Project:Policies specific to racial identities

Please note that this section contains historical context and terminology that some readers might find unsettling or distasteful.

Introduction

Identities

See also: Project:Policies specific to identities

Broadly, an identity is a set of qualities that characterize a person (personal identity) or characterize a person's belonging to a particular group (social identities).

Social Identities

A social identity is a portion of an individual's self-concept that is based primarily on self-categorization within a particular group or combination of groups. These categorizations are often (but not always) assigned to individuals by factors outside of their direct control. The eight major social identities are sometimes referred to as the "Big 8", being:

1. ability
2. age
3. ethnicity
4. gender
5. race
6. religion
7. sexual orientation
8. socioeconomic status

These concepts may be split into separate qualifications based on the definition of a particular term versus the individual's self-identification as such. For example, a work may describe a person's race as African American, even if the term "African American" was not in wide use prior to the 1980s in the United States. In such scenarios, individuals may differentiate between "race" and "racial identity" (or "religion" and "religious identity", "sexual orientation" and "sexual (orientation) identity", "gender" and "gender identity", etc., etc.). In the context of lgbtDB, we occasionally make this separation insofar as it may be useful in select situations, but we avoid it as much as possible, preferring an individual's self-identification.

Race

The term "race" was first utilized in English as a near synonym for an ethnic group, first attested in such use by the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in 1572 ("The Englishe race ouerrunne and daily spoiled."). From the early 17th century onward, it started to be used as a grouping term for a set of ethnic groups, as the OED notes this usage "[f]requently overlap[s] with, and [is] difficult to distinguish from" its later usage in 19th century anthropological classifications. By the late 18th, the term "race" moved toward approximately its current day use; what the OED defines as "any of the (putative) major groupings of humankind, usually defined in terms of distinct physical features or shared ethnicity, and sometimes (more controversially) considered to encompass common biological or genetic characteristics". This linguistic evolution coincides with Bancel et al., who claim that the modern concept of race was invented and rationalized post hoc between 1730 and 1790.

While race-like classification systems have been utilized to marginalize, discriminate, and enslave persons since the beginning of written history, it is much more recent that such classifications have been built on pseudoscientific, rather than a more religious or nationalistic, bases. Pseudoscientific racial classifications are at least as old as Linnaean taxonomy, with Carl Linnaeus himself dividing Homo sapiens into four varieties based on continent and associated with the pseudoscientific concept of the four humors. He dubbed these subspecies europaeus, asiaticus, americanus, and afer. Linnaeus also went on to describe each variety, clearly inserting his own Eurocentric biases into the classification. It would not be until the publication of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach's 1775 "The Natural Varieties of Mankind"<note>Originally published as De Generis Humani Varietati Nativa.</note> that there were five major racial divisions: (1) the Caucasoid race, (2) the Mongoloid race, (3) the Ethiopian (later Negroid) race, (4) the American Indian race, and (5) the Malayan race. This division, in the words of Blumenthal, was based primarily on skin color and head conformation. Blumenthal also assigned each race a qualitative ranking. A number of subsequent classifications followed, but almost also pursued confirmation of pre-existing racist beliefs. Among these were classifications by Georges Buffon, Petrus Camper, and Christoph Meiners. These pseudoscientific and racist philosophies were extremely influential during colonization, and were espoused frequently by a number of powerful figures of the era, such as by Thomas Jefferson.

By the 20th century, most anthropologists and ethnologists held the false belief that race was an entirely biological phenomenon, built mostly on the assumption that these prior racial classification systems were infallible. This belief system has been termed "racial essentialism," and has been widely discredited. Eugenics programs of the 20th century gladly embraced such scientific racism in order to justify acts of genocide. Very few scientists from the Eurosphere questioned these classifications. Some notable scientists who did push back against these conceptualizations including Franz Boas, Ashley Montagu, and E. O. Wilson. Each found that there was no empirical evidence to support any of the existing racial classification systems, leading to the official rejection of such classifications amongst scientists by the 1970s. In the words of anthropologist Jonathan Marks:

By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small... A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as the previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist.

Despite this relative consensus, mainstream scientific works continued to publish racial classification systems with the implication being that there was some underlying biological mechanism. For example, in the first volume of the 1999 encyclopedia Walker's Mammals of the World it was written that:

Living populations of H. sapiens differ from one another only in minor details of skin coloration, hair texture and color, facial features, and so on. Using standard criteria as applied to other mammals, four or five possible geographic races of people can be recognized...

