What is Race? Lecture Flashcards

Vocabulary practice flashcards reviewing definitions, theories, historical frameworks, and key concepts related to race from Political Science.

Race (Oxford Primary Definition)

Each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics.

Race (Biological Definition)

A population within a species that is distinct in some way, especially a subspecies.

Race (Ethnic Definition)

A group of people sharing the same culture, history, language, etc.; an ethnic group.

Race (Archaic Definition)

Ancestry.

Phenotype

The set of observable characteristics of an individual resulting from the interaction of its genotype with the environment.

Origins (Folk Race Definition)

Distinguishing factors in folk definitions of race based on long term residence and region.

Race Ascription

The external assignment or attribution of race to an individual, as opposed to self-identification.

Racialism

The belief in the existence and significance of distinct biological races, analyzed in the study of race as science.

Appiah's Analytical Conclusions on Race

The three analytical conclusions proposed by Kwame Anthony Appiah: 1) the only race in the United States is the human race, 2) race does not equal culture, and 3) racial identity does not equal race.

Darwinism (in Race as Science)

The historical application of evolutionary theory that embraced natural selection while rejecting descent with modification.

Race as Science (Key Characteristics)

A framework defining race through classification of discrete biological entities measured by physical variation, where outer physical traits equal inner qualities, and race is inheritable, fixed/unalterable, and hierarchical.

Phrenology

The detailed study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.

Types of Mankind (1856)

A publication by Nott and Gliddon that used cranial comparisons and visual illustrations as evidence for scientific racialism.

Camper's Facial Angle

A historical comparative diagram illustrating facial angles across monkeys, orangutans, Negroes, and Kalmucks.

Accomplishments of Race as Science

The four main historical functions served by race as science: to enumerate, describe, rank, and justify racial divisions.

The Bell Curve

A book by Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles Murray associated with the re-emergence of race as science in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Inequality by Design: Cracking the Bell Curve Myth

A major scholarly critique published in response to the arguments made in Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve.

New Race as Science

The contemporary re-emergence of biological racial concepts through genetic ancestry analysis of 23 pairs of chromosomes and forensic anthropology.

Race as a Social Construct

The concept that race is not biologically inevitable and need not exist, but exists with a specific purpose as a political construct that is widely held as true and central to identity.

Political Construct

A social concept created and maintained to serve specific power and structural purposes in society, as applied to race.