ABSTRACT
Race, like gender, can be thought of as a cluster of characteristics that are explained in terms of purported biological difference. Both gender and race, as sets of behavioral expectations rationalized through biology, are hard categories to shake loose from beliefs about the constraints of biology. The inherited traits of race would seem to adhere to one another, as if hair texture, say, were only the visible sign of other, hidden, properties. Racial metaphors range from the invisibly internal to the blatantly external. The racial categories defined by the US Bureau of the Census may be bureaucratically consolidated, but they derive in part from the individual's sense of identity within community and subsequently modify the community's perception of itself. This perception is affected, in turn, by the dominant culture's participation in the naming process. Racial identification, then, rests on multiple factors, including self-definition, external attribution, and political exigency, in different proportions, and resulting in a gaggle of official racial groupings.
