Abstract
This chapter divides the question "What is race?" into two questions. The first is "How can we understand the variation in physical appearance among human beings?" It is answered by reviewing evidence from evolutionary biology and biological anthropology that shows that the human species has no races in the biological sense. Physical appearance varies gradually around the planet; and more distant populations are more different from one another than closer ones. The second question is, "How can we understand the kinds of racial classifications (folk taxonomies) applied to differences in physical appearance among human beings?" The answer is provided by evidence from cultural anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, including the author's research comparing racial folk taxonomies in eight cultures. The concept of race varies widely from culture to culture, and cognate racial terms in different languages have different meanings.
An earlier version of this chapter appeared in the 2002 book I edited, Race and intelligence: Separating science from myth, pp. 113–141. It was published in Mahwah, NJ by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. © 2002 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, and is used with permission.
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- 1.
Because this chapter is about race, it uses mainly racial terms, like black and white (in lower case, following a common practice in anthropology), rather than cultural terms, like African American and European American. The term American is also used to refer to the people and culture of the United States because that is our folk term, even though other inhabitants of the New World also think of themselves and their cultures as American. Harris (1964) was the first to explore race as a concept that varies cross-culturally. The title of this chapter alludes to the work of Szasz (1961, 1970a) whose critique of the concept of mental illness parallels in some ways this chapter’s critique of the concept of race.
- 2.
Etics and Emics are discussed more in depth in Chapter 7.
- 3.
The hypothetical number eight was chosen for illustrative purposes because of the tradition in places like New Orleans of classifying people according to their proportion of black “blood” as mulatto (1/2), quadroon (1/4), or octoroon (1/8).
- 4.
A number of identity-related issues facing Americans of mixed ancestry are discussed by Fish and Newton (1998).
- 5.
Terms for Brazilian Indians (e.g., india) and for people whose appearance is thought to reflect Indian-white (e.g., mameluca) or Indian-black (e.g., cafuza) mixtures are omitted in order to avoid excessive complexity. (The absence of these terms from the list of 134 cores referred to above—all of which would also be considered tipos—suggests the incredible variegation of the tipo concept.) Terms for some such people do appear where they are relevant for illustrative purposes, in presentations of folk taxonomies from other cultures below. It should also be pointed out that some Brazilian terms have more than one meaning. For example, in addition to referring to a specific physical appearance, the term morena is sometimes used as a vague descriptor, especially when referring to oneself, to indicate a (usually lighter) classification between branca and preta.
This information was gathered initially while the author was in Brazil from 1974 to 1976 and was supplemented during subsequent visits there and in contacts with Brazilians in the United States.
- 6.
There is no consistently satisfactory way of referring to categories from gender-marked Romance languages in English. This chapter uses the female forms for Portuguese and Spanish terms (even though the male form is grammatically the general one) because the race-related English terms blonde and brunette refer to women and because a comes before o in the alphabet. In the case of French, however, the feminine ending is often attached as a suffix to the masculine one, so use of the masculine form makes for a simpler visual presentation—for example, mulâtre(sse). There are also occasional feminine/masculine inconsistencies in the presentations of folk taxonomies that follow. Unfortunately, different choices would only have led to different inconsistencies.
- 7.
In the presentations of folk taxonomies that follow, it will be evident that physical appearance is a more widely used principle than ancestry—making the American system appear deviant by comparison. As is discussed in Chapter 2, a comparative study of the “racial” folk taxonomies of European cultures offers the potential for insights into the diversity of “racial” concepts among their former colonies.
While both Europeans and Americans have a concept of “nationality,” there is an important meaning for the term in Europe that Americans do not have. This European use of “nationality,” which is similar to the American concept of “blood” (and, indeed, is often referred to as “blood”), is also relevant to understanding the various European “racial” folk taxonomies. “Nationality,” like the social classification of “race,” is an emic concept. As such, its meaning can be expected to vary from culture to culture—especially when language barriers impede cultural interchange. (Naturally, geographical, political, religious, historical, and other etic and emic separations also contribute to differentiation in cultural meanings.)
Differences between this European use of “nationality” and the American concept of “race” become evident in the way that Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian immigrants to the United States all find themselves classified together as members of the same “racial” category (“white”). This is similar to the way in which Indian and Pakistani immigrants, despite differences in the category of “religion” that is salient for them, also find themselves lumped together in an American “racial” category (“Asian,” “south Asian,” or whatever other designation develops over time—see the discussion below).
