Race is a concept based on the premise that the humans can be systematically classified into discrete biological groups based on phenotypic and/or genotypic ancestral traits. Racialism is the view that races are natural and fixed subdivisions of humans, each with its own distinct and variable cultural characteristics and capacity for developing civilizations. Race and racialism are core concepts in eugenics, since early eugenicists typically warned about miscegenation or race-mixing as promoting degeneracy and social degradation, thus promoting scientific racism (see also the Roles of Science in Eugenics; Heredity; Racism).

Ancient conceptions of race
Phenotypic differences in skin colour, hair texture and facial features most certainly intrigued our ancestors as early humans became increasingly mobile and spread throughout the world, contacting groups that had been isolated geographically for (possibly) tens or hundreds of thousands of years. The first written evidence of this differentiation appears circa 1350 B.C. as the Romans, Greeks and Egyptians began large-scale explorations, recognizing various groups as “white,” “black,” and “yellow.” This would seem like a natural distinction to draw between groups of people who appeared to be physically distinct to other groups who had never seen such people before. Certainly at this time, there was also a much underdeveloped sense of human biology. There is little evidence to suggest that any of these colours (or types) of people were discriminated against because of their phenotypic constitution during this period.

It is commonly believed that the Greeks and Romans did not practice any form of race prejudice. The conception that there are natural or biological races of mankind which differ from one another mentally as well as physically is an idea that was not developed until the latter part of the 18th century. However, the development of “civilization” and the Greek city-states in the 700s B.C. sparked a newfound territoriality. The expansion of the Persian Empire in the 500s B.C. led to the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., following which an internal rivalry developed between the Athenians and the Spartans, erupting into the Peloponnesian War of 431-404 B.C. It is with this focus on territoriality, between nations as well as internal city-states, developing out of governmental regulation and material ownership that humans began to develop deep-rooted biases for their own cultural and ethnic groups. It is also with the integration of religion and state power that a major class division emerged, with social class being directly related to birth rites and bloodlines.

Modern conceptions of race
According to Ashley Montagu (1964:37), “The ‘racial’ interpretation is a modern ‘discovery.’ That is the important thing to grasp. The objection to any people on ‘racial’ or biological grounds is virtually a purely modem innovation. That is the basic sense in which modern group antagonism differs from that which prevailed in earlier times.”

Not until the institution of slavery in 4th century Greece would there be an attempt to transform this classism and cultural bias into a biological or corporal entity. Unlike Plato (427-347 B.C), whose work The Republic provided a detailed blueprint for harmonious rule, Aristotle (384-322 B.C) claimed in his Politics that the captives were slaves by nature. Aristotle's view was not readily accepted at this time as cultural prejudice proved sufficient to maintain the established hierarchy, and the science of the day was not sophisticated enough to incorporate human anatomy and intelligence in a manner that could sufficiently prove an innate destiny or dominance; this would remain the domain of the unrelenting religious-based classism.

Even in the 17th century, European explorers and colonizers (i.e., the English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Dutch) imagined themselves as superior to the indigenous peoples they encountered. But this sense of superiority was founded not on a race hierarchy, but on the belief that Europeans had achieved a level of civilization [urbanity and sophistication] unknown in other nations. This awareness of ‘national’ differences outweighed anything approaching a modern tendency to identify a particular skin-color or physiognomy with a “race.” Indeed, it was with the rise of Enlightenment thought and empirical science in the 18th century that the idea of a physical hierarchy based on intellectual and anatomic differences would become a major focus of the scientific endeavour.

Racialism and the science of race
The concept of race was embraced in the mid to late 18th century by naturalists and other scientists and given legitimacy as the product of scientific investigation. Pre-evolutionary science was premised on the notion of divine creation according and the Great Chain of Being – that god created a natural hierarchy of higher and lower organisms. The classification of the natural world by Linnaeus in his Systema Naturae (1735) would form the foundation of modern biological taxonomy, reinforcing the notion that the biological world is ordered in inalterable ways, with humans (Homo sapiens) as the top of the hierarchy. In the 10th edition of Systema Naturae (1758), Linnaeus named four geographical ‘varieites’ of Homo sapiens: europaeus, afer, asiaticus and americanus, introducing some anecdotal behavioural distinctions in line with then current European notions about their own superiority. This represented the first biological classification of humans into distinct racial groups.

