Race

Race

Race - A term used by the German anthropologist Bloomenbach toward the end of the 17th century to classify humans. Race became a cultural myth as it was used by dominant economic and cultural groups (US slave owners, for example) to further bolster their dominant ideologies. (See Ashley Montesquieu's Man's Most Dangerous Myth: Race.) For descriptive purposes, the idea of race has some merit in medical science, but in limited cases, and certainly no scientific standing to justify conceiving it as anything other than a social construction, not unlike community and national borders. See The Evolution of Racism.