WEBVTT - How Are Ethnicity and Race Different? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.640 Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:10.400 Brainstuff Lauren vog Obam Here. The concepts of race and 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:13.400 ethnicity are so intertwined that it's sometimes hard to tell 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:16.400 one from the other. Even unwound, the ideas are not 0:00:16.440 --> 0:00:18.680 as well defined as many people would present them to be. 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:23.000 The reason for that is simple. Yes, humans are a 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:27.040 diverse lot. We can look distinctively different. We're seen sometimes 0:00:27.040 --> 0:00:30.720 completely differently based on those looks. We come from different places, 0:00:30.720 --> 0:00:33.440 though we all as a species come from modern day Ethiopia, 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.239 and the groups from which we have grown. Our families, 0:00:36.280 --> 0:00:39.960 our clans, our cultures, our nations all have traveled different paths. 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:42.960 A wide world of factors have influenced our appearance and 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:45.360 our ways of life during thousands of years of evolution 0:00:45.440 --> 0:00:50.160 and migration. Yet all of those amazingly diverse people's don't 0:00:50.159 --> 0:00:53.199 exist in a vacuum. Across all those millennia and all 0:00:53.200 --> 0:00:56.120 those miles. We've come back together lots of times and 0:00:56.120 --> 0:00:58.520 in lots of ways, and we continue to do so. 0:00:59.400 --> 0:01:02.800 Putting us in distinct boxes with fixed labels is near impossible. 0:01:03.360 --> 0:01:07.279 Even the labels get jumbled. We spoke with Douglas Hartman, 0:01:07.360 --> 0:01:09.840 a professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota and 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:13.160 co author of the book Ethnicity and Race, Making Identities 0:01:13.160 --> 0:01:17.720 in a Changing World, along with sociologist Stephen Cornell. Hartman said, 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:20.200 I think there's a ton of overlap between the terms 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:23.720 ethnicity and race. I really think it's difficult to disentangle them, 0:01:24.000 --> 0:01:27.440 and maybe even inappropriate, because all of these categories have 0:01:27.560 --> 0:01:32.000 elements of identity, self assertion, culture, and heritage, but they 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:35.240 also have elements of labeling, of stigma, of differential treatment, 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:40.520 of power, inequality. Still, maybe because of some innate need 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.280 for order or something more sinister, we continue to define. 0:01:44.800 --> 0:01:48.040 We identify people as this race or that ethnicity. We 0:01:48.120 --> 0:01:51.800 self identify too, and so it is that these labels 0:01:51.840 --> 0:01:56.640 become blurry and at times inseparable. The modern idea that 0:01:56.640 --> 0:01:58.920 there are independent races of man can be traced to 0:01:58.920 --> 0:02:03.440 the late sevents, when German anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach attempted 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:07.280 to scientifically classify humans, largely by how they looked and 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:11.480 where they called home. From an article on Bluemenbach in 0:02:11.520 --> 0:02:16.600 Discover magazine, Blumenbach's final taxonomy of sevente divided all humans 0:02:16.639 --> 0:02:20.639 into five groups defined both by geography and appearance in 0:02:20.680 --> 0:02:23.680 his order, the Caucasian variety for the light skinned people 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.000 of Europe and adjacent parts of Asian Africa, the Mongolian 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:30.880 variety for most other inhabitants of Asia, including China and Japan, 0:02:31.440 --> 0:02:34.320 the Ethiopian variety for the dark skinned people of Africa, 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:38.200 the American variety for most native populations of the New World, 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.920 and the Melee variety for the Polynesians and Melanesians of 0:02:41.919 --> 0:02:47.320 the Pacific and for the Aborigines of Australia. Blumenbach not 0:02:47.400 --> 0:02:50.720 only used geography and skin color, but notably the size 0:02:50.720 --> 0:02:53.120 and shape of skulls to explore what he called the 0:02:53.240 --> 0:02:56.959 quote varieties of mankind. One of his measures, though, was 0:02:57.040 --> 0:03:01.320 unmistakably unscientific. He called Caucasian, named for the people of 