Anthropology terms: do you use "negroid"?

[Hunter]

I was just looking at some social studies textbooks and read the work "negroid" and was unsure if I should use a book using that term.

 

Here is wikipedia on the term.

 

I'm curious how others here deal with this sensitive issue.

[JeneralMom]

How old is the textbook?

[Hunter]

Not vintage. It's an older Rod and Staff.

 

According to wikipedia, the term is still current and used by the academic and medical world, and in current college level textbooks.

[give_me_a_latte]

When I took Forensic Anthropology classes in college, we used it. There are three main groups of humans, in anthropological terms, and negroid is one of those. I think it's a very different term than the racial slurs that sound similar. I would use it with my children, if we were studying anthropology (I'd assume they'd be old enough for a discussion of racial issues by that time, and could understand the difference between the word negroid and...well, others).

[Greta]

I took some anthropology classes when I was getting my degree (not in anthro, in biology) and Negroid was used along with Caucasoid and Mongoloid to describe the three major branches or races of modern humans. No diarespect was either implied or inferred when it was used in this context.

[Crimson Wife]

I learned it in 3rd grade but it is not a term I would use with my children unless it was in a college-level text (like the PP, if they're mature enough for that, they'd be mature enough to understand the proper context for its use).

[Hunter]

I appreciate any and all opinions. This has been coming up over and over lately, and had been one of the reasons I have been just skimming resources instead of picking them and USING them.

 

I realize I need to decide what I am comfortable with and teach it that way. I'm just not sure what I am comfortable with, and what I want to attempt to possibly desensitize my students to.

 

I'm thinking maybe this isn't all that different from naming body parts. Maybe I'm supposed to approach this like health class and just be matter of fact about it, and then discuss appropriate everyday language.

[Kathryn]

I appreciate any and all opinions. This has been coming up over and over lately, and had been one of the reasons I have been just skimming resources instead of picking them and USING them.

 

I realize I need to decide what I am comfortable with and teach it that way. I'm just not sure what I am comfortable with, and what I want to attempt to possibly desensitize my students to.

 

I'm thinking maybe this isn't all that different from naming body parts. Maybe I'm supposed to approach this like health class and just be matter of fact about it, and then discuss appropriate everyday language.

 

That's the approach I'd take. It's valid terminology, not a slur, but you need to decide your own comfort level with your children. I'd certainly have a talk about the term if I used a resource that used it though.

[stripe]

 

I'm thinking maybe this isn't all that different from naming body parts. Maybe I'm supposed to approach this like health class and just be matter of fact about it, and then discuss appropriate everyday language.

 

I am not sure I agree with this because there is controversy over the idea of races, whereas there is a clear difference between male and female and different body parts for each, and this also allows descriptions of hermaphrodites.

 

I think most people are pretty sloppy with these racial terms and imagine dark skin means African, when many non-Africans with dark skin are classified as white (Indian people, for example), and Australian Aboriginees are the most distant relatives of Africans, despite similar coloring.

 

Not all Africans have very dark skin, very curly hair, and large features, a la the stereotypes. Some Ethiopians and Somalis (like models Iman and Liya Kebede) have thin noses, medium brown skin tones, and fairly to very straight hair.

 

My own personal situation makes me uncomfortable with the idea of neat racial types. There are tons of people who don't neatly fit in ANY.

[jamajo]

This passage came directly from your link under the heading "criticism"

 

The term Negroid is commonly associated with notions of racial typology which are currently being disputed by a majority of anthropologists.[18] For modern usage it is generally associated with racial notions, and is discouraged, as it is potentially offensive.[8] The term "Negroid" is still used in certain disciplines such as craniometry, epidemiology and forensic archaeology[dubious – discuss]. Even in a medical context, some scholars have recommended that the term Negroid be avoided in scientific writings because of its association with racism and race science.[19] This mirrors the decline in usage of the term Negro, which fell out of favor following the campaigns of the American civil rights movement — the term Negro became associated with periods of legalized discrimination, and was rejected by African Americans during the 1960s for Black.[8]

 

My personal opinion:

 

It isn't a widely used term and it would catch me off guard if used socially. I would restrict to being used professionally or academically only. Context is everything.

[Hunter]

 

I am not sure I agree with this because there is controversy over the idea of races, whereas there is a clear difference between male and female and different body parts for each, and this also allows descriptions of hermaphrodites.

 

I think most people are pretty sloppy with these racial terms and imagine dark skin means African, when many non-Africans with dark skin are classified as white (Indian people, for example), and Australian Aboriginees are the most distant relatives of Africans, despite similar coloring.

