Ras manusia

Ras adalah suatu sistem klasifikasi yang digunakan untuk mengkategorikan manusia dalam populasi atau kelompok besar dan berbeda melalui ciri fenotipe, 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.

Saat orang menentukan dan menggunakan satu paham tertentu untuk "ras", mereka menciptakan suatu kenyataan sosial di mana diterapkan suatu kategorisasi sosial tertentu. Oleh sebab itu "ras" dipandang sebagai konstruk sosial. 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.

Paham modern pertama tentang "ras"

Tiga "ras" besar menurut Meyers Konversationslexikon tahun 1885-90. Subtipe "ras Mongoloid" ditandai dengan warna kuning dan jingga, "ras Kaukasoid" dalam warna keabu-abuan dan "ras Negroid" dalam warna coklat. Orang Dravida dan Sinhala diwarnai hijau zaitun dan klasifikasi mereka dinyatakan sebagai kurang menentu. "Ras Mongoloid" adalah yang terluas penyebarannya, termasuk kedua Amerika, Asia Utara, Asia Timur, Asia Tenggara dan keseluruhan Arktik yang dihuni manusia.

Boleh jadi kelompok manusia dari dulu selalu menentukan diri sendiri sebagai berbeda dari kelompok lain. Namun, perbedaan tersebut belum tentu selalu dipandang sebagai sesuatu yang alami, tak terubahkan dan menyeluruh. Pandang seperti ini merupakan ciri-ciri khas paham "ras" yang digunakan di masa kini.

Pada awalnya, kata "ras" dipakai untuk menunjuk suatu bangsa atau kelompok etnis. Marco Polo misalnya, dalam bukunya yang ditulis di abad ke-13, menguraikan "ras Persia". Paham "ras" masa kini baru muncul di abad ke-17.

Paham Eropa tentang "ras", sejalan dengan sejumlah paham yang sekarang dikaitkan dengan istilah tersebut, muncul pada saat revolusi ilmiah, which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds, and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions. As Europeans encountered people from different parts of the world, they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade, which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves. Drawing on Classical sources and upon their own internal interactions — for example, the hostility between the English and Irish was a powerful influence on early European thinking about the differences between people — Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual, behavioral, and moral qualities. Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, for example in China, where a concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor, and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world.

The first post-Classical published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier's Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by the different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. In the 18th century, the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging the other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1755 classification of Carolus Linnaeus, inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human race Homo Sapiens continental varieties of Europaeus, Asiaticus, Americanus and Afer, each associated with a different humour: sanguine, melancholic, choleric and bilious respectively. Homo Sapiens Europeaus was described as active, acute, and adventurous whereas Homo Sapiens Afer was crafty, lazy and careless.

The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind," by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race, Mongoloid race, Ethiopian race (later termed the Negroid race), American Indian race, and Malayan race, but he did not propose any hierarchy among the races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them".

From the 17th through the 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what one scholar has called an "ideology of race". According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. In the United States the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and embued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites.

In the last two decades of the 18th century polygenism, the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist Charles White, in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster, and in France by Julien Virey and prominently in the US by Samuel Morton, Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the creation of the Anthropological Society of London during the American civil war, in opposition to the Abolitionist Ethnological Society.

Perdebatan kini

Model evolusi manusia

Lihat pula: Multiregional hypothesis dan Recent single origin hypothesis

Dalam suatu artikel di tahun 1995, Leonard Lieberman dan Fatimah Jackson menyatakan bahwa dukungan baru mana pun untuk suatu paham biologis tentang "ras" kemungkinan besar akan datang dari penelitian tentang evolusi manusia. Menurut mereka, pertanyaannya adalah mengenai akibat model evolusi manusia yang ada sekarang atas paham "ras" yang berdasarkan biologi.