Working at the same time as Linnaeus, although greatly opposed to his systematic classification, was Georges-Louis Leclerc, the Comte de Buffon (1707-1788), whose 1749 Histoire Naturelle Générale et Particulière des Animaux [A Natural History, General and Particular] was the seminal publication of its time on the study of natural history. Buffon argued that the colours of races were merely superficial, and that these variations were caused by the influence of food, air, and the earth’s topography, while structural differences (i.e. stature, body weight, height) in the races were produced secondarily by culture, habits, customs, beliefs, and practices. In attempting to derive a historical relationship among the races by virtue of their resemblance to one another, Buffon proposed a change in the study of man that would outline the divisions of modern anthropology, dividing the discipline into four distinct but complimentary subdisciplines: a) humans in general considered as a natural history subject throughout the ages; b) the races, their description, origin and miscegenation; c) a physical and physiological comparison of man’s characteristics with the other animals, and d) humanity’s origin and place in the zoological scale.

The study of human variation would take yet another dramatic turn in 1775, when Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1753-1840) published his De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa [On the Natural Variety of Mankind]. Blumenbach, considered by most to be the father of modern physical anthropology, was inspired by both Linnaeus’s classification and Buffon’s analysis. He undertook to study the variations of humankind through comparative anatomy, using strictly anatomical features in order to define the races. Blumenbach, like his predecessors, undertook as his main goal to examine the so-called varieties of the human species. Blumenbach’s main interest as an anatomist and anthropologist was in craniometry and variation in craniofacial morphology. The principle question he sought to answer was: “Are men, and have men of all times and of every race been one and the same, or clearly more than one species?” In this regard, he stated, “for a considerable period of time singular shapes of the head have belonged to particular nations, and particular skulls have been shaped out, in some of them certainly by artificial means, it will be our business to look at these things a little more carefully, and to consider how far they constitute different varieties of the human race.”

The variations of humans were, to Blumenbach, caused by the same forces explained by Linnaeus and Buffon – the physical climate, “whose effects seem so great that distinguished men have thought that on this alone depended the different shapes, colour, manners and institutions of men.” This was, in Blumenbach’s view, the factor that caused degeneration away from the European physical form, which was seen as the image of creation, and hence, perfection. In the third edition of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa (1795:265) Blumenbach expanded upon Linnaeus’ four race model by explaining by adding a fifth race, explaining that,

“I have allotted the first place to the Caucasian, for the reasons given below, which make me esteem it the primeval one. This diverges in both directions into two, most remote and very different from each other; on the one side, namely the Ethiopian, and on the other, the Mongolian. The remaining occupy the intermediate positions between that primeval one and these two extreme varieties; that is, the American between the Caucasian and Mongolian; the Malay between the same Caucasian and Ethiopian.”

Although the acceptance of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in the late 19th century lead to the understanding that species change over time in response to environmental stimuli – and that they evolve rather than degenerate – the idea that humans can be divided into discrete racial groups remains pervasive in social and scientific discourse.

-Michael Billinger

• Billinger, M.S., 2000, “Geography, genetics, and generalizations: the abandonment of ‘race’ in the anthropological study of human biological variation.” Master’s Thesis, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University.

• Billinger, M.S., 2007, “Another look at ethnicity as a biological concept: moving anthropology beyond the race concept.” Critique of Anthropology 27(5): 5-35.

• Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 1978, Anthropological Treaties of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Boston: Longwood Press Ltd. (Note: English translations of both the first and third editions of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa appear in Anthropological Treaties of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach).

• Eugencis to Newgenics Project. ‘What is Newgenics?’ Available online at: http://eugenicsnewgenics.com/2014/05/14/what-is-newgenics/

• Montagu, Ashley, 1962, ‘The Concept of Race’, American Anthropologist 65(5): 919–28.

• Montagu, Ashley, 1964, Man’s Most Dangerous Myth (4th Edition). Cleveland: World Publishing Group.

• Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 1978, Anthropological Treaties of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach. Boston: Longwood Press Ltd. (Note: English translations of both the first and third editions of De Generis Humani Varietate Nativa appear in Anthropological Treaties of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach).