Ethnicity

“ At least five distinct races are, as we know, universally recognized by ethnographers, — namely, the yellow or Asiatic race, the brown or Malays, the copper-colored or American-Indian, the negro or African, and,the Caucasian or white race. ”

“ In our imagination the local racial types of Europe have been identified with the modern nations, and thus the supposed hereditary characteristics of the races have been confused with national characteristics. An identification of racial type, of language, and of nationality has been made, that has gained an exceedingly strong hold on our imagination. ”

“ It is assumed as a working principle that each ethnic group has or tends to have an individuality of its own, and, moreover, that the members of such a group think, feel, and act primarily as the representatives, so to speak, of that ethnic individuality in which they live, move, and have their being. That is to say, a social as contrasted with an individual psychology must, it is held, pronounce both the first and last word regarding all matters of mythology, religion, and art in its numerous forms. ”

“ The only sure and scientific method of grouping the tribes of men, to show their descent and affiliations, is by the evidence of language. The grouping of men by their languages constitutes the science of ethnology.
2. Ethnologically speaking, the terms "race" and "linguistic stock" are synonymous. The people of each linguistic stock, in their original and unmixed condition, are distinguished from those of other stocks by various peculiarities of physical traits and character, as well as of religion, customs, and arts. ”

“ This is the standing point, whether of history which is the politics of the past, or of politics which are the history of the present. From this point of view, we may say unhesitatingly that there are such things as races and nations, and that to the grouping of those races and nations language is the best guide. We cannot undertake to define with any philosophical precision the exact distinction between race and race, between nation and nation. ”

“ RACE AND DEMOCRACY Failure to recognize the clear distinction between race and nationality and the still greater distinction between race and language and the easy assumption that the one is indicative of the other have been in the past serious impediments to an understanding of racial values. Historians and philologists have approached the subject from the viewpoint of linguistics and as a result we are to-day burdened with a group of mythical races, such as the Latin, the Aryan, the Indo-Germanic, the Caucasian and, perhaps, most inconsistent of all, the Celtic race. ”

“ Reflections such as these teach us how closely the study of ethnographic science is related to practical politics. Ethnography, indeed, is the necessary basis of correct history and sound statesmanship. It offers to history a foundation on natural law; it explains events by showing their dependence on the physical structure, the mental pecularities, and the geographic surroundings of the peoples engaged in them; it presents, in its present pictures of savage life, the condition of the highest nations in the earlier stages of their culture. ”

“ Perhaps one of the most unerring indications of the native capacities and tendencies of a race is to be found in its ethnic religion, its mythology, its childlike, untutored attitude towards the riddles of the universe. ”

“ The White Race and its Three Groups.—The so-called White Race embraces the historic nations. The chief peoples of this division of mankind fall into three groups,—the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan [3] or Indo-European. The members forming any one of these groups must not be looked upon as kindred in blood; the only certain bond uniting the peoples of each group is the bond of language. ”

“ To obtain the truest expression of the folk-mind and feeling is to reveal much of the inner-consciousness of a race. And the knowledge of those evidences which are most representative of race life constitutes the groundwork of a knowledge of social and moral tendencies, hence of social and moral needs. The student of race traits and tendencies must accept testimony from within the race, and in the study of race character the value of true expressions of the feelings and mental imagery cannot be overestimated. ”

“ In dealing with them as a race, a people, therefore, I do as I would with my own race, I take what to me seem to be racial characteristics, or in other words, the things that are manifested in the lives of the best men and women, and which seem to represent their habitual aims, ambitions, and desires. ”

“ When people speak of the influence of ‘race’ on national character and institutions, they may, and sometimes do, mean by ‘race’ the sum of innate inborn qualities or tendencies of the people at any given point of history. On the other hand, by influence of race they may mean the influence of the prehistoric races which have entered into the social composition of the nation—that is, those races from which its population is descended. ”

“ By such comparisons ethnology aims to define in clear terms the influence which the geographical and other environment exercises on the individual, the social group, and the race; and, conversely, how much in each remains unaltered by the external forces, and what residual elements are left, defiant of surroundings, wholly personal, purely human. ”

“ The feeling which was once confined to the mere household extended itself to the tribe or the city. From the tribe or city it extended itself to the nation; from the nation it is beginning to extend itself to the whole race. In some cases it can extend itself to the whole race far more easily than in others. In some cases historical causes have made nations of the same race bitter enemies, while they have made nations of different races friendly allies. ”

“ That branch of anthropology which treats of the actual distribution of the human race in its different divisions, as distinguished by physical character, language, institutions, and customs, in contradistinction to ethnography, which treats historically of the origin and filiation of races and nations. ”

“ It is history as influenced by the hereditary impulses, predispositions and tendencies which, as highly distinctive racial traits, date back many thousands of years and were originally formed when man was still in the tribal state, long before the advent of civilization. ”

“ We should also find representatives of different races on more advanced levels, like the negroes of Central Africa, the Indians of the Southwestern pueblos, and the Polynesians; and in our present period we may find representatives of the most diverse races taking part in the highest types of civilization. Thus it will be seen that there is no close relation between race and culture. ”

