Throughout history, race has served as a tool for social classification and hierarchical organization. In the past, it was used to categorize people based on physical differences and their social relationships (like kinship ties) in order to create and reinforce notions of superiority over one group or another. Today, most scientists no longer consider race to be a valid scientific classification. However, it persists as a concept woven into the fabric of society and continues to play a critical role in the lives of individuals and communities.
For many, the term “race” refers to a superficial physical characteristic (like skin tone or hair texture), but it also carries with it a deeper meaning of identity, ancestry, national origin, and shared culture. This conflation of the cultural and the physical has given rise to a system of power, privilege, and oppression that has permeated American society.
In the United States, for example, when asked on the census to choose a race, people are asked to select from the following categories: white, black or African American, Hispanic or Latino (more commonly known as “Spanish” or “Mexican”), Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, or some combination of these. However, the use of these terms as descriptors of a person’s appearance can be misleading or even offensive, depending on how they are applied.
The use of the word race, in addition to its cultural and psychological dimensions, also has a profound effect on legal and criminal language. The way in which law enforcement agencies describe people in search bulletins, for instance, can have a direct impact on the way in which they are policed and incarcerated. In this area, scholars like Sandra Guerra-Cortines and W.E.B. DuBois have developed theoretical frameworks to understand how the concept of race is created and the implications of its application in both formal and informal social structures.
In the 21st century, a large body of research has demonstrated that most differences among humans are either genetic or clinal, meaning they vary over time and space. As a result, the idea of race has become increasingly less meaningful in describing human differences and in shaping policies that affect those differences. This is not to say that we can just stop using the term altogether, however, because generations of ideas about race continue to influence our everyday interactions and shape the lives of nonwhite and white people. This is why it is important to be aware of the ways that the concept of race is used in our society.