 

Not all Africans have very dark skin, very curly hair, and large features, a la the stereotypes. Some Ethiopians and Somalis (like models Iman and Liya Kebede) have thin noses, medium brown skin tones, and fairly to very straight hair.

 

My own personal situation makes me uncomfortable with the idea of neat racial types. There are tons of people who don't neatly fit in ANY.

 

Stripe, elaboration is welcome. I want to do the right thing here. The more I hear, about all sides of the issue, the better. I do not want to desensitize myself and others to something that I shouldn't be. You got my attention, when I see that you are aware of the fuzzy area of gender. I trust your advice about the similarities to race. It can be harmful to label too tightly, what nature has not defined so tightly. I have friends who were born ambiguous, so I get it.

[Hunter]

 

My personal opinion:

 

It isn't a widely used term and it would catch me off guard if used socially. I would restrict to being used professionally or academically only. Context is everything.

 

Even in context "correct" terms can still get us in trouble. This type of thing is hard. And I worry so about this type of thing.

 

Thank you everyone who is responding. The bigger the circle of discussion the better for me. I really appreciate everyone's time.

[lillehei]

I was an anthropology major and used the three terms often. I hear it on forensic shows, as well. I don't use it out of context or in everyday conversation.

[Corraleno]

I don't believe those terms are used by many current anthropologists. Even in the 80s, when I was in grad school, those terms (and the biological concept of race) were seen as dated and inaccurate. Here is a statement from the American Anthropological Association on the issue of biological races:

 

"In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species."

 

And that was written 14 years ago (1998). I don't know anything about forensics, but if those terms are still used in that context, I would guess that perhaps they're used as a sort of short-hand to refer to features (nose bridge, cranial shape, etc.), rather than as a biological classification of a specific person.

 

Jackie

[mrbmom77]

I just graduated in 2010 with a minor in Anthropology. The term is definitely still in use in forensic anthropology. I never heard it used to refer to skin color or hair, only bone structure. Specifically, skull structure. Examination of the skull is the only way to determine "race" from a skeleton - eye socket shape, nasal aperture shape, and the angle and size of the jawbone are indicators of race I remember off the top of my head.

I would certainly use it with my child as the proper term if she were studying forensic anthro, but explain that it is inappropriate outside of that context and people who were not familiar with the terminology could be offended. Depends on the age/maturity level of the child.

ETA: The reason determining race is so important has nothing to do with racism or separation, but is to aid identification. If you find a skeleton, knowing the age, sex, and race helps if you're, say, searching a missing persons database for a match. We actually didn't use the term "race" in any other class besides forensic. We talked about "people groups" usually. Most of us believe there's only one race - human.

Edited April 7, 2012 by mrbmom77

[Hunter]

We actually didn't use the term "race" in any other class besides forensic. We talked about "people groups" usually. Most of us believe there's only one race - human.

 

Thank you SO much for sharing this. Can you elaborate a bit more on people groups vs race, or direct me to a resource?

 

While we are at it, the vintage books use "savage", "barbarian" and "civilized". Are there term to replace these terms, or is even the division controversial? Savage is "hunter-gatherer"? I'm not trying to be stupid or discriminatory, I just don't know the "right" or politically correct or nice terms, or even how to properly ask, or even the "right" term for "right" :-0 So I have been avoiding teaching and making purchases and that is getting no one anywhere.

[Corraleno]

Can you elaborate a bit more on people groups vs race, or direct me to a resource?

The problem with the term "race" is that it's biologically meaningless. There are not separate "races" within Homo sapiens sapiens. The concept of race is cultural, not biological, and has been largely replaced by the more accurate term "ethnicity." The idea that there are three "races" is absurd — what about people of "mixed" heritage (e.g. a large percentage of the population of South America) or people from areas between, say, Europe & Asia? Can someone draw a line somewhere and say "OK, everyone east of here is Mongoloid and everyone west of here is Caucasoid?" Of course not.

 

What forensic anthropologists can do is say that a person with X cranial shape (or whatever), is most likely to be of Y ancestry — but those are correlations of physical traits with areas of origin, not evidence of different "races."

 

While we are at it, the vintage books use "savage", "barbarian" and "civilized". Are there term to replace these terms, or is even the division controversial? Savage is "hunter-gatherer"? I'm not trying to be stupid or discriminatory, I just don't know the "right" or politically correct or nice terms

The terms savage/barbarian/civilized are inherently loaded and really don't have objective equivalents. Terms like hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, subsistence agriculturalist, etc., are economic designations, referring to how a group obtains food; there is no judgement implied (in terms of certain groups being "better" than others).

