9.1 The Science and Social Construction of Race and Ethnicity

LO 9.1: Explain how race and ethnicity are socially constructed.

Recall from Chapter 6 that sociologists use the term race to refer to the socially constructed categories into which social groups assign people based on assumed physical, biological, and ancestral characteristics. The practice of classifying humans into distinct racial groups began in the seventeenth century to justify slavery. Governments first set up sociopolitical categories of race. Then, governments, scientists, and others searched for biological markers to defend the existence of racial categories, resulting in differential treatment according to race (Morning, 2014).