Race has historically been used to group people by physical characteristics, but it originated as a concept in 17th-18th century Europe to justify racist beliefs. There is no scientific basis for race; people of the same race can be more genetically different than people of different races. Race is a social construct used to classify people based on cultural ideas rather than biology. Ethnicity refers to shared cultural characteristics rather than physical traits, and nationality describes one's citizenship within a nation-state.

1. Race and Ethnicity

2. Race vs. Ethnicity
• The terms race and ethnicity are often
used interchangeably…however, they
refer to different things.

3. Race
• Race has historically been a way of
grouping people by their physical
characteristics.

4. Human Variation

5. Origins of Race in the West
• Thinking about race originates largely in
Europe during the 17th and 18th
Century.

6. Archaic Racial Terms
• Caucasoid (Europeans/Middle
Eastern/South Asians)
• Mongoloid (Central/East Asian and
American Indian)
• Negroid (Indigenous Africans)
• Aboriginal (Indigenous Australians)

8. Race and Racism
• There was never a time when the idea
of race, as formulated in 17th and 18th
Century Europe, wasn’t racist.

11. Challenges to Race as
Biology
• No trait or gene is found in only one
racial group.
• The amount of genetic difference
between various “racial groups” is very
small…and people may find that the
person they are most genetically similar
to looks very different from them.

12. Race: a folk taxonomy
• Race is a folk taxonomy, a system of
classification based, not on science, but
cultural ideas.

13. Race: Cross-Culturally
• Racialization: the assignment of racial
labels to individuals and groups differs
across cultures.
• The same person may be racialized
differently in different parts of the world.

14. Ethnicity
• Ethnicity refers to shared social, cultural
and linguistic characteristics as well as
a collective sense of identity.
• A given ethnic group may or may not
share a common set of physical
features.

15. Nationality
• Nationality refers to one’s citizenship (or
membership) within a particular
country/nation-state.
• Within a given nation-state there can be
numerous distinct ethnic groups who
may or may not identify with the nation-state.

16. Race/Ethnicity/Nationality
• All of these terms are shifting and there
is considerable variation in self-identification.

17. Ethnicity vs. Race
• Race: shared physical characteristics
• Ethnicity: shared cultural characteristics
• Nationality: alignment with a particular
nation-state.

18. Racism
• Individual vs. Structural

19. Structural Racism
• Structural or Institutional Racism refers
to legal, institutional or cultural practices
that encourage or advantage certain
“racial” groups over others.