What Is Race?
To this day, we still do not have a good definition of race. Some textbooks say, “a set
of obvious physical traits singled out by members of a community or society as socially
significant.” Others say “a set of social relationships that allows attributes or com-
petencies to be assigned on the basis of biologically grounded features.” But what’s
“obvious,” and what features are “biologically grounded”? Head shape? Eye color?
Earwax? There are only two major types of earwax, and according to the experts who
study such things, about 90 percent of Asians and Native Americans but less than
20 percent of other racial groups have the type known as gray-grainy. No other
“biologically grounded feature” appears nearly as often, although no one has ever
suggested that earwax is an indicator of cultural superiority!
What about skin color? In the United States we assign
people to “white,” “black,” and “yellow” categories, but in
Central and South America, there are a dozen or more shades
(in Brazil, over 40), and we can perceive thousands of color gra-
dients. Even within a single individual, skin color can change
daily, darkening or lightening due to such factors as diet, expo-
sure to the sun, or age. Trying to pinpoint a race based on skin
color is absurd.
This is why sociologists have come to understand that race
as a biological distinction has no basis in any empirical fact.
To sociologists, race is more of a social construction than a
biological fact.
Most cultures divide people into good and bad types on the
basis of their cultural traits, usually “us,” the real people, against
“them,” the cannibals (who eat the wrong food), barbarians
(who speak the wrong language), or infidels (who worship the
wrong God). But physical appearance rarely enters the equation.
Historically, the word racemeant the same thing as culture:
the French “race” lived in France and spoke French, and the
Russian “race” lived in Russia and spoke Russian.
Not until the eighteenth century did physical attributes become determining
factors in “race.” In the United States, debates about the morality of “Negro slav-
ery” indicated a concern for skin color that was more important than the very dif-
ferent cultures from which those Negro slaves came. By the nineteenth century, “race
DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN RACE AND ETHNICITY 245Why Do All the Black Kids Sit
Together in the Cafeteria?Psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum (1997) noticed
black and white kids separating in classes, in clubs,
and in tables in the cafeteria, even when there seemed
to be little bad feeling between the groups, even when
the teachers encouraged them to “not notice” race at
all. In Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?,she argues that this separation is not always a bad thing. White
privilege so pervades our society that the Black kids tend to
grow up with internalized oppression, a negatively stereotyped
“ethnic self.” Even if few of the White people around are actively
trying to be racist, being the “only one” invariably leads to feel-
ings of isolation and lower self-worth. Minorities must find ways
to be in the majority, to be the “norm” some of the time, in order
to establish and affirm a positive identity. So they seek each
other out in the classroom and the cafeteria.Sociologyand ourWorld
Differences within racial cate-
gories are often greater than
differences between them—
even among beauty queens.n