ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to shed light on this subject from an evolutionary perspective. It discusses the current debate between those who argue for the traditional view that races are biological categories and those who adopt the more recent perspective that racial distinctions are social constructions having little to do with biology. The chapter turns to the all-important question of racism. It seems to be a natural tendency for people to sort themselves into groups based on language and cultural differences, and these groups often take dim views of each other. The chapter wants to recapture the original meaning in order to determine who or what is racist, whether racism is the main cause of racial inequality in societies like the United States, and whether racism has declined, persisted, or worsened. It considers ethnicity, the close cousin of race. People's attachments to their own ethnic groups, or those usually defined primarily by culture and language, are worldwide and often very intense.
