Week 12 · Chapter

Chapter 12 — Race, Ethnicity, and Human Variation

Cultural Anthropology Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~30–40 minutes · Objective 7 (explain how sex, gender, and sexuality and race and ethnicity are culturally organized, describing documented cross-cultural gender diversity, continuous human variation, and census categories as the issuing body's own categories), Objective 5 (analyze political organization and social control: distinguish power from authority, use the band, tribe, chiefdom, and state model and the egalitarian, rank, and stratified scheme as models rather than rankings, and describe law and dispute resolution) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

People differ in skin color, height, and body shape, but those differences shade into one another from place to place instead of falling into neat boxes. This week you will learn that human variation (the biological differences among people) is continuous, and that most of it lies inside groups rather than between them. You will meet race (a classification of people that a society makes, with real effects) and set it apart from ethnicity (a shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs). Then you will read the race and ethnicity boxes on a real government form as the categories of the office that wrote them.

Why you already care about this

Picture an illustrative sunscreen label on a bottle in a drugstore aisle. It tells everyone to guard their skin against ultraviolet light, the invisible part of sunlight that burns. It does not offer one bottle for each skin color. It gives one warning, because the sun reaches every body.

Now picture a form you have filled in: a job application, a clinic intake sheet, or a college form. Near the end it asks about race and ethnicity, often with 7 boxes and the words "check all that apply". You may have paused over it. Which box fits? What if 2 fit? Who decided what the boxes are?

That pause is where this week begins. The anthropologist asks two questions at once. What does biology show about how people vary? And what did a society, or a government office, decide to call those differences?

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

explain why human variation is continuous and why skin color does not predict other traits;
state where most human variation lies, citing two figures with their sources and saying why neither is one settled number;
describe Boas's 1912 study of immigrants' children and what it showed;
explain race as a social classification with real effects;
tell race apart from ethnicity, and name nation, nationalism, and the nation-state;
read the 2024 census categories as the issuing body's own categories.

Carry this sentence with you: variation is a gradient, not a set of boxes.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 1 named biological anthropology, the subfield that studies human evolution and human variation. Week 2 taught that culture is learned, not inherited, and set cultural relativism as a method. Week 7 taught power and authority, Service's state, and Fried's stratified society. Week 11 taught sex and gender.
This week: human variation as continuous; where most variation lies; Boas's 1912 study; race as a social classification with real effects; ethnicity, ethnic identity, and nationalism; and census categories read as the issuing body's own categories.
How they connect: Week 11 taught a category that a culture organizes around a biological base; this week teaches a second one, and it uses Week 7's tools to ask who has the authority to draw a society's categories.
Where we're going next: Week 13, Religion, Ritual, and Worldview, opens a new unit that turns from social categories to meaning: rites of passage, magic, and witchcraft as explanation.

Three earlier ideas carry this week. From Week 7, authority is power that people accept as rightful, and a state in Service's model is a society with a central government that has the power to tax, make law, and enforce it. From Week 7 too, a stratified society in Fried's scheme is one in which people have unequal access to basic resources. From Week 11, gender is what a culture organizes around sex, and the body is not the job description. This week the same move applies to race: the body varies, and a society draws the categories.

1. See human variation as continuous

Go back to the sunscreen label. Skin color is real, and you can see it. But if you could walk slowly across a continent, meeting people in each town along the way, you would not find a line where one skin color stops and another starts. You would see a slow change, town by town.

Anthropologists name that pattern.

Human variation is the biological differences among people, such as skin color and body form; it is continuous and lies mostly within groups rather than between them.
Continuous variation is variation in which a trait such as skin color changes gradually across geography rather than falling into separate boxes.

Why does skin color vary at all? Skin color varies mainly with ancestral exposure to ultraviolet light and does not predict other traits. In plain words, skin color is an adaptation: it tracks how much ultraviolet light a person's ancestors met where they lived. It does not carry information about intelligence, character, or any other trait. That is why the sunscreen label gives one warning to everyone. Ultraviolet light acts on every body, and skin color is one body's long-term response to it.

Worked example — reading 3 illustrative claims about skin color. Each statement is constructed for this chapter. Decide whether it fits the pinned fact.

