Black is a racialized classification of people, usually a political and skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid- to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have dark skin; in certain countries, often in socially based systems of racial classification in the Western world, the term "black" is used to describe persons who are perceived as dark-skinned compared to other populations. It is most commonly used for people of sub-Saharan African ancestry, Indigenous Australians and Melanesians, though it has been applied in many contexts to other groups, and is no indicator of any close ancestral relationship whatsoever. Indigenous African societies do not use the term black as a racial identity outside of influences brought by Western cultures.
Racism is discrimination and prejudice against people based on their race or ethnicity. Racism can be present in social actions, practices, or political systems that support the expression of prejudice or aversion in discriminatory practices. The ideology underlying racist practices often assumes that humans can be subdivided into distinct groups that are different in their social behavior and innate capacities and that can be ranked as inferior or superior. Racist ideology can become manifest in many aspects of social life. Associated social actions may include nativism, xenophobia, otherness, segregation, hierarchical ranking, supremacism, and related social phenomena.
White trash is a derogatory racial and class-related slur used in American English to refer to poor white people, especially in the rural areas of the southern United States. The label signifies a social class inside the white population and especially a degraded standard of living. It is used as a way to separate the "noble and hardworking" "good poor" from the lazy, "undisciplined, ungrateful and disgusting" "bad poor". The use of the term provides middle- and upper-class whites a means of distancing themselves from the poverty and powerlessness of poor whites, who cannot enjoy those privileges, as well as a way to disown their perceived behavior.
The Aryan race is an obsolete historical race concept that emerged in the late-19th century to describe people who descend from the Proto-Indo-Europeans as a racial grouping. The terminology derives from the historical usage of Aryan, used by modern Indo-Iranians as an epithet of "noble". Anthropological, historical, and archaeological evidence does not support the validity of this concept.
The master race is a pseudoscientific concept in Nazi ideology in which the putative "Aryan race" is deemed the pinnacle of human racial hierarchy. Members were referred to as "Herrenmenschen".
White is a racialized classification of people generally used for those of mostly European ancestry. It is also a skin color specifier, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, ethnicity, point of view, appearance, etc.
Mulatto is a racial classification to refer to people of mixed African and European ancestry. Its use is considered outdated and offensive in several languages, including English and Dutch, whereas in languages such as Italian, Spanish and Portuguese it is not, and can even be a source of pride. A mulatta is a female mulatto.
The concept of race as a categorization of anatomically modern humans has an extensive history in Europe and the Americas. The contemporary word race itself is modern; historically it was used in the sense of "nation, ethnic group" during the 16th to 19th centuries. Race acquired its modern meaning in the field of physical anthropology through scientific racism starting in the 19th century. With the rise of modern genetics, the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: "The belief in 'races' as natural aspects of human biology, and the structures of inequality (racism) that emerge from such beliefs, are among the most damaging elements in the human experience both today and in the past."
The Caucasian race is an obsolete racial classification of humans based on a now-disproven theory of biological race. The Caucasian race was historically regarded as a biological taxon which, depending on which of the historical race classifications was being used, usually included ancient and modern populations from all or parts of Europe, Western Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa.
Scientific racism, sometimes termed biological racism, is the pseudoscientific belief that the human species can be subdivided into biologically distinct taxa called "races," and that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism, racial inferiority, or racial superiority. Before the mid-20th century, scientific racism was accepted throughout the scientific community, but it is no longer considered scientific. The division of humankind into biologically separate groups, along with the assignment of particular physical and mental characteristics to these groups through constructing and applying corresponding explanatory models, is referred to as racialism, race realism, or race science by those who support these ideas. Modern scientific consensus rejects this view as being irreconcilable with modern genetic research.
Whiteness studies is the study of the structures that produce white privilege, the examination of what whiteness is when analyzed as a race, a culture, and a source of systemic racism, and the exploration of other social phenomena generated by the societal compositions, perceptions and group behaviors of white people. It is an interdisciplinary arena of inquiry that has developed beginning in the United States from white trash studies and critical race studies, particularly since the late 20th century. It is focused on what proponents describe as the cultural, historical and sociological aspects of people identified as white, and the social construction of "whiteness" as an ideology tied to social status.