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:06.520 the Caucus Mountains in eastern Europe, beautiful. Many Europeans, who 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:10.160 already believed mistakenly that the first humans came from the Caucus, 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.360 seized upon bloom Inbo's work as scientific proof that the 0:03:13.440 --> 0:03:17.000 light skinned race, the original race, was biologically and inherently 0:03:17.040 --> 0:03:20.120 superior to others. They did so despite the fact that 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:23.639 blumenbach EON's ahead of his time, held that all races 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:26.119 and people's were equal, and stated that the quote many 0:03:26.200 --> 0:03:29.320 varieties of man are at present known to be one 0:03:29.400 --> 0:03:34.240 and the same species that thinking by Europeans that one 0:03:34.320 --> 0:03:37.800 race is superior to another has led historically to some 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:43.160 of the worst of human behavior colonization, slavery, apartheid, and genocide. 0:03:43.640 --> 0:03:46.560 It's given rise to forced inequality in many different forms, 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:51.240 including political, social, and economic. And here's the kicker, the 0:03:51.320 --> 0:03:55.520 High and Mighty Europeans were dead wrong. Scientists now overwhelmingly 0:03:55.520 --> 0:03:59.200 agree that humans, biologically and genetically speaking, are all the 0:03:59.240 --> 0:04:03.360 same our DNA. The genetic makeup of all human beings 0:04:03.360 --> 0:04:06.760 who live today is ninety nine point nine percent alike. 0:04:07.320 --> 0:04:10.360 In fact, there's more genetic variance within any given race 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.520 than there is among the different races. Basically, what that 0:04:14.600 --> 0:04:17.640 means is because genetic differences in humans are so minimal, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:21.520 some scientists simply describe humans as belonging to just one race, 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:26.320 the human race. Despite the scientific shootdown, the term race 0:04:26.400 --> 0:04:29.039 is still widely used today, and a person is still 0:04:29.040 --> 0:04:32.440 assigned a race according to physical characteristics skin color, the 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.120 shape of the nose or lips, or the type of hair. Now, 0:04:36.320 --> 0:04:39.760 instead of claiming some pseudo scientific basis, though race is 0:04:39.760 --> 0:04:43.720 considered a social construct, meaning it's something we as societies 0:04:44.040 --> 0:04:48.520 used to place people conveniently into groups. Here's how Hartman 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.560 and co author Cornell define race in their book quote 0:04:52.760 --> 0:04:55.960 a human group defined by itself or others as distinct 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.799 by virtue of perceived common physical characteristics that are held 0:04:59.839 --> 0:05:03.800 to be inherent. Determining which characteristics constitute the race is 0:05:03.800 --> 0:05:08.440 a choice human beings make. Some of the reasons for 0:05:08.480 --> 0:05:11.960 the continuing use of race as an identifier may be acceptable. 0:05:12.560 --> 0:05:15.600 The US Census Bureau, for example, asks people to identify 0:05:15.640 --> 0:05:19.120 themselves by race, and currently gives them six choices, including 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:22.320 some other race, which they can fill in. The bureau 0:05:22.400 --> 0:05:24.840 also allows respondents to say there of more than one race. 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:28.200 The bureau uses that data for purposes such as funding 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:32.640 government programs aimed at specific groups. Other reasons, though, are 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.800 definitely not acceptable. A racial discrimination is still real all 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:42.280 over the globe. Though genetically race is not a valid concept, socially, 0:05:42.400 --> 0:05:46.120 it is very very real in some definitions. It goes 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:50.880 well beyond physical characteristics too. Hartman said, there really are 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:53.919 cultural differences between people who grew up in an African 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.720 American community versus a white suburban community. It's not genetic, 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.320 but it's a real thing. There are different lane, which is, 0:06:00.360 --> 0:06:03.400 different patterns of behavior, different ways of thinking about the world. 