Mauricio José de Souza Neto

Professor Eithne Luibheid

Race: from unity to diversity and diversity within unity

When addressing racial formation, Omi and Winant (1994, p.138) delineates a concept of race as “a

phenomenon whose meaning is contested throughout social life. In this account race is both a

constituent of the individual psyche and of relationships among individuals, and an irreducible

component of collective identities and social structures”. But it has not always been like that.

The Oxford online dictionary defines race as “each of the major divisions of humankind, having

distinct physical characteristics” and “a group or set of people or things with a common feature or

features”. These definitions help demonstrate that ‘race’ derives from the Italian razza (Spitza 1948;

Cortelazzo&Zolli 1985; Boulle 2003), which was used to refer to a “set of individuals of an animal or

vegetable species that differ from other groups of the same species for one or more permanent and

transmissible characters to descendants” (Cortelazzo&Zolli 1985, p. 1037)1. Razza, however, has a

very interesting origin. According to the same authors it comes from the Latin generatio (generation),

which has in it one of the forms of genus (birth, origin, kind). Perhaps that may loosely explain the

conflict between the biological and the sociological concepts that ‘race’ entails.

The word ‘race’ had been used in the Middle Ages referring to the French king and his ascendants to

justify his privileges and right to rule as a monarch. The king was descended from the Capetians, who

were deemed to be the third race of kings, following by Merovingians and the Carolingians. The term

1 My translation
was later used to make a distinction between the old noble families from the new one, explained by

the noblesse de race (p. 12).

Although it is possible to say that these definitions of race were led by, mutatis mutandis, biological

ideas, there was no denotation of color as an attribute or feature of race until then. It had to do with

animals, breeding and, when referring to humans, blood(lines).

It is possible to say that the term ‘race’ as it is understood nowadays had its epigenesis with the work

of François Bernier, “Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui lhabitent” (A New

Division of the Earth, According to the Different Species or Races of Men Who Inhabit it), published

in 1684. Bernier divided the Earth in four races of humans. The first one was the European, North

African, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American race; the second one was the East Asian,

Southeast Asian, and Central Asian race; the third one was the Sub-Saharan African race; and the

fourth one was the Lapp race. I will not examine or cast criticism over his work, but I must reckon

that his New Division of the Earth was also a new concept of race; one very similar to the one that is,

to some extent, used nowadays: focused on fixed physical features, such as “the distinction made

between inherent skin pigmentation and that which results from exposure to the elements” (Boulle,

op cit p. 15).

Although still using phenotypical traits to establish a difference, his addressing to human beings, I

daresay, may have opened the path to the anthropological discourse from the eighteenth century,

which was notably based on color.

One may say that scholars have based their works on different grounds. Glick, Schiller et al (1992)

remind us that “until recently race and nation often were used interchangeably, as in the construction

“the British race”, in order to make clear that race is no more a product of genetics[…]” (17). Such

reminder is necessary, but it fails to address that it is only true to a certain degree, as Lopez (2002)
does. Race is also a product of genetics, especially if one considers the researches made on

biomedicine, for example.

That also reminds us that the study of race is not a path for the Social Studies alone. Race has different

meanings inside and outside various fields of research. Again, in other areas, in works of Garcia (2001),

Kukathas (2008) and Murji (2015) it is possible to see that ‘race’ is in constant change in the fields

reported. In the essays presented in Murji (2015) it is read that ‘race’ has different meanings, therefore

implications for both biomedicine research and clinical care. On American Cultural Studies, Ferguson

(2014) advocates that “the study of race incorporates a set of wide-ranging analyses of freedom and

power”, and it is “more than a way of identifying and organizing political coalitions against forms of

state repression and capitalist exploitation; it is also a category that sets the terms of belonging and

exclusion with modern institutions”. His study brings light to how fragile the social concept of race

may be. Race is understood as a unity and the intersections engendered in this category are hardly

taken into consideration. An European middle-class man does not share the same status of an

European middle-class woman, nor does an American black woman with a Caribbean black woman

(Susan E. et al 1991). In the same sense feminist activists such as Angela Davies (1997), when

addressing race, also tackled and insisted on denouncing the patriarchal ideals within the

manifestations of power in society; which would affect the very construction of race. And the non-

straight (Queer, LGBTQI etc.) people of color’s critical cultural and political practices have inherited

the “women of color feminism’s critical assessment of liberation and emancipation” (Fergurson 2014).

In this sense of diversity, even within unity, some scholars formulate a difference between race and

ethnicity. In America some studies use both terms as synonyms, while others prefer to establish a

difference. Ergin (2017) somewhat agrees with the racial formation ideas. She bases her idea on Cornell

and Hardmann (2007) and believes that “races are constructed categories, too, although more likely
associated with perceptions of physical difference” (p. 23). Nagel (2017), in the same book, states that

“ethnicity is constructed out of the material of language, religion, culture, appearance, ancestry, or

regionalities” (p. 5).

It seems ethnicity encompasses the ideas of nation, people and race itself. It may refer to a group of

people with physical and cultural traits whose members self-identify with the group, which means they

feel they belong to the group. So, identity and culture are key to understanding this concept. Race,

however, is another semantic operator. It is a process of grouping people out of a collection of

perceived group characteristics. Despite all processes of empowerment and opportunities of self-

identification, it appears that race, in the society, is more how ‘people see you’ rather than ‘how you

see yourself’. Even though, it is not that simple.

If color is one characteristic of the group, how to categorize a person with dark skin and thin eyes

from Japan? So Japanese and black would be categories of race? Seems to suffice, but in current USA,

to some groups, it is impossible for this person of color to be seen (imagine self-identify) as black,

once this category of race associated to color could only refer to African American. Here the idea of

nation, along with the sense of belongness (from the group perspective), operate as a factor to

distinguish. Issues like that can be seen in the otherwise great works in Dalmage (2004).

In Brazilian Portuguese the terms are so problematic and intertwined that they are used together, étnico-

racial (ethnic-racial). And they may be usually seen in contrast to the idea of color. While ethnicity and

race refers to a collectivity, color refer to the individuality (individuality inside the group). It is not very

different in English, but it is necessary to consider the geo-political-social-historical-cultural

differences.

All the quarrel intrinsic to the language sounds to agree with the words of the first grammarian of the

Portuguese language, Fernão de Oliveira. He believed that people would make the language, not the
opposite ([1542]1988). He was mostly right. He was, nonetheless, unsuccessful for having not

considered that language is also part of the interplay of power. In this perspective, it is necessary to

concur with Fairclough (1992) by seeing language as a social practice. He supposes that language is an

irreducible part of the social life, dialectically connected to other elements of the social life in such a

way that it is impossible to consider language without taking the social life into consideration as well.

Therefore, linguistics usages reflect the social practices and are constituted by them in a dialectical

movement. In other words, the traces of whiteness and manhood, fundamental to assemble the pieces

of the puzzle called patriarchalism are undeletable and unobliviable in the concept of race.

That said, it is possible to say that ‘race’ is an important keyword to analyze, describe and denounce

human behavior. However, it is mandatory to ruminate on its various and diverse meanings. It is

important to note that ‘race’ exists as an epistemic and epistemological operator, capable of not only

providing critical thinking, but also promoting, modus in rebus, scientific and sociological discomfort

necessary to the (re/de)construction of this entry in any field of study. It is not entirely a teleological

entry, it is rather a metatheoretical and metamethodological one that requires other operators (such as

race and gender) to provide an effective path to understanding, considering the different assumptions

of the term in time and in space.

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