responsible for most of the developments of race concepts - both racialist and constructionist. Leaving that out would create a huge hole in the coverance.·Maunus·ƛ· 22:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)


etymology

The Arabic word cited in this ill-informed section is the plural of the Arabic form of 'gene', the Arabic word for which is مورثة

The Greek word 'genos' is indisputably a nominal form of the verb 'gignomai' and equally indisputably the source of the Arabic word.

The highly contentious term 'race' may well come from the Arabic word meaning 'head'. But attempts to work out how one has come to mean the other are vague and ill-defined, rather like the understanding of term 'race' itself. Pamour (talk) 14:19, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I have improved the grammar of this paragraph, and improved its conceptual clarity, but I don't think I have changed what it means. I have inserted two notes of "citation needed". As a person with a pretty good background in English, I am amazed that people would hold the view that the concept of race was absent form English until the 1500s. I plan to look up the usages of the word "race" in Shakespeare and perhaps in Milton, and in the Latin Bible of that century. It surprises me that very few of the comments on this Talk page are recent. I found much in this article to be so confusing, so loaded with politically correct views, and so historically unlikely, that I have looked into the concept of race as it has been historically applied to denote different breeds, types, and landraces of animals. These are the same concepts. They don't seem to have many evaluative connotations.

Europeans had been exposed to the fact of racial differences for a very long time before Columbus, not only in Greek and Roman times, but also before Columbus, during the Crusades, when large numbers of literate Englishmen and other Europeans had opportunities to observe the variety within humanity. As I have read about such observations, I do not recall that references to human differences had any intrinsic connection to ideas about slavery or inferiority. With reference particularly to slavery, the old English words "thrall" and "thralldom" refer to slaves in Europe who were of the same stock as their European masters (consider "enthralled"). As late as Cromwell's time, native Englishmen could be legally punished by enslavement, for crimes such as participating in rebellion.

It is undeniable that racial prejudice has been common throughout history, but so have other kinds of pernicious prejudices, such as those based on religious differences. I find it interesting that racial prejudice seems to be commonly against the group that one's own group is at war with. Not so very long ago, many English speaking people were prejudiced against Germans, and after that, there was an interval when they were prejudiced against Russians. As for the idea that light colored people are naturally prejudiced against darker colorations, I bring the phrase "tall, dark, and handsome"! For attitudes of a different direction in relation to coloration, I invite consideration of the attitudes probably held by the earlier inhabitants of Britain, who had darker Celtic colorations. I'm sure they became very prejudiced against people with Nordic coloration. Attitudes vary with circumstances.

I am disinclined to believe that the concept of slavery is intrinsically or historically tied to the concept of race. I will probably be back. Janice Vian, Ph.D. (talk) 04:15, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

removing Views of hereditarian race researchers section

This section doesn't views of race, rather it presents a poorly written rebuttal of unreferenced and unpresented accusations of racism. The section appears to be synthesis and not relevant to the topic of the article. aprock (talk) 00:56, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Citation needed for Agassiz's listing of races

The article writes that Agassiz believed in twelve races:

"Western American Temperate (the indigenous peoples west of the Rockies), Eastern American Temperate (east of the Rockies), Tropical Asiatic (south of the Himalayas), Temperate Asiatic (east of the Urals and north of the Himalayas), South American Temperate (South America), New Holland (Australia), Arctic (Alaska and Arctic Canada). Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), and American Tropical (Central America and the West Indies)."

I have been unable to find any reference to this racial typology. Assistance please? FuzzyCatPotato (talk) 17:20, 27 December 2016 (UTC)

Nothing absurd in term "Caucasian"

According to article: "...taken together, that the absurd denomination of "Caucasian" is usually applied".Similar statements are absurdity.The so called Caucasiony (Mountain Northern Caucasian) anthropological type of Balkanian-Caucasian (also Pamirian-Alpine) race practically differs in nothing from Dinarid in the Balkans, the Alps. The only difference is that Dinarids have high growth more often.I demand to clean from article this quote as it proceeds from the unique source - the Russian neo-nazism and Slaviс-orthodox racism.Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union occupied the Caucasus and did a lot of things for distortion of the historical past of the Caucasian people, first of all North Caucasians. All these insults used by modern Russian racists and their allies among the persons from Polish Jewish origin of Russia (like Zhirinovsky etc.) are an absolute lie.In the North Caucasus isn't present any black at all, brown. North Caucasians and many Georgians as a rule don't differ from inhabitants of the Balkans, Switzerland and also Italy and Spain.North Caucasians unfortunately have no independent state that gives the chance to racists strenuously to compose and extend frankly false racist nonsense. And North Caucasians are revenged as if for that respect which was shown to North Caucasians in the German Reich. Hitler's regime didn't allow any insults and racist tricks in relation to North Caucasians, but many Slavic people were considered as "Untermensch"

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Missing references?

In the section about the history of Charles Darwin, it notes that he came from a family of abolitionists, and I couldn't find a source listed for that claim, but would like access to a source that confirms that. Is it possible someone can list one for that section? Thank you in advance. 22:51, 20 February 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.187.0.41 (talk) 22:51, 20 February 2018 (UTC)

References

I don't have time to do this myself, but this article needs serious referencing - I'm trying to find sources for half of the claims made here, and they're very difficult to come across. If someone who's well versed in this topic could comb through it and put some proper sources/links in, that would be great. At the moment I don't think it meets Wikipedia's standards. 146.90.217.133 (talk) 15:03, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 08:37, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

"Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid & sometimes Australoid" listed at Redirects for discussion

Information icon A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid & sometimes Australoid. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 8#Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid & sometimes Australoid until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. Rsk6400 (talk) 16:05, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

New image

Would any editors of this article have any objections to me adding this image to the article (I recently uploaded it to Commons)? I would add it to the section with Historical race concepts#Racial_anthropology_(1850–1930). P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 16:43, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Why not ? I'd say, just go ahead. --Rsk6400 (talk) 17:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Ok - will do, I just wanted to make sure that adding the file wouldn't be inappropraite. P,TO 19104 (talk) (contribs) 18:03, 10 January 2021 (UTC)
Good find. Just in case you know more: I was searching in vain for "Cram's New Family Atlas of the World" of 1884. The best match I found was "Cram's Unrivaled Family Atlas of the World" of 1882. Is there any more information available ? And: A Chinese man as an example for "Caucasian race" is not very common. As far as I know, Chinese were normally seen as belonging to the "Mongoloid race". --Rsk6400 (talk) 19:17, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Postmodern Philosophy

Foucault is simply inserted with no previous mention or explanation of his "Power-Knowledge" philosophy. This is critical to explain the political use of the discredited pseudo science of race. Thatcatdavid (talk) 09:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I just deleted the mention of Foucault - it was unsourced. --Rsk6400 (talk) 10:30, 23 March 2021 (UTC)
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