"Skin color in a region tracks the ultraviolet light the people's ancestors met there." This fits: skin color varies mainly with ancestral exposure to ultraviolet light.
"You can tell a person's other traits from their skin color." This does not fit: skin color does not predict other traits.
"Skin color changes gradually from place to place." This fits: variation is continuous, so there is no line where one color stops.

In words: 2 of the 3 statements fit the course's facts, and 1 does not, so 2 + 1 = 3, and the one that fails is the one that uses skin color to predict something else.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Think of a trait that you share with some relatives but not others, such as height or hair texture. What does that tell you about drawing a sharp line between groups?
(b) Why might it be tempting to treat a visible trait, such as skin color, as a sign of traits you cannot see?

Misconception check. Students often read skin color as predicting other traits, as if the color of a person's skin came bundled with a list of other features. That is tempting, because skin color is easy to see and everyday talk often links it to other things. But skin color varies mainly with ancestral exposure to ultraviolet light, and it does not predict other traits. The cure: when someone links skin color to another trait, ask what evidence links them, and remember the sunscreen label.

2. Locate most variation: within groups, not between them

Think about one family at a reunion. Cousins differ in height, eye color, and build, sometimes a lot. Now think about two families from two different towns. The differences inside each family can be as large as the differences between the two families. Scale that up, and you have this week's second idea.

Within-group variation is the finding that most human variation lies within groups rather than between them; the figures for it come from different analyses and are stated with attribution, never as one settled number.

A classic study made the idea a number. Lewontin (1972), "The Apportionment of Human Diversity", Evolutionary Biology, found that most human genetic variation lies within populations rather than between them, with a figure of about 85 percent within populations.

A professional body stated it too.

The Statement on Race is the American Anthropological Association's 1998 statement that there is greater variation within so-called racial groups than between them and that race in the United States is a social mechanism invented during the eighteenth century.

Its figure is about 94 percent of physical variation within so-called racial groups. The two figures come from different analyses, so the course states each one with its source and keys neither.

Worked example — setting the two figures side by side. Use the two attributed figures.

Lewontin's figure. About 85 percent of variation within populations, so 100 − 85 = 15 percent lies outside them.
The Statement on Race figure. About 94 percent within so-called racial groups, so 100 − 94 = 6 percent lies outside them.
The gap. 94 − 85 = 9 percentage points apart. The gap is in percentage points because it is the difference between two percentages.
What they share. Both are above 50 percent, so both say most variation lies within groups.

In words: the two figures are 9 percentage points apart because they come from different analyses, yet both are above 50 percent, so the idea is settled even though the number is not one number.

A caveat for your own reading: you will meet other figures for this idea in other sources, measured in other ways. Treat each one as that analysis's figure, give its source, and ask what it measured before you compare it with another.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Explain to a friend, without any numbers, why two groups can look different on the surface while most variation still lies inside each group.
(b) Why does it matter that the course states these figures with their sources instead of picking one as "the" figure?

Misconception check. Students often read the within-groups percentage as one settled number, and they memorize "85" or "94" as if it were a law of nature. That is tempting, because a single figure is easy to remember. But the two figures come from different analyses, and they are 9 percentage points apart. The cure: learn the idea as the fact, and learn each figure with its source.

3. Weigh a classic study: Boas on immigrants' children

Think about a family whose children grew up in a different place from their parents, with a different diet, a different climate, or different work. The children may end up taller or shorter than their parents. Nobody would say the children belong to a different group because of it. Yet for a long time, some body measurements were treated as fixed markers of race.

Boas (1912), "Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants", American Anthropologist, tested that idea. He found that children born in the United States to immigrant parents differed in head form from their parents. That was evidence that traits once treated as fixed racial markers respond to environment.

Worked example — the shape of Boas's argument, step by step. Read the study's logic without adding any detail the course has not pinned.

The assumption he tested. Head form was treated as a fixed racial marker, passed down unchanged.
The comparison. Immigrant parents, and their children born in the United States.
The finding. The children differed in head form from their parents.
The conclusion. If a trait called fixed changed between 2 generations, then it responds to environment and is not a fixed marker.

In words: Boas compared 2 generations of 1 family line in 1 new setting and found that a supposedly fixed trait changed, so the trait was not the fixed racial marker it had been taken to be.

Later researchers reanalyzed his data, and the course mentions those reanalyses in words and keys no figure from them. Here is each side's strongest case, with no verdict.

