American Anthropological Association (the AAA) is the the foremost professional association of Anthropologists in the USA with over 5,000 members.\u00a0
Assignment:
Read the AAA Statement on Race (Read online below or\u00a0Download as a PDF HERE).\u00a0
Post your 75 word reply to the following discussion questions:Why do you think the AAA felt the need to publicize a statement on race? Think of the\u00a0discussion in the “Invention of Race” as you reply to this question. Why do you think it took until 1998 for the American Anthropological Association to publish a statement on race?
This statement is over 20 years old now. Do you think that this statement needs to be updated? Have our ways of thinking about race changed since this statement was published? Have new concerns arisen around race since this statement was published? Is there anything you would delete from or add to this statement? <\/p>\n
American Anthropological Association Statement on “Race” (May 17, 1998)In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to
viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on
visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this
century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous,
clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics
(e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial
groups. Conventional geographic “racial” groupings differ from one another only in about
6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within “racial” groups than
between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their
phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have
come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has
maintained all of humankind as a single species.
Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over
geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another,
knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. For example, skin
color varies largely from light in the temperate areas in the north to dark in the tropical
areas in the south. These facts make attempts to establish lines of division among
biological populations arbitrary and subjective.
Historical research has shown that physical variations in the human species have no
meaning except the social ones that humans put on them. Today scholars in many fields
argue that “race” as it is understood in the United States of America was a social
mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought
together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered
Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labor.
From its inception, this modern concept of “race” was modeled after an ancient theorem
of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established
by God or nature. Thus “race” was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples
in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to
rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples.
Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used “race” to justify the
retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans,
and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored
and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that
the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-
Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences.
As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the
cultural\/behavioral characteristics associated with each “race,” linking superior traits with
Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous fictitious
beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized in American thought. Early in\u00a0
the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness
about human differences. Differences among the “racial” categories were projected to
their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and
Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer to apes. In the
latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to
justify social, economic, and political inequalities among people.
“Race” thus evolved as a worldview of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human
differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the
human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into “racial”
categories. The myths linked behavior and physical features together in the public mind.
Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human abilities or behavior.
How people have been accepted and treated within the context of a given society or
culture has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The “racial” worldview
was invented to assign some groups to perpetual low status, while others were permitted
access to privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States has been that the
policies and practices stemming from this worldview succeeded all too well in
constructing unequal populations among Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of
African descent. Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve
and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day inequalities between so called
“racial” groups are not consequences of their biological inheritance but products of\u00a0
historical and contemporary social, economic, educational, and political circumstances. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
American Anthropological Association (the AAA) is the the foremost professional association of Anthropologists in the USA with over 5,000 members.\u00a0 Assignment: Read the AAA Statement on Race (Read online below or\u00a0Download as a PDF HERE).\u00a0 Post your 75 word reply to the following discussion questions:Why do you think the AAA felt the need to publicize […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-11701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-research-paper-writing","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11701\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/papersspot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}