ABSTRACT
Most people in the United States understand race to refer to biological difference, the way sex is understood to refer to biological difference. People who share certain phenotypic characteristics such as skin color, shape of eyes, nose, and mouth, body type, and hair texture, for example, are said to belong to particular racial groups. In the United States and throughout the world, Winant (2001) argues, racial groups mark social and political difference as well. The categories themselves are increasingly contested, since millions of people do not fit neatly within one of this country’s four or five major groups. These groups have been designated by the U.S. Census and other government agencies as African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Caucasians or European Americans, and Latinos/Latinas (although the latter is, for some purposes, recognized as a nonracial category, overlapping with other groups). The corresponding colors-black, yellow, red, white, and brown-have at different times been used as epithets, simple descriptors, or appropriated by members of racial minority groups as proud selfdesignations. Furthermore, the majority of people that do identify with one of the racial groups often do not share phenotypic characteristics supposedly common to the group. Phenotypic characteristics are seen as racial, and each racial group is associated with and signals expectations about ethnicity, class background, and a particular relationship to the dominant culture.
