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Humans come in all shapes and sizes. Classifying them into groups is a subjective process, influenced by cultural ideas and political priorities. There are many different, equally valid criteria one can use to sort people into groups:

Is there a correct way to classify?

Following are the U.S. federal government's current definitions for the racial and ethnic groups we used in the sorting activity:

Most of these categories were introduced in 1977, in response to new civil rights laws designed to remedy discrimination. Look closely at these definitions. Is everybody defined in the same way?

To be categorized as Native American, for example, requires "tribal affiliation or community recognition" - a condition of no other category. The definition for African American includes a reference to "black racial groups" while none of the other categories mention race. In fact, Hispanic or Latino is defined as a "Spanish culture of origin, regardless of race." The category Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander was only introduced in 1996 - previously, it was lumped together with Asians.

What reasons might exist for defining these groups in these seemingly contradictory ways? Are the criteria social or scientific?

Explore the RACE TIMELINE section to see how definitions have changed over time.

What about multiraciality?

In our film, anthropologist Alan Goodman says that we are all mongrels, that humans have been mixing for centuries. According to evolutionary biologists, we're all descended from the original peoples of Africa. Depending on how you look at it, you could say that we're all mixed race or we're all Africans. How do these ideas affect the way you think about yourself?

The 2000 U.S. Census tried to accommodate changing ideas of race by allowing people to check more than one box. However, statisticians who use Census data have a hard time matching this to information collected in previous years.

Multiracialism has the potential to challenge our assumptions about race, but it can also reinforce the wrong ideas. For example, we often say that someone is part white and half Asian or Latino – but which part? What makes somebody part white, and how do we measure that? Geneticists tell us there’s not a single trait that separates one race from another. What are other pitfalls of quantifying race through percentages?

In the past, African Americans were defined by different percentages of African ancestry – at its extreme, the “one-drop rule” declared that persons with any known African ancestry were defined as Black. Today, Native Americans are still defined by “blood quantum” – to be classified as American Indian requires proof of at least some (usually "one quarter" or more) of Indian ancestry. Can you think of any historical reasons why we might classify these two groups in opposite ways – essentially maximizing the number of African Americans and minimizing the number of American Indians?

Explore the HUMAN DIVERSITY section to see human migration over the centuries.

Why don't we just get rid of racial categories?

Although the government's definitions aren't perfect, we need racial classification because our society is still unequal in terms of race. For example, does being white have the same meaning as being Black, Latino, or Native American?

Sociologist Andrew Hacker conducted an experiment in which he asked a group of white college students if they would consider changing their race and living the rest of their lives as Black, and if so, how much compensation they thought was fair for making the change. The amount the students agreed upon was $50 million - $1 million per year for the next 50 years. If all races are the same, why is compensation necessary?

Race is a double-edged sword, but we must overcome centuries of inequality before we can unmake it. As former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun once wrote, "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race. There is no other way."

For example, if we didn't track race data, we would never know that schools today are more segregated than they were in 1960. We wouldn't know there's an enormous wealth gap between African Americans and whites. We wouldn't know that Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes, that one out of every four Latinos lives below the poverty line or that the number of hate crimes against South Asians and Arab Americans has increased exponentially since September 11, 2001.

We all want to live in a society where people are valued for who they are, not what they look like. But pretending that race doesn’t exist or matter is not the same as treating people equally. Without data on different racial groups, how will we know if we're equal? Until race doesn't matter, we can't overlook its consequences.

Explore the WHERE RACE LIVES section to see how race still affects people's life opportunities.

The Resources section of this Web site contains a wealth of information about issues related to race. There you'll find detailed information about books, organizations, film/videos, and other Web sites. For more about this topic, search under "racial classification." You can also read related online articles in the Background Readings section of this site.

For complete lesson plans, visit the FOR TEACHERS section of this Web site.

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