Rethinking Race Labels

One of the tenets of anti-racist belief is that race doesn’t actually exist. Instead it is only a social construct. Perceptions of race have certainly changed over time, but the way we think of race today — and the way I myself grew up understanding it — is that it only applies to certain physical differences, most notably the tone of one’s skin. <a href="https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/race" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The English word “race,”</a> as it relates to lineage or ethnicity, originates from the 16th century. It derives from the French word which is spelled the same way but pronounced differently. In turn, the French word comes from the Italian “razza.” The racial categories that <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-10/race-caucasian-myth-racism" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">we use today were influenced</a> by the work of German anthropologist <a href="http://www.bibliotecauniversitaria.ge.it/export/sites/bug/documenti/UetP/7_CONTESTO_TEOLOGICO_FILOSOFICO/Blumenbach.pdf" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Johann Blumenbach</a>. He sorted humanity into five original classifications that included a color coding roughly based on skin tone: Caucasian/white, Mongolian/yellow, Malayan/brown, Ethiopian/black and American/red. <a href="https://kevinkelly-61383.medium.com/rethinking-race-labels-e5dc19a30f63">Learn More</a>