Indianness depends on bodily signifiers even though it is treated as purely cultural.

Evidence

Wade suggests that the principal idea underlying this widely held belief that race and Indians are separate and inconsequential matters “is that the category ‘Indian’ does not depend on phenotypical signifiers In contrast, ‘black’ is often seen as a category defined by more fixed phenotypical criteria that cannot be manipulated in the same way” (1997:37). It is, of course, incorrect to use race to talk of black identity, and ethnicity to talk about Indian identity, as if blackness were only about phenotype and Indianness just about culture. “Such an opposition separates phenotype from culture, as if the former was not itself culturally constructed” (Wade, 1997:39). Furthermore the category “Indian” is very dependent upon bodily signifiers in Latin America. This is one of the reasons a number of “mixed-race” Indians are viewed as racial charlatans in the region. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 3658

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the race-vs-ethnicity distinction by showing both categories depend on culturally constructed bodily signifiers.