What is Race?

Whenever most people are asked to define race, some people will discuss outward appearance while others will discuss ancestry. When people are asked to identify the races that exist, some will begin listing different races while others will say, "There is only one race, the human race."

How did we come about defining the different races?

During the Age of Enlightenment, a man named Johann Friedrich Blumenbach identified and classified five races: The Caucasian race, the Mongoloid race, the Malay race, the Negroid race, and the American race. A German Encylopedia, Meyers Blitz-Lexikon used images to describe a couple of the different races.

Caucasian Race (Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, 1932)

Mongoloid Race (Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, 1932)

Negroid Race (Meyers Blitz-Lexikon, 1932)

A person's race is determined by their ancestry, their physical features, and their ethnicity.

Scientific racism is the "use of pseudo-scientific and hypotheses to justify racial superiority".

In the image above, scientists are measuring the nose and jaw size of white men. The sketch compares black people to chimpanzees.

During the Apartheid in South Africa, a pencil test was issued to determine whether a person was white, black, or coloured (a person of mixed race). If people were uncertain about their racial group, a pencil would be slid into their hair. They were asked to shake their head a few times. How easily the pencil fell out would determine if a person "passed" or "failed" the test. If the pencil was stuck, the person's hair would be considered to be too "kinky" to be considered white and would be classified as "coloured" or "black". If the pencil fell, the person would be classified as "white".

Biologically, race is not real. Race is a social construct, but it has a social reality. The effects of race and racism are still shown in our society today. When race was created, it formed a social structure that gave whites privilege over non-whites. For example, a white kid can use "black" slang, listen to hip-hop music, and dress in hip-hop attire but he can easily shed that image and still be white. If a black kid were to do the same thing, he would still be profiled and people would still stereotype him.

Meyers Blitz-Lexikon: d. Schnellauskunft für jedermann in Wort u. Bild = Blitz-Lexikon.. Leipzig: Bibliogr. Inst. AG, 1932. Print.