Try out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. Language: English Spanish. This article assesses anthropological thinking about the race concept and its applications. Utilizing the heuristic of constructors, shifters , and reconcilers , we also illustrate the ways in which anthropologists conceptualize their interpretations of race along a broad spectrum as well as what these differential approaches reveal about the ideological and biological consequences of socially defined races, such as racism in general and racialized health disparities in particular.

Define the term reification and explain how the concept of race has been reified throughout history. Discuss what anthropologists mean when they say that race is a socially constructed concept and explain how race has been socially constructed in the United States and Brazil. Identify what is meant by racial formation, hypodescent, and the one-drop rule. Describe how ethnicity is different from race, how ethnic groups are different from racial groups, and what is meant by symbolic ethnicity. Analyze ways in which the racial and ethnic compositions of professional sports have shifted over time and how those shifts resulted from changing social and cultural circumstances that drew new groups into sports. Suppose someone asked you the following open-ended questions: How would you define the word race as it applies to groups of human beings?

A race is a grouping of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into categories generally viewed as distinct by society. By the 17th century the term began to refer to physical phenotypical traits. Modern science regards race as a social construct , an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society.

Try out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. Controversies over race conceptualizations have been ongoing for centuries and have been shaped, in part, by anthropologists. To assess anthropologists' views on race, genetics, and ancestry.