Colonization and slavery produced the unified black and Asian racial categories

Evidence

Nevertheless, the second approach has rejected the “natural race” view in favor of the argument that racial categories are always socially constructed (Harding, 1993). Reflection on the World War II atrocities committed in the name of maintaining “racial purity” decreased the attractiveness of continuing to search for biological determinants of racial differences. Moreover, the “social race” defenders pointed out the immense cultural variation in systems of racial classification. The US had had a complex system of classifying people of African descent as quadroons, octoroons, and those legally counted as black because their ancestry gave them 1/32 “black blood.” In parts of the Caribbean class has shaped racial classification so that the richer one is, the whiter one is perceived to be. South Africa, Japan, and other cultures have their own systems of racial classification. Furthermore, the emergence of population genetics, as indicated, made it compelling to treat alike variation in human populations and in animal and plant populations. Purported “racial difference” is best understood on the model of classifying butterflies or petunias. By the 1960s this social race approach was well-established in biology and the social sciences. According to this view, racial prejudice, now deprived of its scientific grounds, should soon wither away. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1564 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Colonial ethnography supplied the classificatory categories apartheid segregation built upon. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 567; Liberal universalism developed historically alongside imperialism and slavery. — , Second Treatise of Government and A…, 57; Colonial racial categories were shuffled across visual and verbal criteria — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 228 (+9 more)

Broader Connections

• Racial categories vary enormously across cultures and eras, revealing their social construction #complicates (0.74) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1564