[GPC-ANTH] Discussion Topic for Chapter 4 - Race, as a Cultural Construct

Discussion topic for Chapter 4
How is the concept of "race" a cultural construct and why do we still hear the term used?


Student Response
From our textbook, the term race is scientifically and anthropologically defined as follows: “In biology, a subgroup within a species, not scientifically applicable to humans because there exist no subspecies within modern Homo sapiens.”

The concept of “race” as we have come to understand it is a cultural construct rather than a scientifically-supported biological one. Renaissance and Industrial era researchers tried to understand and classify the world in which we live. They assigned racial delineations according to the accepted scientific methods of the time – most often (and now we know, incorrectly) assigning racially defining categories based simply on where a people lived or the single differentiator of skin color. As science progressed as a formal educational discipline, it became clear that we are all part of the same species and genus, and that no true variant subspecies exist within our shared biological classification.

As has been common practice throughout recorded history, politicians and religious leaders used these classifications to benefit their needs, encouraging the acceptance of these classifications as a way of reinforcing ethnic superiority of their own culture over that of societies and cultures that possessed resources they desired. Just as ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians, American natives on both continents, and African tribal leaders dealt in slavery of their own and surrounding peoples, so too did the Western Europeans use “the inferiority of savage races” to justify these practices as colonial expansion brought them to the “New World”.

Unfortunately, we will continue to hear this term incorrectly used as long as it is politically expedient for our governmental and societal leaders, worldwide, to exploit language for their political and monetary needs.