The belief of superiority/inferiority based on physical characteristics has been naturalized into our society. And most people do not know that the physical characteristics that are visible, things like skin color, are but 0.01% of all genetic make up. Really, when we think of race, it has more to do with social race than biological race, for humans are not so biologically distinct from other humans (Kottak 2000:139). The concept of race that most Americans have is a social construct that changes with different cultures (Kottak 2000:139).

One could look at different cultures to see racial definition as a cultural phenomenon in action. We learned in class a perfect example of this. In the United States, when asked to label certain pictures of persons in a race, most Amer

Anthropologists cannot look at simple skin color and facial characteristics as defining biological differences because people cannot be categorized into specific races so easily (Kottak 2000: 149). There is still the idea floating around today of the different races being Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid, based mostly on skin color. What is does not take into consideration is there are many peoples who do not fit exactly into one or the other. Take the people in India, their skin color is dark, however their facial characteristics are closer to the Europeans. And even in each category lies so many physical differences, like within Africa; there are so many physical differences such as height (Rensberger 1996: 3) and there are so many different degrees in skin tone as well.

Another example to show that race is a social construct is the way Americans label racially mixed children. A child of a black mother and a white father would be labeled as black, though the genetic material of both parents are found equally in the child (Kottak 2000: 139). This is called hypodescent, the placing of a mixed child in the minority group. One prime example of this is the "One Drop" rule. Where if there was even one black ancestor in the lineage one was considered black, though the person's skin color may be white.

Video: "Skin Deep: The Science of Race"

When slavery emerged and colonization by the Europeans was rampant, ideas of race and race order emerged more and more. The inferiority of certain races was used to accommodate those already standing views of ethnocentrism (Sanjek 1994: 5). As the maltreatment of other cultures wore on and on, the "natural" inferiority of those enslaved peoples grew to be a naturalized thought. It was believed that these peoples were so ill equipped to take care of themselves and that was the reason that they were so easy to enslave (Sanjek 1994:5).

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Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)