Ras manusia

Ras adalah suatu sistem klasifikasi yang digunakan untuk mengkategorikan manusia dalam populasi atau kelompok besar dan berbeda melalui ciri fenotipik, asal-usul geografis, tampang jasmani dan kesukuan yang terwarisi. Di awal abad ke-20 istilah ini sering digunakan dalam arti biologis untuk menunjuk populasi manusia yang beraneka ragam dari segi genetik dengan anggota yang memiliki fetotip yang sama. Arti "ras" ini masih digunakan dalam antropologi forensik (dalam menganalisa sisa tulang), penelitian biomedis dan kedokteran berdasarkan asal-usul.

Di samping itu, di Amerika Serikat misalnya, penegak hukum menggunakan istilah "ras" dalam menentukan profil tersangka dan penggambaran kembali tampang sisa yang belum diidentifikasi.

Selain itu, karena di banyak masyarakat, pengelompikan berdasarkan "ras" mengikuti pola pelapisan sosial, bagi ilmuwan sosial yang meneliti kesenjangan sosial, "ras" dapat menjadi variabel yang berarti. Sebagai faktor socsologis, kategori "ras" dapat secara terbatas mencerminkan penjelasan yang subyektif, jati diri dan lembaga sosial.

Oleh karena itu, paradigma "ras" yang digunakan dalam berbagai disiplin menekan dengan cara yang beraneka pada sifat biologis atau pada segi konstruksi sosial.

Walau para biologis kadang-kadang menggunakan paham "ras" untuk membuat pembedaan antara kumpulna ciri-ciri yang rancu, ilmiawan lain mengajukan wawasan bahwa paham "ras" sering digunakan secara naif atau terlalu sederhana. Untuk manusia, "ras" tidak memiliki arti taxonomis : semua manusia adalah anggota dari subspesies hominid yang sama yaitu Homo sapiens sapiens. Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits.

When people define and put about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations. While race is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real, material effects in housing discrimination, in the legal process, in policing practices, in education, etc. Omi and Winant’s theories of racial formation describe how “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies.” The meanings and implications of “race” are produced and invested in by social institutions as well as through cultural representations. Since Omi and Winant, scholars have elaborated and revised the implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. Angela Davis, Ruth Gilmore, and Imani Perry have traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language and their effects on the policing and disproportionate incarceration of people of color.

Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby the individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide. Scholars continue to debate the degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed, as well as the extent to which the realities of race must be acknowledged in order for society to comprehend and address racism adequately.

Lihat pula

• Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza
• Jared Diamond
• Stephen Oppenheimer

Pranala luar

• (Inggris) US Human Genome Project on "Issues of Race"
• (Inggris) Is Race "Real"? - forum organized by the Social Science Research Council, includes a March 2005 op-ed article by A.M. Leroi from the New York Times advocating biological conceptiosn of race and responses from scholars in a variety of fields.
• (Inggris) Steven and Hilary Rose, The Guardian, "Why we should give up on race", 9 April 2005
• (Inggris) Times Online, "Gene tests prove that we are all the same under the skin", 27 October 2004.
• (Inggris) Catchpenny mysteries of ancient Egypt, "What race were the ancient Egyptians?", Larry Orcutt.
• (Inggris) Judy Skatssoon, "New twist on out-of-Africa theory", ABC Science Online, Wednesday, 14 July 2004.
• (Inggris) Michael J. Bamshad, Steve E. Olson "Does Race Exist?", Scientific American, December 2003
• (Inggris) OMB Statistical Directive 15, "Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity", Federal Register, 30 October 1997.
• (Inggris) Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Joanna Mountain, and Barbara A. Koenig, "The Reification of Race in Health Research"
• (Inggris) Michael Root, "The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences"
• (Inggris) Richard Dawkins: Race and creation (extract from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life) - On race, its usage and a theory of how it evolved. (Prospect Magazine October 2004) (see also longer extract here)
• (Inggris) Racial & Ethnic Distribution of ABO Blood Types - bloodbook.com