From there, the authors uncritically enumerate four races: (1) Negroid, (2) Caucasoid, (3) Mongoloid, (4) Australoid and Khoisanic. Today, a number of groups continue to push scientific racism in a number of forms, but it is the general consensus amongst scientists that race is a social construct. Therefore, in most scholarship, the imprecise term "race" has been replaced with terms like populations, peoples, ethnic groups, etc. That being said, the use of race in genetics was only formally renounced by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2023.

Racial Identities

Originally, race as a social construct was a term ascribed by a dominant group (often White persons) toward a marginalized or minoritized group. Over the course of many generations, race came to be an internalized identity in addition to a broader socially imposed construct. However, self-identification of one's race, at least in the context of the United States, is a very recent phenomenon. It was only as part of the 1960 census that U.S. Americans could choose their own race category on the U.S. Census, and even then it was only able to be chosen by individuals who mailed in their census documentation. Census-takers prior to that time made determinations of race themselves, leaving respondents no room to self-identify. Therefore, in the context of lgbtDB, census data prior to 1970 cannot be used to conclusively identify an individual's racial identity, for example.

Regardless, it is very clear that individuals began to adopt racial identities by the 18th century as well, especially in contexts where more nuanced ethnic or cultural identities were lost due to forces of dehumanization, colonialism, and assimilationism. For example, in the 18th century works of Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, and Venture Smith, they refer to themselves as part of the same race using a number of different terms taken from classification systems of the era (African, Negro, etc.). Likewise, Indigenous peoples of the Americas adopted "Indian" as a self-descriptor of race, as evidenced in the works of Samson Occom (Mohegan) and William Apess (Pequot) around the mid-18th century. It is notable that Asian self-identity emerged far later. For example, Dean Mahomed referred to himself as a "native of India" even though he was labeled as "Asiatic" by British colonizers. It would not be until the early 20th century when terms like "Oriental", "Asiatic", or "Asian" would become self-descriptors, more often in the context of autobiographical materials written by Chinese and Japanese immigrants to the United States.

In contrast, because White (or Caucasian) persons were often considered "unmarked" or "default" in a racialized context, it was extremely uncommon for such individuals to write about themselves as being White. Some of the earliest written records using White as a self-identity come from works such as the prefatory materials to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845), with White abolitionists identifying themselves as White. But only by the early 20th century would works by White U.S. Southerners (Lillian Smith, Thomas Dixon Jr., etc.) really begin to self-apply the terminology of Whiteness. Immigrants would also frequently write about assimilation into the "white race" in the United States, such as in the writings of Mary Antin and Edward Bok.

Creating a Racial Identity

Conditions for Creation

When creating a racial identity, make sure that it is representative of something that a person actually utilizes as a form of self-, rather than imposed, identity. It is preferable that a racial identity be in use by at least one real-life or fictional person who meets the Wikipedia notability criteria. As well, lgbtDB is extremely strict when it comes to the usage of the terms "race", "racial identity", and "racial group". Oftentimes in fictional settings, especially in fantasy and science fiction, "race" is used as a biological descriptor. In lgbtDB, even if the original source uses the term "race", we use the term "species". For example, Dragonborn in Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) are a species in lgbtDB, not a race.

With that in mind, it is acceptable to create a new racial identity element as long as the entity is claimed specifically as a racial identity in any of the following scenarios:

1. There is evidence of a person using such a racial identity in at least one publication, even if that person is anonymous;
2. There is evidence of a person using such a racial identity in at least one publicly available survey wherein the choice was made by the person themselves, such as in United States Census data in the 1970 census onward

Assigning a Racial Identity

PLEASE NOTE: This is a section in progress.

We attempt to keep the terminology as close to what the person used in life as possible in order to respect their individual autonomy. We attempt to not ascribe contemporary labels where possible, but we will note when they have been applied in other ways. For example, Phillis Wheatley never publicly identified as African American, and the use of African American was really only popularized in the 1980s (even though there are select uses that predate that popularization). However, many resources, such as the National Women's History Museum, refer to Phillis Wheatley as an African American woman. Therefore, we could add an "instance of" (P1) "African American woman" (Q10769) statement to the page for Phillis Wheatley, with the appropriate referenced resources, but we would not add African American as Phillis Wheatley's racial identity.