- 8.
As with “nationality,” tipo in Portuguese and Spanish and type in French is a word with multiple meanings, many of which are shared with the English word “type.” The “racial” use of the word, to refer to a culturally constructed category of physical appearance, however, is not found in American English.
- 9.
This chapter deals with a variety of “racial” terms from a variety of cultures that are used to refer to different kinds of people, as defined by those cultures. The intent has been to include descriptive terms and to exclude pejorative terms or epithets. The history of racism being what it is (albeit differing in each culture), many descriptive terms carry some negative semantic baggage as well—except, of course, terms for whites. For example, “mulatto” in the United States is a term that can be used either descriptively (someone with one white parent and one black parent) or with a negative connotation (e.g., a “half breed” or “tragic mulatto”). Emotional meanings and stereotypes associated with the various terms are not a subject of discussion in this chapter.
- 10.
The nature and limitations of these data should be made explicit. Initial information was obtained from classroom exercises in New York City, and from immigrants or children of immigrants who are bi-cultural Americans rather than from uni-cultural informants answering questions about their own systems. Thus, the students’ cultural knowledge might have been incomplete, or distorted by American filters, or modified to fit the classroom setting. The interviews rarely lasted more than 30 min and were conducted in English—hardly an adequate sample. Often they concerned unfamiliar countries. Even when the relevant language was available (French, Portuguese, and Spanish—but not Capeverdean, Haitian, or Martinican creoles) the lack of familiarity with racial terminology or the state of race relations might have led to the omission of important questions that could have altered the discussion here.
The presentations that follow resulted from more detailed supplementary interviews with additional individuals who could confirm, clarify, enhance, and/or increase the information previously obtained; often the resulting changes were substantial. (The contributions of sources who were willing to be identified have been acknowledged.) It should be recognized that people from different geographical locations, of different social class or ethnic backgrounds, of different physical appearance, or different in some other culturally significant way might have provided different information. If there are any inaccuracies, responsibility for them remains with me.
- 11.
This presentation follows the Martinican practice regarding the capitalization of terms.
- 12.
Because Puerto Rican folk terms reflect physical appearance rather than ancestry, “indios” are people whose physical appearance corresponds to what Puerto Ricans believe Indians look like. Since the indigenous peoples of the island were annihilated by the mid 1500s, whatever may constitute the genetic makeup of indios, we may be sure that contributions from the original Native Americans are insignificant. This is yet another striking illustration of the way in which “racial” categories are emic social constructions (and not etic biological classifications).
- 13.
Jamaicans expect a range of skin colors, and the fact that children might be described differently within a family does not mean that they would be treated differently.
- 14.
Americans in the 1950s listening to Harry Belafonte’s popular Calypso album (1956) would doubtless have been surprised to learn that the “Brown Skin Girl” in his song would not have been considered black in Jamaica, nor would the blue eyed baby left behind with her by the American sailor.
- 15.
Dictionary definitions of “racial” terms often have a bizarre quality because lexicographers use authoritative and even scientific-sounding language in defining folk categories. This quality is exaggerated in two-language dictionaries, where words are used to communicate concisely the essence of one culture’s folk category to members of another culture unacquainted with it. Thus, an authoritative Brazilian Portuguese–English dictionary defines cabo-verde as “a half-breed of Negro and Indian” (Novo Michaelis, 1973, p. 199).
Leaving aside the question of whether the lexicographer was aware of the pejorative meaning of “half-breed,” one is bewildered by the well-known absence of Brazilian Indians from Cape Verde. The following is an attempt to reconstruct for an American audience the cultural assumptions underlying this amazing definition.
The Brazilian concept of tipo as a set of physical features means that the term cabo-verde is used to refer to people who look a certain way. These individuals, whose ancestors often include both Brazilian Indians and Africans, resemble some Capeverdeans in appearance—hence the choice of the term.
- 16.
In any given language, words often have more than one meaning. In Cape Verde, to avoid confusion, we have to remember that the words branca and preta might refer to either a cor or a tipo.
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Fish, J.M. (2011). The Myth of Race. In: The Concept of Race and Psychotherapy. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7576-8_1
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