Skin colour classifications of human groups have been used in historical racial classifications.
The number of categories was long recognized as subjective, and ethnic groups were placed in categories at different points throughout history. François Bernier (1684) questioned the validity of using skin colour as a racial characteristic, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1795) was associated with the five-colour categorization "Aethiopian or Black", "Caucasian or White", "Mongolian or Yellow", "American or Red", and "Malayan or Brown" subgroups, and Charles Darwin (1871) emphasized the gradual differences between categories.The Descent of Man p225,
There is broad agreement among modern scientists that typological conceptions of race have no scientific basis.Race Is Real, but not in the way Many People Think, Agustín Fuentes, Psychology Today.com, 9 April 2012
History
Antiquity to 1600s Categorization of racial groups by reference to skin color is common in classical antiquity."Among the Greeks and Romans who have provided the fullest description of blacks, the Africans' color was regarded as their most characteristic and most unusual feature. In this respect the ancients were not unlike whites of later generations who used color terms as a kind of shorthand to denote Africans and those of African descent." Frank M. Snowden, Before Color Prejudice: The Ancient View of Blacks, Harvard University Press, 1991, p. 7. For example, it is found in e.g. Physiognomica, a Greek treatise dated to c. 300 BC.
The transmission of the "color terminology" for race from antiquity to early anthropology in 17th century Europe took place via rabbinical literature. Specifically, Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer (a medieval rabbinical text dated roughly to between the 7th to 12th centuries) contains the division of mankind into three groups based on the three sons of Noah, viz. Shem, Ham and Japheth: "He [Noah] especially blessed Shem and his sons, (making them) black but comely [], and he gave them the habitable earth. He blessed Ham and his sons, (making them) black like the raven [], and he gave them as an inheritance the coast of the sea. He blessed Japheth and his sons, (making) them entirely white [], and he gave them for an inheritance the desert and its fields" (trans. Gerald Friedlander 1916, p. 172f.)
This division in Rabbi Eliezer and other rabbinical texts is received by Georgius Hornius (1666). In Hornius' scheme, the Japhetites (identified as Scythians, an Iranic ethnic group and Celts) are "white" (), the Aethiopians and Chamae are "black" (), and the Indians and Semites are "brownish-yellow" (), and almost all Jews being neither black nor white but "light brown" (, the color of boxwood), following Mishnah Sanhedrin, they accordingly are classified as Semites.Arca Noae, sive historia imperiorum et regnorum ̀condito orbe ad nostra tempora. Officina Hackiana, Leiden 1666, p. 37. Alias pro colorum diversitate commode quoque distinxeris posteros Noachi in albos, qui sunt Scythae & Japhetaei, nigros, qui sunt Aethiopes & Chamae, flavos, qui sunt Indi & Semaei. Ita Iudaei in Glossea Misnae tractatu Sanhedrin. fol. 18. dicuntur ut buxus, nec nigri nec albi, quales fere sunt omnes a Semo orti.
François Bernier in a short article published anonymously in 1684 moves away from the "Noahide" classification, proposes to consider large subgroups of mankind based not on geographical distribution but on physiological differences. Writing in French, Bernier uses the term , or synonymously "kind, species", where Hornius had used "tribe" or "people". Bernier explicitly rejects a categorization based on skin color, arguing that the dark skin of Indians is due to exposure to the Sun only, and that the yellowish colour of some Asians, while a genuine feature, is not sufficient to establish a separate category. Instead his first category comprises most of Europe, the Near East and North Africa, including populations in the Nile Valley and the Indian peninsula he describes as being of a near "black" skin tone due to the effect of the sun. His second category includes most of Sub-Saharan Africa, again not exclusively based on skin colour but on physiological features such as the shape of nose and lips. His third category includes Southeast Asia, China and Japan as well as part of Tatarstan (Central Asia and eastern Muscovy). Members of this category are described as white, the categorization being based on facial features rather than skin colour. His fourth category are the Lapps (Lappons), described as a savage race with faces reminiscent of bears (but for which the author admits to rely on hearsay). Finally, the natives of the Americas are considered as a fifth category, described as of "olive" () skin tone. The author furthermore considers the possible addition of more categories, specifically the "blacks of the Cape of Good Hope", which seemed to him to be of significantly different build from most other populations below the Sahara.Anonymous [F. Bernier], "Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races qui l'habitent", Journal des Sçavants, 24 April 1684, p. 133–140. See also Charles Frankel, La science face au racisme (1986), 41f.
Early Modern physical anthropology In the 1730s, Carl Linnaeus in his introduction of systematic taxonomy recognized four main human subspecies, termed (Americans), (Europeans), (Asians) and (Africans). The physical appearance of each type is briefly described, including colour adjectives referring to skin and hair colour: "red" and "black hair" for Americans, "white" and "yellowish hair" for Europeans, "yellowish, sallow", "swarthy hair" for Asians, and "black", "coal-black hair" for Africans.Linnaeus, Syst. Nat. ed. 10 Vol. 1. p. 21.