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:09.880 Cultural differences suggest the other word most often conflated with race, ethnicity, 0:06:10.000 --> 0:06:14.200 and that muddies the terminology waters even more. Cornell and 0:06:14.240 --> 0:06:18.200 Heartman defined ethnicity this way, quote a sense of common 0:06:18.240 --> 0:06:22.920 ancestry based on cultural attachments, past linguistic heritage, religious affiliations, 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:28.040 claimed kinship, or some physical traits. So the difference between 0:06:28.160 --> 0:06:31.760 race and ethnicity. Then, whereas race is mostly defined and 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:35.360 determined by physical characteristics, ethnicity is considered to be more 0:06:35.360 --> 0:06:39.120 about a person's culture, language, family, and place of origin. 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:43.640 Nationalities are thrown into the mix too. Examples of ethnicity 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:47.960 include being Indian, Jewish, or Asian regardless of race. So 0:06:48.040 --> 0:06:50.880 a woman born in Atlanta to parents from Japan might 0:06:50.920 --> 0:06:55.000 consider herself as racially Asian, but as ethnically Japanese American, 0:06:55.320 --> 0:06:58.919 Japanese American, or even something more specific based on exactly 0:06:58.960 --> 0:07:02.599 where in Japan her parents are from. Selected displays like 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:05.680 clothing can play a part two. A Scottish American man 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.240 wearing a plaid or tartan kilt or an Indian American 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.080 woman wearing a sorry are examples of how people display 0:07:11.080 --> 0:07:15.280 their ethnicity through dressing. But the important thing to remember 0:07:15.320 --> 0:07:18.440 here is that both race and ethnicity are socially defined, 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.160 neither is biologically valid. Cornell and Hartmann say that people 0:07:23.160 --> 0:07:25.920 are more likely to self identify with multiple ethnicities than 0:07:26.000 --> 0:07:28.800 multiple races, though of course some consider themselves to be 0:07:28.840 --> 0:07:32.160 more than one race. It's important to note to other 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:37.080 points the sociologists make about race and ethnicity. Race, unlike ethnicity, 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:40.200 is still mostly a term that is assigned by other groups, 0:07:40.440 --> 0:07:43.480 which often leads to one claiming superiority over the other, 0:07:44.120 --> 0:07:47.960 and racial identity is usually considered inherent. In other words, 0:07:48.000 --> 0:07:50.160 you're born as a certain race, and it's generally not 0:07:50.280 --> 0:07:53.320 something you can change just by saying so. Remember Rachel 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:57.880 dolisal that said all of these are observations, not rules. 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:02.240 The rules, as we've said, are tad Murky. Hartman said, 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:05.600 people have this kind of crazy idea about the purity 0:08:05.640 --> 0:08:08.360 of races. There's no way to really isolate a race, 0:08:08.800 --> 0:08:12.240 and today even more so with intermarriage, with globalization, those 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.520 categories that we often think are so firm Americans are 0:08:15.560 --> 0:08:18.400 so convinced there's five main races. Because we've acted like 0:08:18.440 --> 0:08:20.920 there are in our senses and everything else, they get 0:08:20.960 --> 0:08:23.160 blurred and mixed up, and they don't make sense anymore. 0:08:24.520 --> 0:08:26.760 If it's logic were after when discussing the terms of 0:08:26.800 --> 0:08:29.520 race and ethnicity, the last word probably ought to go 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:32.600 to someone who's an expert at words, say a poet. 0:08:33.280 --> 0:08:37.960 This is from Maya Angelo's piece Human Family. I note 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:41.120 the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we 0:08:41.160 --> 0:08:48.840 are more alike my friends, than we are unlike. Today's 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.600 episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. 0:08:52.040 --> 0:08:53.960 Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:56.319 Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other topics, 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:58.920 visit our home planet how stuff Works dot com. And 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.240 for podcasts from I heart Radio, visit that i heeart 0:09:01.320 --> 0:09:03.760 radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:09:03.800 --> 0:09:15.599 favorite shows. H