Speaker 1: Welcome to BrainStuff, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, BrainStuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here with a classic episode from
Speaker 2: The Vault. In this one, we get into the sticky
Speaker 2: definitions of and differences between race and ethnicity. A note
Speaker 2: here that both are different from nationality, which is an
Speaker 2: indication of the country where a person is a legal citizen. Hey, BrainStuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum here. The concepts of race and ethnicity are
Speaker 1: so intertwined that it's sometimes hard to tell one from
Speaker 1: the other. Even unwound, the ideas are not as well-defined
Speaker 1: as many people would present them to be. The reason
Speaker 1: for that is simple. Yes, humans are a diverse lot.
Speaker 1: We can look distinctively different. We're seen sometimes completely differently
Speaker 1: based on those looks. We come from different places, though
Speaker 1: we all as a species come from modern-day Ethiopia, and
Speaker 1: the groups from which we have grown, our families, our clans,
Speaker 1: our cultures, our nations, all have traveled different paths. A
Speaker 1: wide world of factors have influenced our appearance and our
Speaker 1: ways of life during thousands of years of evolution and migration. Yet,
Speaker 1: all of those amazingly diverse peoples don't exist in a vacuum.
Speaker 1: Across all those millennia and all those miles, we've come
Speaker 1: back together, lots of times and in lots of ways,
Speaker 1: and we continue to do so. Putting us in distinct
Speaker 1: boxes with fixed labels is near impossible. Even the labels
Speaker 1: get jumbled. We spoke with Douglas Hartman, a professor of
Speaker 1: sociology at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the
Speaker 1: book Ethnicity and Race, Making Identities in a Changing World,
Speaker 1: along with sociologist Stephen Cornell. Hartman said, I think there's
Speaker 1: a ton of overlap between the terms ethnicity and race.
Speaker 1: I really think it's difficult to disentangle them and maybe
Speaker 1: even inappropriate because all of these categories have elements of identity, self-assertion, culture,
Speaker 1: and heritage, but they also have elements of labeling, of stigma,
Speaker 1: of differential treatment, of power inequality. Still, maybe because of
Speaker 1: some innate need for order, or something more sinister, we
Speaker 1: continue to define. We identify people as this race or
Speaker 1: that ethnicity. We self-identify, too. And so it is that
Speaker 1: these labels become blurry and, at times, inseparable. The modern
Speaker 1: idea that there are independent races of man can be
Speaker 1: traced to the late 1700s, when German anthropologist Johann Friedrich
Speaker 1: Blumenbach attempted to scientifically classify humans, largely by how they
Speaker 1: looked and where they called home. From a 1994 article
Speaker 1: on Blumenbach in Discover magazine, Blumenbach's final taxonomy of 1795
Speaker 1: divided all humans into five groups, defined both by geography
Speaker 1: and appearance— In his order, the Caucasian variety for the
Speaker 1: light-skinned people of Europe and adjacent parts of Asia and Africa,
Speaker 1: the Mongolian variety for most other inhabitants of Asia, including
Speaker 1: China and Japan, the Ethiopian variety for the dark-skinned people
Speaker 1: of Africa, the American variety for most native populations of
Speaker 1: the New World, and the Malay variety for the Polynesians
Speaker 1: and Melanesians of the Pacific and for the Aborigines of Australia.
Speaker 1: Blumenbach not only used geography and skin color, but notably
Speaker 1: the size and shape of skulls to explore what he
Speaker 1: called the, quote, varieties of mankind. One of his measures, though,
Speaker 1: was unmistakably unscientific. He called Caucasians, named for the people
Speaker 1: of the Caucasus Mountains in Eastern Europe, beautiful. Many Europeans,
Speaker 1: who already believed mistakenly that the first humans came from
Speaker 1: the Caucasus, seized upon Blumenbach's work as scientific proof that
Speaker 1: the light-skinned race, the original race, was biologically and inherently
Speaker 1: superior to others. They did so despite the fact that Blumenbach,
Speaker 1: eons ahead of his time, held that all races and
Speaker 1: peoples were equal and stated that the, quote, many varieties
Speaker 1: of man are at present known to be one and
Speaker 1: the same species. That thinking by Europeans that one race
Speaker 1: is superior to another has led, historically, to some of
Speaker 1: the worst of human behavior, colonization, slavery, apartheid, and genocide.
Speaker 1: It's given rise to forced inequality in many different forms,
Speaker 1: including political, social, and economic. And here's the kicker. The
Speaker 1: high and mighty Europeans were dead wrong. Scientists now overwhelmingly
Speaker 1: agree that humans, biologically and genetically speaking, are all the same.