Saat ini semua manusia diklasifikasi sebagai anggota dari spesies Homo sapiens dan subspesies Homo sapiens sapiens. Namun manusia bukan spesies homininae pertama. Spesies pertama dari genus Homo adalah Homo habilis, yang diperkirakan muncul di Afrika Timur paling sedikit 2 juta tahun lalu. Anggota dari spesies ini menghuni berbagai bagian Afrika dalam waktu yang agak singkat. Homo erectus is theorized to have evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that Homo sapiens evolved out of African Homo erectus ((sensu lato) or Homo ergaster). Most anthropologists believe that Homo sapiens evolved in East Africa and then migrated out of Africa, replacing H. erectus populations throughout Europe and Asia (the Out of Africa model). Recent Human evolutionary genetics ( Jobling, Hurles and Tyler-Smith, 2004) support this “Out of Africa” model, however the recent sequencing of the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes shows some admixture . These results also show that 40.000 years ago there co-existed at least three major sub-species that may be considered as“races” (or not, see discussion below): Denisovans, Neanderthals and Cro-magnons. Today, there's only one human species with no sub-species.

Lieberman and Jackson argued that while advocates of both the Multiregional Model and the Out of Africa Model use the word race and make racial assumptions, none define the term. They conclude that students of human evolution would be better off avoiding the word race, and instead describe genetic differences in terms of populations and clinal gradations.

Ringkasan berbagai definisi biologis untuk "ras"

Biological definitions of race (Long & Kittles 2003)

Concept	Reference	Definition
Esentialis	(Hooton 1926)	"A great division of mankind, characterized as a group by the sharing of a certain combination of features, which have been derived from their common descent, and constitute a vague physical background, usually more or less obscured by individual variations, and realized best in a composite picture."
Taksonomis	(Mayr 1969)	"A subspecies is an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species, inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of a species, and differing taxonomically from other populations of the species."
Populasi	(Dobzhansky 1970)	"Races are genetically distinct Mendelian populations. They are neither individuals nor particular genotypes, they consist of individuals who differ genetically among themselves."
Lineage	(Templeton 1998)	"A subspecies (race) is a distinct evolutionary lineage within a species. This definition requires that a subspecies be genetically differentiated due to barriers to genetic exchange that have persisted for long periods of time; that is, the subspecies must have historical continuity in addition to current genetic differentiation." ("Suatu subspesies (ras) adalah suatu garis evolusi yang berbeda dalam suatu spesies. Definisi ini menentukan bahwa suatu subspesies berbeda secara genetis karena kendala dalam pertukaran genetis yang sudah bertahan selama jangka waktu yang panjang. Artinya, subspesies tersebut harus memiliki kesinambungan sejarah di samping pembedaan genetis masa kini")
Population genetic correlation structure	(Edwards 2003)	"most of the information that distinguishes populations is hidden in the correlation structure of the data and not simply in the variation of the individual factors." ("Kebanyakan informasi yang membedakan populasi tersembunyi dalam struktur korelasi data, bukan hanya dalam variasi faktor individu")

"Ras" sebagai konstruksi sosial

Artikel utama: Social interpretations of race dan Racialism

Para antropolog dan ilmuwan evolusi lain sudah beralih dari istialh "ras" ke istilah "populasi" untuk membahas perbedaan genetika. Para sejarawan, antropolog kebudayaan dan ilmuwan sosial memahamkan kembali istilah "ras" sebagai kategori kebudayaan atau konstruksi sosial, suatu cara tertentu orang bicara tentang mereka sendiri dan tentang orang lain.

Banyak ilmuwan sosial sudah menggantikan istilah "ras" dengan kata "kelompok etnik" untuk menunjuk kelompok yang mengidentifikasi diri sendiri berdasarkan kepercayan mereka mengenai kebudayaan, asal-usul dan sejarah bersama. Alongside empirical and conceptual problems with "race," following the Second World War, evolutionary and social scientists were acutely aware of how beliefs about race had been used to justify discrimination, apartheid, slavery, and genocide. This questioning gained momentum in the 1960s during the U.S. civil rights movement and the emergence of numerous anti-colonial movements worldwide. They thus came to believe that race itself is a social construct, a concept that was believed to correspond to an objective reality but which was believed in because of its social functions.