 

Jackie

[Corraleno]

Can you elaborate a bit more on people groups vs race, or direct me to a resource?

These are from Wikipedia, but the references cited are academic articles:

 

Since the 1960's a majority of scientists have come to understand the concept of race as a social construct mapped on to phenotypes in different culturally determined ways, and not as a biological concept. A 2000 study by Celera Genomics found that human beings largely have similar genetic input, and that citizens of any given village in the world, whether in Scotland or Tanzania, hold 90 percent of the genetic variability that humanity has to offer. The study found only .01% of genes account for a person's external appearance.[19]

 

Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and the more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 30s and 50s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races.[67] Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at the level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people.

 

Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. Mid-20th century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to the frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant 'constellation'".[69] Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that "the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing."[70] Moreover, anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless.[71] The Human Genome Project states "People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other."[72]

 

Richard Lewontin ... concluded neither "race" nor "subspecies" were appropriate or useful ways to describe human populations.[74] Others also noting that group variation was relatively low compared to the variation observed in other mammalian species, agreed the evidence confirmed the absence of natural subdivision of the human population.[32][75]

 

Jackie

[stripe]

I am not sure I see hermaphroditic individuals as analogous to mixed race or non-stereotypical people of certain ethnic backgrounds. I think actually I see groupings by sex to be somewhat of the opposite, conceptually, to racial designations: I believe the terms "male" and "female" are accurate for most people and we can clearly describe what specific body parts make someone female or male, and some small group of people have a mixture from both groups. On the other hand with "race," I think the term is an odd hodge podge of factors that are hard to describe and inconsistently assigned such as skin color, hair texture, and nose size. I think a good number of people on earth that don't reside in areas the focus was on a hundred years ago (such as those in Latin America) do not fit neatly into those groups. There is an enormous amount of ethnic mixing between native peoples, Europeans, and Africans in Latin America (did you know more slaves went to Mexico from Africa than to the US?), for example.

 

I did see that there has been some attempt to make the the three race camp broader (discussed in this somewhat unusual blog entry) by making more groups.

 

While we are at it, the vintage books use "savage", "barbarian" and "civilized". Are there term to replace these terms, or is even the division controversial? Savage is "hunter-gatherer"? I'm not trying to be stupid or discriminatory, I just don't know the "right" or politically correct or nice terms, or even how to properly ask, or even the "right" term for "right" :-0 So I have been avoiding teaching and making purchases and that is getting no one anywhere.

 

I think they were/are an attempt to pass a moral judgment on certain groups of people (perhaps in ways that we might agree with, for example, being repulsed by cannibalism or something) but there were societies that were known to be complex and well organized that were branded "savage" by European onlookers, which of course is very convenient when wanting to take over the government and resources of such a people. I am honestly wondering, is it really ever necessary to use those terms? I have less of a problem with "civilized" than "savage," but I still wonder under what circumstances one would feel compelled to use it.

[Crimson Wife]

I am honestly wondering, is it really ever necessary to use those terms?

 

So when studying how the Roman Empire got invaded by the Goths, Visigoths, Huns, etc. it isn't appropriate to refer to these tribes collectively as "barbarians"? My ancestors were among these tribes (Celts) and I don't consider it an offensive term because compared with the Romans, the Celts were very uncivilized at the time.

[Hunter]

My head is spinning, but I'm :bigear:

 

I've been told hermaphrodite is an unacceptable term, but...then people argue about what to replace it with. And to my ambiguous non Caucasian friends they say use of their chosen pronoun, is far more important to them than any racial language. I'm not sure if I can use the terms I've been taught to say, because I'm not sure what the forum rules are.

 

Why can't this all be easier. :willy_nilly:

 

And as I said I don't even know the "right" word for "right". Or of there is a "right" to label as "right". UGH!

 

Confusion!

[Pen]

:bigear:

 

I have a family with members with mixed ... uh... origins and skin and eye colors ... what maybe called "races"...or "ethnicities"--some paperwork seems to have both. To me, terms tend to be upsetting (or not) mainly depending upon purpose and attitude attached to the terms. And it is also perfectly possible to use the most PC possible words and still hold very racist attitudes. And vice versa also sometimes. Dates and what was considered acceptable at the time of publication would also be significant to me.

Waldorf attitudes toward "race"-- with blonde hair and blue eyes representing the good and dark representing the opposite, were very upsetting, however beautiful the art. But a doctor looking at race to think about likely problems--say sickle cell anemia versus...something that tends to be found in some other racial group, something like that seems reasonable.

Edited April 7, 2012 by Pen