R

race. A word introduced into English in the sixteenth century, and initially used to designate a category of persons whose similar characteristics could be attributed to common descent. From about 1800, largely because of the influence of the French comparative anatomist Cuvier, the word was increasingly used to designate a permanent zoological type and often equated with a species. In The Origin of Species, 1859, Charles Darwin demonstrated that there were no permanent types in nature; he recognized ‘geographical races or sub-species’ as ‘local forms completely fixed and isolated’, but it was only with the establishment of population genetics that the underlying mechanisms were revealed. If the word race is used in modern biology it designates a subspecies, a local form which is an adaptation to a particular environment produced by natural selection. All these three uses of the word can still be noticed, but in very recent times a fourth has appeared. Legislation is enacted against discrimination on grounds of a person’s racial group; official forms, as in connection with a census, may record a person’s race. Unlike the previous uses of the word this one does not convey any explanation of the causes of physical variation. In sociology the use of ‘race’ entails many difficulties since the popular understanding of race often echoes the pre-Darwinian sense of race as type and is incompatible with an approach from population genetics. In general, beliefs about race are used by relatively powerful groups to exclude or demarcate others, whereas ethnic groups are based upon voluntary identification. See M. Banton and J. Harwood, The Race Concept, 1975.