Boas's strongest case. A trait that was called fixed changed within one generation, in a new environment. That is enough to show it is not a fixed racial marker.
The cautious case. One measure in one study cannot settle how much every trait responds to environment. Reanalyses ask how large the change was, and a careful reader keeps that question open.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Make the strongest case that Boas's finding mattered, even if later reanalyses differ on the size of the change.
(b) Make the strongest case for caution: what would you want to know before saying how much any trait responds to environment?

Misconception check. Students often treat a trait that runs in families as fixed, as if anything a child shares with a parent cannot change. That is tempting, because family resemblance is real. But Boas found that children born in the United States to immigrant parents differed in head form from their parents. The cure: before calling a trait fixed, ask whether it was ever measured in a new environment.

4. Define race: a social classification with real effects

Think about the boxes on the form again. A different country's form, or the same country's form from a different decade, would show different boxes. Some boxes have been added, some dropped, some renamed. If the boxes were natural groups, they would not keep changing. They change because people make them.

Race is a social classification of people into groups that a society makes; the categories differ across places and times, and the inequality built around them has real effects, so race is not a set of natural biological groups.

Read that definition twice, because it holds two halves. The first half says the categories are made by societies. The Statement on Race describes race in the United States as a social mechanism invented during the eighteenth century. The second half says the categories have real effects. A category that a society made can still shape where people may live, what work they can get, and how others treat them.

Week 7 gives you the tools for the second half. In Fried's scheme, a stratified society is one in which people have unequal access to basic resources. When a society ties access to land, jobs, or schooling to a category, the category becomes part of how that society is stratified. And Week 7's power and authority ask who made the rule and whether people accepted it as rightful.

Worked example — two halves, one sentence (illustrative). An illustrative town has a rule, long ago written into its housing records, that kept some families out of one neighborhood by category. Read it with both halves.

Who made the category? The town did, through its records and rules. Nothing in biology drew that line.
Did it have real effects? Yes. Families sorted out of the neighborhood could not buy homes there, so the rule shaped unequal access to a basic resource, housing.
What does Week 7 call that? Unequal access to basic resources is the mark of a stratified society in Fried's scheme.

In words: the town's category was made by people, not by biology, and it still decided who could live where, so a social classification can have real and lasting effects.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Explain why "made by a society" and "has real effects" can both be true of the same category. Use an example from a school, a team, or a workplace.
(b) Using Week 7's power and authority, explain why it matters who gets to write the categories a society uses.

Misconception check. Students often make one of two opposite wrong turns. The first reads race as a set of natural biological groups. The second hears "race is a social construct" and concludes that race has no real effects. Both are tempting, the first because visible traits feel natural, the second because "constructed" can sound like "imaginary". The cure: say both halves every time, "made by a society" and "real in its effects".

5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism

Picture an illustrative neighborhood festival celebrating an ethnic heritage. Stalls sell the heritage's foods. A stage hosts its music and dance. Signs are written in two languages, and some families wear clothing that marks the day. People who grew up with the heritage come to celebrate it, and neighbors come to share it.

What is on show is not skin color. It is ancestry, language, food, music, and custom: the things a group shares and passes on.

Ethnicity is a shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs; it is not the same as race.
Ethnic identity is how people claim and display their ethnicity, for example through food, music, language, dress, or a heritage festival.

Race and ethnicity are both social categories, and both have real effects. But they rest on different things. Race sorts people by a society's reading of bodies, while ethnicity gathers people around a shared heritage that they learn and display. Like all of culture, an ethnic identity is learned, not inherited biologically, and it is shared but never uniform: two people at the same festival may claim the heritage in different ways.

Worked example — sorting 4 illustrative statements. Each statement is constructed for this chapter. Name the idea it is about.

"The festival's stage hosts the heritage's music." A shared custom on display is ethnic identity.
"The form groups people by a society's reading of skin color." A classification by a society's reading of bodies is race.
"The family speaks its grandparents' language at home." A shared language passed down is ethnicity.
"A grandchild wears the heritage's clothing to the festival." Claiming and displaying a heritage is ethnic identity.

In words: 1 of the 4 statements is about race and 3 are about ethnicity or ethnic identity, so 1 + 3 = 4, and none of the ethnicity statements rests on skin color.

