As they built American society, leaders among Americans of European descent fabricated the cultural/behavioral traits associated with each « race » and associated traits superior to Europeans and negative and inferior traits to blacks and Native Americans. Many arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about different peoples have been institutionalized and deeply rooted in American thought. Race serves as a justification for people`s behavior. Americans used race to generalize people and categorize them into different groups that represented the power they had over those people. Historical research has shown that the idea of « race » has always had more meanings than mere physical differences; In fact, physical variations in the human species have no meaning other than the social variations that humans impose on them. Today, scholars argue in many fields that « race, » as understood in the United States of America, was a social mechanism invented in the 18th century to refer to the populations gathered in colonial America: English and European settlers, conquered Native American peoples, and the peoples of Africa who were used to provide slave labor. This issue of Open Anthropology features a selection of articles on the themes of race, racism and protest. We open up the recent work of scholars who apply anthropology to contemporary protests, examine the fundamental but often discrete contributions of anthropologists of color, and present articles that challenge anthropology to be more self-critical. The articles show that even if anthropology`s reflections on race and racism are still too modest, a strong public anthropology is still possible. RACE Are we so different? look at the race in the United States through the eyes of history, science and lived experience. The program explains how human variation differs from race, when and why the idea of race was invented, and how race and racism affect everyday life. To promote a broad understanding of race and human variation, the American Anthropological Association conducted the RACE project.

The RACE project still has an award-winning public education program called RACE Are We So Different? The program includes a travelling exhibition at the museum, an interactive website and educational materials. The program is aimed at children from middle school age to adults. The following statement was adopted by the Board of Directors of the American Anthropological Association, which responded to a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. It does not reflect a consensus of all AAA members, as individuals are different in their approaches to the study of « race. » We believe that it generally represents contemporary thought and the scientific positions of a majority of anthropologists. It is a basic principle of anthropological knowledge that all normal people have the ability to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different linguistic and cultural backgrounds who have acquired a version of American cultural characteristics and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. In addition, people of all physical variations have learned and continue to learn different cultural behaviors as modern transportation displaces millions of immigrants around the world. « This book brings together compelling evidence from many disciplines to show that. The biology of the breed is a powerful myth. It is important, engaging, educational and masterful in his story.

– Daryl G. Smith Fluehr-Lobban, Carolyn. 2005. Race and Racism: An Introduction. Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press. Goodman, Alan H., Yolanda T. Moses, and Joseph L. Jones.

2012. Race: Are we so different? Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. See also www.understandingrace.org Harrison, Faye V. 2002. Unravelling the « race » for the 21st century. In Exotic no more: anthropology on the front lines, edited by Jeremey MacClancy, pp. 145-166. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hartigan, John. 2010. Rasse im 21.

Jahrhundert: ethnographic approaches. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marks, Jonathan. 2003. What it means to be a 98% chimpanzee: monkeys, humans and their genes. Berkeley: University of California Press. (In particular Chap. 3) McClaurin, Irma, ed.

2001. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Mukhopadhyay, Carol C., Rosemary Henze and Yolanda T. Moses. 2007. What is the reality of the breed? Ein Quellenbuch über Rasse, Kultur und Biologie. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Education. Mullings, Leith.

2005. Questioning Racism: Towards an Anti-Racist Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 667-693. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 2014. Racial Education in the United States. 3rd edition New York: Routledge. Venkatesan, Soumhya (Eds.). 2019.

Violence and injury are at the heart of racism: the 2017 debate of the Group for Debates in Anthropological Theory, Manchester. Kritik der Anthropologie 39(1):12-51. (Open access version at www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/86839477/GDAT2017_Racism_debate_Accepted_version.docx Wade, Peter. 2015. Race: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Illustrated in color with images from the popular US National Public Education Project and the American Anthropological Association`s museum exhibit, RACE: Are We So Different? provides an introduction to the complex science of human variation and the history and lived experiences of race and racism. Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It has never been accurate in the past and it remains inaccurate when it comes to today`s human population. Humans are not biologically divided into different continental types or racial genetic groups. Instead, the Western concept of race must be understood as a classification system that emerged from and in support of European colonialism, oppression and discrimination.

It therefore has its roots not in biological reality, but in the politics of discrimination. For this reason, over the past five centuries, race has become a social reality that structures societies and the way we live the world. In this regard, race is real, as is racism, and both have real biological consequences. Although « race » is not biology, racism affects our biology, especially our health and well-being. Racism is a prejudice against someone because of their race in the context of a belief in the inherent superiority and inferiority of different racial groups reinforced by institutional and historical structures. Interpersonal experiences of racism and structural racism include, but are not limited to, open oppression, physical submission, expropriation or displacement, reduced access to health care, economic and educational discrimination, a history of segregation and material deprivation.