The Origin of the Term “Race”; Is Race an Empirical Fact or Just a Concept?
It is not surprising that people use race to legitimize their bad and discriminatory behavior against someone as if it were the right thing to do. However, racism itself is “fabricated” and has nothing to do with empirical facts.
So Exactly, Where Did The Term “Race” Come From?
According to the Encyclopedia of Britannica, the term “race” itself was a new term in the western world in the 17th century. The term was used to categorize humans and was often used in literature at Shakespeare’s time, such as using the terms “race of saints” or “a race of bishops.” In the 18th century, the term race was used massively in territories of the British colonies to sort and rank the people there. For example, Europeans saw themselves as free people, Amerindians as conquered people, and Africans brought in as slaves.
Britain has a long history of separating itself from others and treating “outsiders,” like the Irish, for example, as aliens.
The idea or concept of “race” is built (constructed) by certain parties and does not have biological facts, especially at the genetic level. Therefore, this concept of race can also be seen as an ideology or worldview.
Yes. It is an idea that certain people started. It’s a concept.
Differences Between Ethnicity and Race
Ethnicity is often misunderstood as race. Ethnicity refers to specific groups of people who share a common tradition, language, or dialect. However, even the conceptual boundaries do not have clear lines due to a large number of migrations and assimilations from year to year.
While race is more related to phenotype (physical characteristics such as hair, skin color, face shape, and so on), in the current era, it isn’t easy to categorize humans based on the two things above.
For example, many X people have light skin. However, due to migration and assimilation, many X people also have dark skin. They both have the same ethnicity, namely as X people.
But in the concept of “race,” the two are different because of their physical characteristics.
Racism Definition
Taking from Oxford Languages, racism has two definitions:
1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism aimed at a person or persons based on their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, usually a minority or marginalized group.
2. the belief that different races have different characteristics, abilities, or qualities, especially to distinguish them as inferior or superior to one another.
Of the two definitions, both are attitudes or prejudices and discriminatory behavior, even though both perspectives have no scientific basis.
However, why did humans develop this attitude?
Tribalistic Brain
Humans over the centuries developed tribalistic behavior based on patterns of cognition, where humans tend to consider the occurrence of adverse events to something unknown. This pattern of cognition is undoubtedly irrational. Still, it is advantageous when applied to an unknown nature or region (as a form of survival against possible threats).
However, if applied to society, it has absolutely no advantage. It is even counterproductive to human resilience because this can be further developed by discriminating and even killing (as has happened in German history).
Notes: For this topic, “Tribalistic Brain,” I will write a whole new article about it on how human develop such tribalistic behavior, from where and when do human come up with tribalistic tendencies, etc.