Craig Venter and Francis Collins of the National Institute of Health jointly made the announcement of the mapping of the human genome in 2000. Upon examining the data from the genome mapping, Venter realized that although the genetic variation within the human species is on the order of 1–3% (instead of the previously assumed 1%), the types of variations do not support notion of genetically defined races. Venter said, "Race is a social concept. It's not a scientific one. There are no bright lines (that would stand out), if we could compare all the sequenced genomes of everyone on the planet." "When we try to apply science to try to sort out these social differences, it all falls apart."

Stephan Palmié asserted that race "is not a thing but a social relation"; or, in the words of Katya Gibel Mevorach, "a metonym," "a human invention whose criteria for differentiation are neither universal nor fixed but have always been used to manage difference." As such, the use of the term "race" itself must be analyzed. Moreover, they argue that biology will not explain why or how people use the idea of race: History and social relationships will.

Imani Perry, a professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University, has made significant contributions to how we define race in America today. Perry’s work focuses on how race is experienced. Perry tells us that race, “is produced by social arrangements and political decision making.” Perry explains race more in stating, “race is something that happens, rather than something that is. It is dynamic, but it holds no objective truth.”

Di Amerika Serikat

Artikel utama: Race in the United States

Lihat pula: Admixture in the United States

The immigrants to the Americas came from every region of Europe, Africa, and Asia. They mixed among themselves and with the indigenous inhabitants of the continent. In the United States most people who self-identify as African–American have some European ancestors, while many people who identify as European American have some African or Amerindian ancestors.

Since the early history of the United States, Amerindians, African–Americans, and European Americans have been classified as belonging to different races. Efforts to track mixing between groups led to a proliferation of categories, such as mulatto and octoroon. The criteria for membership in these races diverged in the late 19th century. During Reconstruction, increasing numbers of Americans began to consider anyone with "one drop" of known "Black blood" to be Black, regardless of appearance.³ By the early 20th century, this notion was made statutory in many states.⁴ Amerindians continue to be defined by a certain percentage of "Indian blood" (called blood quantum). To be White one had to have perceived "pure" White ancestry. The one-drop rule or hypodescent rule refers to the convention of defining a person as racially black if he or she has any known African ancestry. This rule meant that those that were mixed race but with some discernable African ancestry were defined as black. The one-drop rule is specific to not only those with African ancestry but to the United States, making it a particularly African-American experience.

The decennial censuses conducted since 1790 in the United States created an incentive to establish racial categories and fit people into those categories.

The term "Hispanic" as an ethnonym emerged in the 20th century with the rise of migration of laborers from American Spanish-speaking countries to the United States. Today, the word "Latino" is often used as a synonym for "Hispanic". The definitions of both terms are non-race specific, and include people who consider themselves to be of distinct races (Black, White, Amerindian, Asian, and mixed groups). However, there is a common misconception in the US that Hispanic/Latino is a race or sometimes even that national origins such as Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Salvadoran, etc. are races. In contrast to "Latino" or "Hispanic", "Anglo" refers to non-Hispanic White Americans or non-Hispanic European Americans, most of whom speak the English language but are not necessarily of English descent.

Di Brazil

Artikel utama: Race in Brazil

Compared to 19th century United States, 20th century Brazil was characterized by a perceived relative absence of sharply defined racial groups. According to anthropologist Marvin Harris, this pattern reflects a different history and different social relations. Basically, race in Brazil was "biologized," but in a way that recognized the difference between ancestry (which determines genotype) and phenotypic differences. There, racial identity was not governed by rigid descent rule, such as the one-drop rule, as it was in the United States. A Brazilian child was never automatically identified with the racial type of one or both parents, nor were there only a very limited number of categories to choose from.

Over a dozen racial categories would be recognized in conformity with all the possible combinations of hair color, hair texture, eye color, and skin color. These types grade into each other like the colors of the spectrum, and no one category stands significantly isolated from the rest. That is, race referred preferentially to appearance, not heredity. The complexity of racial classifications in Brazil reflects the extent of miscegenation in Brazilian society, a society that remains highly, but not strictly, stratified along color lines. Henceforth, the Brazilian narrative of a perfect "post-racist" country, must be met with caution, as sociologist Gilberto Freyre demonstrated in 1933 in Casa Grande e Senzala.

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