TY - JOUR
T1 - Skin color and race
AU - Jablonski, Nina G.
N1 - Funding Information:
I am grateful to Jennifer Raff and Agustin Fuentes for inviting me to participate in the Presidential Symposium on Race and Genetics held at the 2019 AAPA meeting, and appreciate having been asked to submit an article for the special issue of the AJPA on race. I have benefited over the last 30 years from conversations with numerous bright and insightful people about the relationships between skin color, race, science, and society. These include, in alphabetical order, Koos Bekker, Michael Campbell, George Chaplin, Paul Ehrlich, Bert Ely, Zimitri Erasmus, Lynn Fellman, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Joseph Graves, Ronald Hall, Leslea Hlusko, Mircea Iliescu, Fatima Jackson, Rick Kittles, Tina Lasisi, Sindiwe Magona, Gerhard Maré, Laurie Mulvey, Njabulo Ndebele, Heather Norton, Brandon Ogbunu, Barney Pityana, Ellen Quillen, Sam Richards, Mark Shriver, Anna Swiatoniowski, Crain Soudien, Sarah Tishkoff, Jen Wagner, and Ward Watt. I am also grateful to two anonymous reviewers, whose constructive comments informed the final version of this article. This article would not have been possible without the inspired and conscientious support of Tess Wilson, who assisted me in locating library resources and maintained my bibliographic library and the decades of stimulating discussions with George Chaplin on how human variation evolved and what it means.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author. American Journal of Physical Anthropology published by Wiley Periodicals LLC.
PY - 2021/6
Y1 - 2021/6
N2 - Skin color is the primary physical criterion by which people have been classified into groups in the Western scientific tradition. From the earliest classifications of Linnaeus, skin color labels were not neutral descriptors, but connoted meanings that influenced the perceptions of described groups. In this article, the history of the use of skin color is reviewed to show how the imprint of history in connection with a single trait influenced subsequent thinking about human diversity. Skin color was the keystone trait to which other physical, behavioral, and culture characteristics were linked. To most naturalists and philosophers of the European Enlightenment, skin color was influenced by the external environment and expressed an inner state of being. It was both the effect and the cause. Early investigations of skin color and human diversity focused on understanding the central polarity between “white” Europeans and nonwhite others, with most attention devoted to explaining the origin and meaning of the blackness of Africans. Consistently negative associations with black and darkness influenced philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant to consider Africans as less than fully human and lacking in personal agency. Hume and Kant's views on skin color, the integrity of separate races, and the lower status of Africans provided support to diverse political, economic, and religious constituencies in Europe and the Americas interested in maintaining the transatlantic slave trade and upholding chattel slavery. The mental constructs and stereotypes of color-based races remained, more strongly in some places than others, after the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. The concept of color-based hierarchies of people arranged from the superior light-colored people to inferior dark-colored ones hardened during the late seventeenth century and have been reinforced by diverse forces ever since. These ideas manifest themselves as racism, colorism, and in the development of implicit bias. Current knowledge of the evolution of skin color and of the historical development of color-based race concepts should inform all levels of formal and informal education. Awareness of the influence of color memes and race ideation in general on human behavior and the conduct of science is important.
AB - Skin color is the primary physical criterion by which people have been classified into groups in the Western scientific tradition. From the earliest classifications of Linnaeus, skin color labels were not neutral descriptors, but connoted meanings that influenced the perceptions of described groups. In this article, the history of the use of skin color is reviewed to show how the imprint of history in connection with a single trait influenced subsequent thinking about human diversity. Skin color was the keystone trait to which other physical, behavioral, and culture characteristics were linked. To most naturalists and philosophers of the European Enlightenment, skin color was influenced by the external environment and expressed an inner state of being. It was both the effect and the cause. Early investigations of skin color and human diversity focused on understanding the central polarity between “white” Europeans and nonwhite others, with most attention devoted to explaining the origin and meaning of the blackness of Africans. Consistently negative associations with black and darkness influenced philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant to consider Africans as less than fully human and lacking in personal agency. Hume and Kant's views on skin color, the integrity of separate races, and the lower status of Africans provided support to diverse political, economic, and religious constituencies in Europe and the Americas interested in maintaining the transatlantic slave trade and upholding chattel slavery. The mental constructs and stereotypes of color-based races remained, more strongly in some places than others, after the abolition of the slave trade and of slavery. The concept of color-based hierarchies of people arranged from the superior light-colored people to inferior dark-colored ones hardened during the late seventeenth century and have been reinforced by diverse forces ever since. These ideas manifest themselves as racism, colorism, and in the development of implicit bias. Current knowledge of the evolution of skin color and of the historical development of color-based race concepts should inform all levels of formal and informal education. Awareness of the influence of color memes and race ideation in general on human behavior and the conduct of science is important.
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U2 - 10.1002/ajpa.24200
DO - 10.1002/ajpa.24200
M3 - Article
C2 - 33372701
AN - SCOPUS:85098135193
SN - 0002-9483
VL - 175
SP - 437
EP - 447
JO - American Journal of Physical Anthropology
JF - American Journal of Physical Anthropology
IS - 2
ER -