Race is a social construct, but it can also be used as a tool to organize communities and support people who have experienced discrimination. The term “race” refers to a group of individuals with similar physical characteristics such as skin color and facial features. It is often used in conjunction with ethnicity, which refers to a person’s cultural background.
People are assigned a racial category by themselves and by others. They can also choose to identify with more than one racial group, depending on the circumstances. A person’s racial identity may be based on genetics, environment and family experiences. People who have experienced racial discrimination may develop a racial identity in order to deal with this stress.
While the term race is usually associated with a negative connotation, some philosophers have defended the concept. They have argued that the historical concept of race has evolved and no longer exists in the form it did in the past. However, these philosophers have different definitions of race and what constitutes a racial group.
For example, a philosophy professor named Peter Singer argues that race is a classification system that combines phenotypic traits and common experiences to determine a person’s unique identity. This differs from ethnicity, which is based on a person’s culture and ancestral origins. Singer argues that there are no objective biological criteria for determining a person’s racial designation and that the societal and cultural factors that determine an individual’s racial identification are more important than any differences in phenotypic traits between groups.
Other philosophers have defended the concept of race, but with substantial changes to its foundations. For instance, the cladistic race concept differs from the historic concept in that it does not use geographic boundaries and it focuses on distinct phenotypic characteristics rather than common experiences. This approach to race has been criticized by anthropologists because it ignores the fact that many phenotypic characteristics are shared by all humans and that a purely anthropological concept of race would have to exclude a vast number of people.
Regardless of its underlying philosophical framework, the concept of race is still used in public policy and legislation. For example, the Census Bureau requires that people report their racial groupings, which include White, Black or African American, Asian and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. These categories are not intended to be interpreted as biological or anthropological in nature and should not be used as a factor for eligibility in Federal programs. Nevertheless, a mismatch between the conceptual and typical referent of the term race has contributed to a variety of disparities in health outcomes, housing, education, and criminal justice. These disparities can be traced back to historic examples of misuse of racial data, such as the addition of an “insane or idiot” category to the 1840 census in order to skew statistics on mental disabilities among free coloreds and the categorization of multiracial enslaved people as insane or idiots. These issues continue to be the focus of debate and research.