Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of scientific racism and has become increasingly seen as an essentially pseudoscientific system of classification.
The idea of “race” began to evolve in the late 17th century, after the beginning of European exploration and colonization, as a folk ideology about human differences associated with the different populations—Europeans, Indigenous Americans, and Africans—brought together in the New World.
Race refers to a person's physical characteristics, such as bone structure and skin, hair, or eye color. Ethnicity, however, refers to cultural factors, including nationality, regional culture, ancestry, and language.
Race is a social construct used to group people. Race was constructed as a hierarchal human-grouping system, generating racial classifications to identify, distinguish and marginalize some groups across nations, regions and the world.
“Race” vs. “Ethnicity”: Why These Terms Are So Complex July 31, 2020 by Alyssa Pereira Historic protests against racial inequality. National debates over offensive names of sports team names and conflicts over the place of Confederate monuments in our culture. Arguments about border walls, language barriers—rising tensions over immigration despite an increasingly diverse populace. In ...