How are humans classified into races?

Question

How are humans classified into races?

Answer 1

Race is not biological it is a cultural construction.  So one could not actually classify humans into races.  Unless you were a racist and were attempting to classify people into races so that you could (illogically) prove one race is superior to another.

Answer 2

How? I dont know but the ignorant people manage to do it anyways.

Answer 3

Where I live...White Black Puerto Rican Dominican Mexican Columbain... Even though white and black aren't races, thats what ppl call them...white could be irish german ritish engilsh (at least where i live) black could be anywhere from africa, chad south africa, stuff like that. its not right but thats how it is

Answer 4

Depends of how you are doing the classifications.

Biologically (with variations)  there are five

-Caucasiod (People of European, Middle Eastern and North African ancetry)

- ******* (Peoples originating from the  sub-saharan African continent and surrounding islands

- Mongoliod (People originating from the East Asia)

-Native American - (indegineous peoples of North and South America

- Aborigone (People indegenoius to Australia and surrounding islands)

Though there is such a huge amount of inter-marriage that it is nearly impossible for an individual to fall into only one catagory.

In forensic anthropology there are the three basic, Mongoloid, Cacuasoid, and ******* with variations within those classifications.

Native Americans tend to have Mongoloid traits as well as Caucasoid traits. South Americans (especially Brazilians!) tend to be extremely diverse - even within the immediate family.  

Different social sciences make their classifications in different ways. But in all of them, you cannot confuse race with ethnicity or national identity. The three are not interchangable

Answer 5

The "old" way of classifying is:

Caucasoid (white folk); ******* (black folk); and Mongoloid (Asian folk).

Of course, science has long since dispelled BIOLOGICAL components of race, and focused more upon ethnic (geographical and cultural) patters.  When people live near one another, it does impact genetics.  However, with gene flow due to people moving around, these neat classifications do not hold up.

Race is really a social construct that serves cultural and political purposes.  For instance, I culturally am "black" or African American, although I have one Irish ancestor.  I love and embrace my culture, which differs a bit from Carribean black cultures (for which I also have mad respect).

In time (1,000 years or less), these issues will not matter so much because we will have bigger intellectual fish to fry.

By the way, we all started as MODERN humans in Africa.  check out http://www.nationalgeographic.com/genogr...

Answer 6

Race is usually classified according to biological and physical differences, but only certain aspects of each are used. There is not just one race that a group of people can be classified into. Technically each person could be classified into their own race depending on how many characteristics you use, so I would say that race doesn't really exist it's something we created because people need to find a way to understand differences.

Answer 7

Wondering is spot on. 'race' is a culturally constructed concept with no grounding in biological reality. There is same amount of genetic difference between those classified as 'black African', 'white European' or 'Asian' as there is within these categories, the amount of genetic variation within Africa for instance, is far greater that that between Chinese and European for instance. Differences appear to relate merely to the coding for skin pigmentation and bone structure but what is really represented by these superficial differences is the history of human migration around the planet, the earliest diaspora out of Africa around 135,000 years ago resulted in the differential survival of different genetic lineages that can be identified as 'haplotypes' or similar patterns of  DNA coding. And just to go back to basics for everyone, the change in genetic information within a given population over time is called evolution. No progress is implied, just change through chance (genetic drift) through the differential survival of beneficial traits or mutation ('selection' or adaptation). So change occurred as population moved around the globe. All being human, Homo sapiens sapiens, we are free to make babies with whoever we want and now, with increasingly free migration and union, these indicators of previous history will become meaningless, (I for instance may be 1/4 Irish, 1/8th Spanish, 1/8th Nigerian, 1/8th Iranian, 1/8 Native Ametican, 1/16th Tibetan and 1/16 Thai) What race would you classify me as? Eventually, I would hope, (although there are enough opinionated people out there) the concept of 'race' will become even more laughable and then redundant.

Answer 8

UUUUUMMMMMM TONI, I LOVE BLACK WOMEN, YOUR BEAUTIFUL........

THERE REALLY IS ONLY ONE RACE, THE HUMAN RACE.....

THEY DO CLASSIFY RACES AS TO FEATURES THAT DIFFER FROM RACE TO RACE, BUT I THINK THAT'S JUST NOT RIGHT, I REALLY DON'T THINK THEY RECOGNIZE THAT OLD WAY OF THINKING ANYMORE, IF IT IS THAT'S KINDA DUMB OF SCIENCE.................I THINK THAT WAS AN OLD STANDARD THAT IS OUT OF DATE.

Answer 9

Sounds like Caucasian, Mexican, and Chinese our considered White and African-American, African, Jamaican, Puerto-Rican are considered Black.

Everybody else are just what they are.

Not sure why its like that but thats how they divide skin color among races. Well atl east the federal govt.

Answer 10

Humans are classified into races by:

~thier skin color

~their reiligon

Answer 11

How are humans classified into races? Not very well, and the practice has been more or less abandoned in favor of more flexible population study methods. No one has been seriously been called a caucasoid or ******* by an anthropologist in at least 50 years.

Answer 12

i dont think they should be cause everyone is human black white brown tan no mater what color there still human