Speaker 1: Our DNA, the genetic makeup of all human beings who
Speaker 1: live today, is 99.9% alike. In fact, there's more genetic
Speaker 1: variance within any given race than there is among the
Speaker 1: different races. Basically, what that means is because genetic differences
Speaker 1: in humans are so minimal, some scientists simply describe humans
Speaker 1: as belonging to just one race, the human race. Despite
Speaker 1: the scientific shootdown, the term race is still widely used today,
Speaker 1: and a person is still assigned a race according to
Speaker 1: physical characteristics, skin color, the shape of the nose or lips,
Speaker 1: or the type of hair. Now, instead of claiming some
Speaker 1: pseudoscientific basis, though, race is considered a social construct, meaning
Speaker 1: it's something we as societies use to place people conveniently
Speaker 1: into groups. Here's how Hartman and co-author Cornell define race
Speaker 1: in their book. Some of the reasons for the continuing
Speaker 1: use of race as an identifier may be acceptable.
Speaker 2: The U.S.
Speaker 1: Census Bureau, for example, asks people to identify themselves by
Speaker 1: race and currently gives them six choices, including some other
Speaker 1: race which they can fill in. The Bureau also allows
Speaker 1: respondents to say they're of more than one race. The
Speaker 1: Bureau uses that data for purposes such as funding government
Speaker 1: programs aimed at specific groups. Other reasons, though, are definitely
Speaker 1: not acceptable. Racial discrimination is still real all over the globe.
Speaker 1: Though genetically race is not a valid concept, socially it
Speaker 1: is very, very real. In some definitions, it goes well
Speaker 1: beyond physical characteristics, too. Hartman said... There really are cultural
Speaker 1: differences between people who grew up in an African-American community
Speaker 1: versus a white suburban community. It's not genetic, but it's
Speaker 1: a real thing. There are different languages, different patterns of behavior,
Speaker 1: different ways of thinking about the world. Cultural differences suggest
Speaker 1: the other word most often conflated with race, ethnicity, and
Speaker 1: that muddies the terminology waters even more. Cornell and Hartman
Speaker 1: define ethnicity this way, quote, a sense of common ancestry
Speaker 1: based on cultural attachments, past linguistic heritage, religious affiliations, claimed kinship,
Speaker 1: or some physical traits. So the difference between race and
Speaker 1: ethnicity then? Whereas race is mostly defined and determined by
Speaker 1: physical characteristics, ethnicity is considered to be more about a
Speaker 1: person's culture, language, family, and place of origin. Nationalities are
Speaker 1: thrown into the mix too. Examples of ethnicity include being Indian, Jewish,
Speaker 1: or Asian, regardless of race. So a woman born in
Speaker 1: Atlanta to parents from Japan might consider herself as racially Asian,
Speaker 1: but as ethnically Japanese, American, Japanese-American, or even something more
Speaker 1: specific based on exactly where in Japan her parents are from.
Speaker 1: Selected displays like clothing can play a part too. A
Speaker 1: Scottish-American man wearing a plaid or tartan kilt or an
Speaker 1: Indian-American woman wearing a sari are examples of how people
Speaker 1: display their ethnicity through dressing. But the important thing to
Speaker 1: remember here is that both race and ethnicity are socially defined.
Speaker 1: Neither is biologically valid. Cornell and Hartman say that people
Speaker 1: are more likely to self-identify with multiple ethnicities than multiple races,
Speaker 1: though of course some consider themselves to be more than
Speaker 1: one race. It's important to note two other points the
Speaker 1: sociologists make about race and ethnicity. Race, unlike ethnicity, is
Speaker 1: still mostly a term that is assigned by other groups,
Speaker 1: which often leads to one claiming superiority over the other.
Speaker 1: And racial identity is usually considered inherent. In other words,
Speaker 1: you're born as a certain race, and it's generally not
Speaker 1: something you can change just by saying so. Remember Rachel Dolezal?
Speaker 1: That said, all of these are observations, not rules. The rules,
Speaker 1: as we've said, are a tad murky. Hartman said... People
Speaker 1: have this kind of crazy idea about the purity of races.
Speaker 1: There's no way to really isolate a race. And today,
Speaker 1: even more so with intermarriage, with globalization, those categories that
Speaker 1: we often think are so firm. Americans are so convinced
Speaker 1: there's five main races because we've acted like there are
Speaker 1: in our senses and everything else. They get blurred and
Speaker 1: mixed up and they don't make sense anymore. If it's
Speaker 1: logic we're after when discussing the terms of race and ethnicity,
Speaker 1: the last word probably ought to go to someone who's
Speaker 1: an expert at words, say a poet. This is from
Speaker 1: Maya Angelou's piece, Human Family. I note the obvious differences
Speaker 1: between each sort and type, but we are more alike,
Speaker 1: my friends, than we are unalike.
Speaker 2: Today's episode is based on the article Ethnicity vs. Race vs. Nationality,
Speaker 2: an explainer, on HowStuffWorks.com, written by John Donovan. BrainStuff is
Speaker 2: a production of iHeart Podcasts in partnership with HowStuffWorks.com and
Speaker 2: is produced by Tyler Klang. four more shows from iHeart Podcasts.
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