Rural Health
- PDF / 248,299 Bytes
- 21 Pages / 547.087 x 765.354 pts Page_size
- 37 Downloads / 184 Views
What is ‘‘race’’ and who decides where a person fits in the racial, ethnic, or cultural categories so widely used in the United States? And on what criteria do they base their decision? Such basic questions about race are often left unaddressed by people who speak about the relationships among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. Most people simply assume that a consensus exists on classifying the race (or ethnicity) of individuals, but there are opposing views on the meaning of the concept of ‘‘race’’ (and ethnicity). Under the traditional view, race is a biological trait, capable of classification into types based on observable physical characteristics such as skin color, hair type, nose shape, etc. The biological basis of race has been the source of fairly heated debates, and it is now generally understood that such external physical characteristics have little reliable relationship to culture or ethnic group status. Today ‘‘race’’ has no consensus definition, and in fact, biological racial categories and observable characteristics have more variation with members of commonly identified racial groups than between such groups. The newer views of race argue that biological or anthropological definitions of race are not scientifically valid, and instead assert that race is a social and political construction. The social construction view does recognize that race classification and race identity exists in our society and that race does significantly influence the lives of people—thus it also recognizes that race merits careful attention in our culture. In this view, race is the category to which individuals are assigned on the basis of observable physical characteristics and on family genealogical history as it is understood by individuals. Race also includes the generalizations and stereotypes made as a result of such categorization. People are thus commonly treated (or studied) as though they belong to biologically defined racial groups on the basis of such characteristics, although these groups are largely socially or politically constructed. ‘‘Race’’ has traditionally been a system of classifying individuals as members of a group of persons who are related by heredity or a common descent. Under this view, racial groups are supposedly distinguishable by distinctive physical characteristics that are possessed by members of a particular racial group. Biological race #
Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2008
has been more recently distinguished by genetic markers such as blood groups and other markers. Overall, the scientific validity of the concept of race has been seriously called into question by many authorities. Biological categories of race and phenotypic characteristics have been shown to have more variation within ascribed racial groups than between such groups. Race has also been used to refer to a population of people isolated reproductively from other populations and whose members share greater physical and genetic similarity with each other than with other groups of people. More broadly, race
Data Loading...