Nation, nationalism, and the nation-state

Think of a crowd standing for a national anthem before a game. Thousands of strangers act as one people for a few minutes. That feeling has names.

A nation is a people who see themselves as sharing a history and an identity, often tied to a homeland.
Nationalism is the idea and feeling that a nation should govern itself, together with loyalty to that nation.
A nation-state is a state whose government claims to stand for one nation.

Week 7's state is a society with a central government that has the power to tax, make law, and enforce it. A nation-state adds a claim: that the government stands for one people. That claim is a claim, not a description, because most states hold people of many ethnicities. The course names these ideas in words and argues no current political question about any nation.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Describe a festival, holiday, or meal where you have seen a heritage claimed and displayed. Which parts were about ancestry, language, religion, or custom?
(b) Why might a government that claims to stand for one nation care how its people are counted and categorized?

Misconception check. Students often read ethnicity as the same as race, as if the two words were polite swaps for each other. That is tempting, because forms often ask about both together. But ethnicity is a shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs, while race is a society's classification of people by its reading of bodies. The cure: ask "is this about a shared heritage, or about how a society sorts bodies?"

6. Read census categories as the issuing body's own

Go back to the form one last time. The boxes on it were not invented by the clinic or the employer. They follow a standard written by a government office, so you can read them the way an anthropologist reads any category: as the category of the people who made it.

A census category is a category an issuing body uses to count and describe a population; the course teaches each one as that body's own category, not as a natural group.
The minimum categories are the seven race and ethnicity categories that the Office of Management and Budget's 2024 standard requires at a minimum, asked in one combined question.

Two issuing bodies say what their categories are. The Census Bureau states that its race categories reflect a social definition of race, not an attempt to define race biologically, anthropologically, or genetically, and that people may report more than one race. In 2024, the Office of Management and Budget revised its standards to use one combined race-and-ethnicity question with seven minimum categories, adding Middle Eastern or North African, and it describes the categories as socio-political constructs.

Worked example — reading the 2024 categories (Dataset G, real). Read the standard as its issuing body describes it, then set the two figures from Section 2 beside it.

The 2024 standard. The Office of Management and Budget's revision uses 1 combined race-and-ethnicity question with 7 minimum categories: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African American; Hispanic or Latino; Middle Eastern or North African; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and White.
The newly added category. Middle Eastern or North African is 1 of the 7, so 7 − 1 = 6 categories were not newly added in 2024.
The issuing body's own description. The Office of Management and Budget describes the 7 categories as socio-political constructs, and the Census Bureau states that its race categories reflect a social definition of race, not a biological, anthropological, or genetic one.
A "check all that apply" form (illustrative). The Census Bureau states that people may report more than one race, so 1 person who checks 2 boxes is still 1 person, and a tally of checked boxes can run higher than the count of people.
A tally of that form (illustrative, constructed for this course). 8 people return the form; 6 check 1 box and 2 check 2 boxes, so 6 × 1 + 2 × 2 = 10 checked boxes, 10 − 8 = 2 more checks than people, and 2 ÷ 8 × 100 = 25 percent of the people checked more than one box.
The two figures side by side. About 85 percent within populations (Lewontin) and about 94 percent within so-called racial groups (the Statement on Race) are 94 − 85 = 9 percentage points apart, yet both are above 50 percent.

Here is the reading in plain words: the 7 boxes on the form are categories that a government office made and can revise, as it did in 2024, while human variation itself is continuous and lies mostly within groups, so a census category is a social classification with real effects, not a natural biological group.

Notice the Week 7 move inside this reading. The office has the authority to draw the boxes, and people fill them in because they accept the office as rightful. Yet the office itself calls its categories socio-political constructs. Authority decides what the boxes are; it does not turn them into biology.

An honesty note on this reading: the course teaches what each body says about its own categories, and nothing more. It keys the 7 categories and the fact of the 2024 revision. It pins no population figure for any category, so if you meet one, treat it as a claim to check against the issuing body's own page and year.

Pause and think. Choose one option and answer it in two or three sentences:

(a) Why might an issuing body revise its categories, as the 2024 standard did by adding a category? What does a revision tell you about whether the categories are natural?
(b) Imagine you check 2 boxes on a "check all that apply" form. What does the form gain by letting you do that, and what does any box still leave out?

