The Idea of Race

A ahort snippet from my textbook, due to be released in December.

Race is a manufactured concept. Biologically, there is only one human “race,” the species homo sapiens to which all people belong. The idea of race as a biological distinction emerged in the 1700s, most notably with Carl Linnaeus who established much of the taxonomy of organisms in use today. He divided homo sapiens into four varieties: Europeanus, Americanus, Asiaticus, and Africanus. Some people took the taxonomy one step further, claiming that there were multiple species of human beings…