The Nordic race was a racial concept which originated in 19th-century anthropology. It was considered a race or one of the putative sub-races into which some late-19th to mid-20th century anthropologists divided the Caucasian race, claiming that its ancestral homelands were Northwestern and Northern Europe, particularly to populations such as Anglo-Saxons, Germanic peoples, Balts, Baltic Finns, Northern French, and certain Celts and Slavs. The supposed physical traits of the Nordics included light eyes, light skin, tall stature, and dolichocephalic skull; their psychological traits were deemed to be truthfulness, equitability, a competitive spirit, naivete, reservedness, and individualism. In the early 20th century, the belief that the Nordic race constituted the superior branch of the Caucasian race gave rise to the ideology of Nordicism.
Nordicism is an ideology which views the historical race concept of the "Nordic race" as an endangered and superior racial group. Some notable and seminal Nordicist works include Madison Grant's book The Passing of the Great Race (1916); Arthur de Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1853); the various writings of Lothrop Stoddard; Houston Stewart Chamberlain's The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899); and, to a lesser extent, William Z. Ripley’s The Races of Europe (1899). The ideology became popular in the late-19th and 20th centuries in Germanic-speaking Europe, Northwestern Europe, Central Europe, and Northern Europe, as well as in North America and Australia.
The Alpine race is an historical race concept defined by some late 19th-century and early 20th-century anthropologists as one of the sub-races of the Caucasian race. The origin of the Alpine race was variously identified. Ripley argued that it migrated from Central Asia during the Neolithic revolution, splitting the Nordic and Mediterranean populations. It was also identified as descending from the Celts residing in Central Europe in Neolithic times. The Alpine race is supposedly distinguished by its moderate stature, neotenous features, and cranial measurements, such as high cephalic index.
Identifying human races in terms of skin colour, at least as one among several physiological characteristics, has been common since antiquity. Such divisions appeared in rabbinical literature and in early modern scholarship, usually dividing humankind into four or five categories, with colour-based labels: red, yellow, black, white, and sometimes brown. It was long recognized that the number of categories is arbitrary and subjective, and different ethnic groups were placed in different categories at different points in time. François Bernier (1684) doubted the validity of using skin color as a racial characteristic, and Charles Darwin (1871) emphasized the gradual differences between categories. Today there is broad agreement among scientists that typological conceptions of race have no scientific basis.
Social interpretations of race regard the common categorizations of people into different races. Race is often culturally understood to be rigid categories in which people can be classified based on biological markers or physical traits such as skin colour or facial features. This rigid definition of race is no longer accepted by scientific communities. Instead, the concept of 'race' is viewed as a social construct. This means, in simple terms, that it is a human invention and not a biological fact. The concept of 'race' has developed over time in order to accommodate different societies' needs of organising themselves as separate from the 'other'. The 'other' was usually viewed as inferior and, as such, was assigned worse qualities. Our current idea of race was developed primarily during the Enlightenment, in which scientists attempted to define racial boundaries, but their cultural biases ultimately impacted their findings and reproduced the prejudices that still exist in our society today.
The Passing of the Great Race: Or, The Racial Basis of European History is a 1916 racist and pseudoscientific book by American lawyer, self-styled anthropologist, and proponent of eugenics Madison Grant (1865–1937). Grant expounds a theory of Nordic superiority, claiming that the "Nordic race" is inherently superior to other human "races". The theory and the book were praised by Adolf Hitler and other Nazis.
Multiracial Americans or mixed-race Americans are Americans who have mixed ancestry of two or more races. The term may also include Americans of mixed-race ancestry who self-identify with just one group culturally and socially. In the 2020 United States census, 33.8 million individuals or 10.2% of the population, self-identified as multiracial. There is evidence that an accounting by genetic ancestry would produce a higher number.
Blanqueamiento in Spanish, or branqueamento in Portuguese, is a social, political, and economic practice used in many post-colonial countries in the Americas and Oceania to "improve the race" towards a supposed ideal of whiteness. The term blanqueamiento is rooted in Latin America and is used more or less synonymously with racial whitening. However, blanqueamiento can be considered in both the symbolic and biological sense. Symbolically, blanqueamiento represents an ideology that emerged from legacies of European colonialism, described by Anibal Quijano's theory of coloniality of power, which caters to white dominance in social hierarchies. Biologically, blanqueamiento is the process of whitening by marrying a lighter-skinned individual to produce lighter-skinned offspring.
Racism has been present in Brazil since its colonial period and is pointed as one of the major and most widespread types of discrimination, if not the most, in the country by several anthropologists, sociologists, jurists, historians and others. The myth of a Racial Democracy, a term originally coined by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre in his 1933 work Casa-Grande & Senzala, is used by many people in the country to deny or downplay the existence and/or the broad extension of racism in Brazil.
