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Historical perspectives on race
Historical perspectives on race

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2.1 What do we mean when we talk about ‘race’ in the past?

We often think of race as a historical or biological fact: that humans have always grouped people into what we term races, and that there is a biological basis to race that is fixed in time and space. But this is not the case. The concept of ‘five races’ only dates from the eighteenth century, when European scientists divided the world’s people into racial categories generally aligned to African, Asian, European, Native American and Australasian. The belief that race is somehow a fixed category underpins a false construction of white superiority. Crucially, recent advances in genetic mapping have uncovered that there are only tiny variations in DNA among humans across the globe [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] .

Race is not a scientific category. Race is a social, political and legal construction. Our understanding of race has changed over time. But definitions of race have great consequence: these definitions continue to shape the experiences of people in the past and the present, and in different geographical, social, economic, political and legal contexts.