Race originated as a cultural-religious distinction legislated into biological heredity

Evidence

If the Spanish origin of the term is true, then the problem with “race” goes back to its beginnings. It was used to expel from Spain people “tainted” by Jewish and Moorish blood - hence “race” in the “physical” and “visible” sense, we might think. Yet the list of people to which the doctrine of purity of blood (limpieza de sangre) was applied went on and included descendants of heretics and of “penitenciados (those condemned by the Inquisition)” (Stolcke, 1994:276-7). Thus at this terrible beginning, “race” was hardly based on the perception of phenotypal difference but on a religiously and politically, hence “culturally,” defined distinction that was legislated to be hereditary, innate, and immutable. It was what we would now call an “ethnic” distinction, as defined by Nathan Glazer as well as by Pierre van den Berghe. Stuart Hall (1994) said memorably that race and ethnicity play hide-and-seek with each other. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 724

Categorization

• DEFINE: Reveals that the very origin of ‘race’ was cultural (limpieza de sangre targeting converts), not phenotypic.
• XREF: Connects to the immodesty article’s theme of cultural distinctions legislated as innate/hereditary. — connects to: Race was co-constituted with religion in European history. — Nasar Meer, Racialization and Religion: Race,…, 31; Races are produced by racism, not by biology — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 76; Early modern Spain and Portugal pioneered hereditary notions of bodily racial difference. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 114 (+5 more)
• ADDENDUM: The limpieza de sangre doctrine parallels the ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ theme of culture being legislated into nature/heredity.