Race

Introduction
The many meanings of “race”
“Race” as a mechanism of social division
- North America
- South Africa
The history of the idea of race
- The problem of labor in the New World
- The enslavement and racialization of Africans
- Human rights versus property rights
- Building the myth of Black inferiority
- Immigration and the racial worldview
- Legitimating the racial worldview
  - Enlightenment philosophers and systematists
  - Scientific classifications of race
  - The institutionalizing of race
  - Transforming “race” into “species”
  - The false assumptions of anthropometry
- The decline of “race” in science
  - The influence of Franz Boas
  - Mendelian heredity and the development of blood group systems
- “Race” and intelligence
Hereditarian ideology and European constructions of race
- Hereditary statuses versus the rise of individualism
- The Germanic myth and English constructions of an Anglo-Saxon past
- Gobineau’s Essay on the Inequality of Human Races
- Galton and Spencer: The rise of social Darwinism
“Race” ideologies in Asia, Australia, Africa, and Latin America
- European conquest and the classification of the conquered
- India’s caste system
- Japan’s minority peoples
- Race in Asia
- Latin America
  - The colonial period
  - Postcolonial society
“Race” and the reality of human physical variation
Modern scientific explanations of human biological variation
The scientific debate over “race”

References & Edit History Related Topics

Images & Videos

Overhead view of a diverse group of people standing in a circle, holding each other's hands in a gesture of unity and teamwork.

Antique world map titled Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World by William C. Woodbridge, with shaded regions, labeled continents, and inset tables and legends.

Homo monstrosus

World map using a gradient from dark brown to light beige to show the distribution of skin color variations among indigenous populations prior to European colonization. Darker tones are concentrated near the equator, especially in Africa, southern Asia, northern Australia, and parts of the Americas, while lighter tones appear in northern and higher latitude regions.

What is critical race theory?

At a Glance

Antique world map titled Moral and Political Chart of the Inhabited World by William C. Woodbridge, with shaded regions, labeled continents, and inset tables and legends.

Related Questions

Overhead view of a diverse group of people standing in a circle, holding each other's hands in a gesture of unity and teamwork. — Human variation Skin color is one of the variables that has been used to classify people into different racial categories.

Race

human

Written by

Yasuko I. TakezawaAll

Fact-checked by

Britannica Editors

Last updated

Nov. 7, 2026 •History

Race, the idea that the human species is divided into distinct groups on the basis of inherited physical and behavioral differences. Genetic studies in the late 20th century refuted the existence of biogenetically distinct races, and scholars now argue that “races” are cultural interventions reflecting specific attitudes and beliefs that were imposed on different populations in the wake of western European conquests beginning in the 15th century. The modern meaning of the term race with...

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