Misconception check. Students often read census categories as a scientific list of the natural races, because the categories come from a government and appear on official forms. That is tempting, because official forms feel authoritative. But the Census Bureau states that its race categories reflect a social definition of race, and the Office of Management and Budget calls its categories socio-political constructs. The cure: say "the Office of Management and Budget's categories" or "the Census Bureau's categories", never "the races".

Key terms

Human variation — The biological differences among people, such as skin color and body form; it is continuous and lies mostly within groups rather than between them. (first used: 1. See human variation as continuous)
Continuous variation — Variation in which a trait such as skin color changes gradually across geography rather than falling into separate boxes. (first used: 1. See human variation as continuous)
Within-group variation — The finding that most human variation lies within groups rather than between them; the figures for it come from different analyses and are stated with attribution, never as one settled number. (first used: 2. Locate most variation: within groups, not between them)
Statement on Race — The American Anthropological Association's 1998 statement that there is greater variation within so-called racial groups than between them and that race in the United States is a social mechanism invented during the eighteenth century. (first used: 2. Locate most variation: within groups, not between them)
Race — A social classification of people into groups that a society makes; the categories differ across places and times, and the inequality built around them has real effects, so race is not a set of natural biological groups. (first used: 4. Define race: a social classification with real effects)
Ethnicity — A shared identity based on ancestry, language, religion, or customs; it is not the same as race. (first used: 5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism)
Ethnic identity — How people claim and display their ethnicity, for example through food, music, language, dress, or a heritage festival. (first used: 5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism)
Nation — A people who see themselves as sharing a history and an identity, often tied to a homeland. (first used: 5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism)
Nationalism — The idea and feeling that a nation should govern itself, together with loyalty to that nation. (first used: 5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism)
Nation-state — A state whose government claims to stand for one nation. (first used: 5. Tell ethnicity from race, and name nationalism)
Census category — A category an issuing body uses to count and describe a population; the course teaches each one as that body's own category, not as a natural group. (first used: 6. Read census categories as the issuing body's own)
Minimum categories — The seven race and ethnicity categories that the Office of Management and Budget's 2024 standard requires at a minimum, asked in one combined question. (first used: 6. Read census categories as the issuing body's own)

Summary

Human variation is continuous; traits change gradually across geography.
Skin color tracks ancestral ultraviolet exposure and predicts no other trait.
Most variation lies within groups; cite each figure with its source.
Boas (1912) found immigrants' children differed in head form from their parents.
Race is made by societies and is real in its effects.
Ethnicity is a shared heritage; it is not the same as race.
A nation-state is a state whose government claims to stand for one nation.
The 2024 standard has 7 minimum categories, the issuing body's own.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative hiking club asks its 20 members to fill in a heritage sign-up sheet that says "check all that apply". 16 members check 1 box and 4 members check 2 boxes. How many boxes are checked in all, and why is that number larger than 20?
Two illustrative surveys of a town's commuters report that 62 percent and 70 percent ride a bike to work. A classmate says the surveys differ by "8 percent". Fix the wording and explain why.
Label each illustrative statement as race or ethnicity: (a) "The family celebrates its grandparents' New Year customs." (b) "The old law sorted residents by a reading of their skin color." (c) "The choir sings in its members' heritage language."
A classmate writes, "Race is a social construct, so it does not affect anyone's life." Name the wrong turn and rewrite the sentence so it is fair.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

The 16 members who check 1 box give 16 × 1 = 16 checks, and the 4 who check 2 boxes give 4 × 2 = 8 checks, so 16 + 8 = 24 boxes are checked. That is 24 − 20 = 4 more checks than members, because a person who checks 2 boxes is still 1 person.
A gap between two percentages is written in percentage points, so 70 − 62 = 8 percentage points. Saying "8 percent" would describe a share of a total, not the difference between two shares.
(a) Shared customs passed down in a family are ethnicity. (b) Sorting people by a society's reading of bodies is race. (c) A shared heritage language on display is ethnicity, here claimed as ethnic identity.
The sentence reads "race is a social construct" as "race has no real effects". A fair version: "Race is a social classification that societies make, and the inequality built around it has real effects on people's lives."

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week, Religion, Ritual, and Worldview turns from social categories to meaning, starting with the three phases of a rite of passage.

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