Human race classification descended from animal and plant taxonomy

Evidence

No biologist has ever been able to provide a satisfactory definition of “race”—that is, a definition that includes all members of a given race and excludes all others. Attempts to give the term a biological foundation lead to absurdities: parents and children of different races, or the well-known phenomenon that a white woman can give birth to a black child, but a black woman can never give birth to a white child. The only logical conclusion is that people are members of different races because they have been assigned to them. — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 27 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Modern scientific racism emerged out of Enlightenment taxonomy of human subspecies; Humans infer unseen traits of new species from essentialized hierarchical categories. — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 267; Blumenbach coined ‘Caucasian’ and founded scientific racial classification (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Race categories result from social assignment, not biology #complicates (0.82) — Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White, 27