The views of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach on the categorization of the major races of mankind developed over the course of the 1770s to 1820s. He introduced a four-fold division in 1775, extended to five in 1779, later borne out in his work on craniology (Decas craniorum, published during 1790–1828). He also used color as the name or main label of the races but as part of the description of their physiology. Blumenbach does not name his five groups in 1779 but gives their geographic distribution. The color adjectives used in 1779 are "white" (Caucasian race), "yellow-brown" (Mongolian race), "black" (Aethiopian race), "copper-red" (American race) and "black-brown" (Malayan race). Blumenbach belonged to a group known as the Göttingen school of history, which helped to popularize his ideas.
Blumenbach's division and choice of color-adjectives remained influential throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, with variation depending on author. René Lesson in 1847 presented a division into six groups based on simple color adjectives: White (Caucasian), Dusky (South Asian), Orange (Austronesian), Yellow (East Asian), Red (Indigenous American), Black (African). According to Barkhaus (2006)A. Barkhaus, "Rassen" in: Hansjörg Bay, Kai Merten (eds.) Die Ordnung der Kulturen: zur Konstruktion ethnischer, nationaler und zivilisatorischer Differenzen 1750-1850 (2006), p. 39–44. it was the adoption of both the colour terminology and the French term by Immanuel Kant in 1775 which proved influential. Kant published an essay Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen "On the diverse races of mankind" in 1775, based on the system proposed by Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, in which he recognized four groups, a "white" European race (), a "black" Negroid race (), a copper-red Kalmyk race () and an olive-yellow Indian race ().Kant (1775:432), cited after Barkhaus (2006:44).
Two historical anthropologists favored a binary racial classification system that divided people into a light skin and dark skin categories. 18th-century anthropologist Christoph Meiners, who first defined the Caucasian race, posited a "binary racial scheme" of two races with the Caucasian whose racial purity was exemplified by the "venerated... ancient Germans", although he considered some Europeans as impure "dirty whites"; and "Mongolians", who consisted of everyone else.Painter, Nell Irvin. Yale University. "Why White People are Called Caucasian?" 2003. September 27, 2007. ; Keevak, Michael. Becoming Yellow: A Short History of Racial Thinking. Princeton University Press, 2011. . Meiners did not include the Jews as Caucasians and ascribed them a "permanently degenerate nature".Eigen, Sara. The German Invention of Race. Suny Press:New York, 2006. p.205 Hannah Franzieka identified 19th-century writers who believed in the "Caucasian hypothesis" and noted that "Jean-Julien Virey and Louis Antoine Desmoulins were well-known supports of the idea that Europeans came from Mount Caucasus."Franzieka, Hannah. Berghahn Books: 2004. James Cowles Prichard's Anthropology: Remaking the Science of Man in Early In his political history of racial identity, Bruce Baum wrote, "Jean-Joseph Virey (1774–1847), a follower of Christoph Meiners, claimed that "the human races... may divided... into those who are fair and white and those who are dark or black."Baum, Bruce David. The Rise and Fall of the Caucasian Race: A Political History of Racial Identity. New York University: 2006.
Lothrop Stoddard in The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920) considered five races: White, Black, Yellow, Brown, and Amerindian (Red). In this explicitly white supremacist exposition of racial categorization, the "white" category is much more limited than in Blumenbach's scheme, essentially restricted to Europeans, while the separate "brown" category is introduced for non-European Caucasoid subgroups in North Africa, Western, Central and South Asia.
Racial categories after 1945
Following World War II, more and more biologists and anthropologists began to discontinue use of the term "race" due to its association with political ideologies of racism. Thus, The Race Question statement by the UNESCO, in the 1950s, proposed to substitute the term "ethnic groups" to the concept of "race". Categories such as Europid, Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid remain in use in fields such as forensic anthropology.Adams, Bradley J. (2007). Forensic Anthropology. USA: Chelsea House. Page 44. Retrieved June 12, 2017, from link.
Color terminology remains in use in some countries with multiracial populations for the purpose of their official census, as in the United States, where the official categories are "Black", "White", "Asian", "Native American and Alaska Natives" and "Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders" and in the United Kingdom (since 1991) with official categories "White", "Asian" and "Black". Conversely, it is uncommon in English speaking countries to use "Yellow" to refer to Asian people or "Red" to refer to Indigenous peoples of the Americas. This is due to historic negative associations of the terms (ex. Yellow Peril and Redskin). However, some Asians have tried to reclaim the word by proudly self-identifying as "Yellow". Similarly, some Native Americans have tried to reclaim the term "Red".
Much of the color-based classification relates to groups that were politically significant at different points in US history (e.g., part of a wave of immigrants), and these categories do not have an obvious label for people from other groups, such as people from the Middle East or Central Asia. However, many Middle Eastern and South Asian people in the Anglophone world self-identify as "Brown", considering their skin color central to their identity. Many Hispanics, particularly mestizos, have self-identified as the Bronze race () since the 20th century. The term "Olive" has sometimes been used to refer variously to Mediterranean European, West Asian, Latin American, Southeast Asian and North African people.
Symbolism and uses of color terminology