“ By a geographical or racial arrangement the general culture of each distinct race is made the prominent feature of the collection, and it is therefore more strictly ethnological, whereas in the arrangement which I have adopted, the development of specific ideas and their transmission from one people to another, or from one locality to another, is made more apparent, and it is therefore of greater sociological value. ”

“ In considering racial or native homogeneity, we touch upon one aspect of a much disputed question, the influence of race on national character and history, in regard to which the greatest diversity of opinion has prevailed and still prevails. ”

“ While there is not in any nation, in any race, any such thing as strict purity of blood, yet there is in each nation, in each race, a dominant element--or rather something more than an element--something which is the true essence of the race or nation, something which sets its standard and determines its character, something which draws to itself and assimilates to itself all other elements. ”

“ Practically all historians, while using the word race, have relied on tribal or national names as its sole definition. The ancients, like the moderns, in determining ethnical origin did not look beyond a man’s name, language or country and the actual information furnished by classic literature on the subject of physical characters is limited to a few scattered and often obscure remarks. ”

“ On examining attentively the different “ethnic groups” commonly called “peoples,” “nations,” “tribes,” etc., we ascertain that they are distinguished from each other especially by their language, their mode of life, and their manners; and we ascertain besides that the same traits of physical type are met with in two, three, or several groups, sometimes considerably removed the one from the other in point of habitat. ”

“ Nationality is a psychological concept or state of mind. Race is a physiological fact, which may be accurately determined by scientific tests such as skull-measurement, hair-formation, and colour of eyes and skin. In other words, race is what people anthropologically really are; nationality is what people politically think they are. ”

“ The old term ethnology has a far more limited and definite meaning. It is the study of the different peoples or races who compose the varied population of the world, including their physical characters, their intellectual and moral development, their languages, social customs, opinions, and beliefs; their origin, history, migrations, and present geographical distribution, and their relations to each other. ”

“ THE QUESTION OF COMPLEXION.
The tendency of scientific thought in ethnology is in the direction of giving more and more importance to the race characteristics, such as height, color of the hair, eyes and skin, and the formation of the skull and body generally, than to language. The language possessed by a people may be merely the result of conquest or migration. ”

“ No more inappropriate ethnological name was ever propounded than that of Caucasian for a fancied division of the human family, the cream of mankind, from which the civilized peoples of Europe are supposed to have sprung. ”

“ The range of complexion among mankind, beginning with the tint of the fair-whites of Northern Europe and the dark-whites of Southern Europe, passes to the brownish-yellow of the Malays, and the full-brown of American tribes, the deep-brown of Australians, and the black-brown of Negros. ”

“ Nowhere can the real existence of a race be discovered, but we find two or three types, even among the most savage and most isolated tribes. Special ethnography relates to the description of each people; general ethnography to common questions of manners, customs, aptitudes, industries, beliefs, institutions; to the past of the race, the environment, circumstances in the evolution of humanity ”

“ But there are a hundred subordinate questions which come home for decision to the bosoms of all readers and thinkers, travellers and writers, to whom the race itself, viewed as a broken link in the ethnological chain, is a fruitful theme, both for retrospection and for actual observation. ”

“ The distinction between the conceptions of race, language and nationality should, at the very outset, be clearly established. Race deals with man both as a physical creature and as a being endowed with spiritual qualities. Tall, blond men constitute a race distinct from their fellows who combine stockiness and brunetness. The basis of differentiation in this case is anatomical. ”

“ MY FATHER
vii PREFACE European history has been written in terms of nationality and of language, but never before in terms of race; yet race has played a far larger part than either language or nationality in moulding the destinies of men; race implies heredity and heredity implies all the moral, social and intellectual characteristics and traits which are the springs of politics and government. ”

“ From the facts of ethnology I now turn to the theories and speculations of ethnologists, which have been devised to explain these facts, and to furnish satisfactory answers to the inquiry—what conditions have determined the existence of the persistent modifications of mankind, and have caused their distribution to be what it is? ”

“ Work, making a clear statement as to the meaning of the movement to study Negro life and history and setting forth the plans to save the records of the black race that the Negro may not, like the Indian, leave no written account of his thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and achievements. ”

“ Together, they make up the social unit, at first the family or clan, itself becoming part of a larger unit, a tribe, nation or people. The typical folk, or ethnos, is a social unit, the members of which are bound together by certain traits common to all or most, which impart to them a prevailing character, an organic unity, specific peculiarities and general tendencies. ”

“ Ethnology, as it is understood by some students, has to do with peoples, groups of mankind separated from other groups, linguistically, physically or geographically, but has nothing to do with "race." Race is thought to be purely a zoological question. Others understand ethnology to be the study of races of men, varieties in the zoological sense, and their subdivisions into smaller groups, peoples. ”

“ There are certain ethnic units or races which for periods ranging from five hundred to two thousand years have produced character, and through character the great contributions that have been made to human culture and have been expressed through men of distinction, dynamic force, and vivid personality. ”

“ We can show that the same races have ever been distinguished by the same characteristics—some superior morally, some physically, some intellectually—some exhibiting maritime tastes, others agricultural, others pastoral. Every race has its own modes of thinking; every race has its own civilization, in which it cannot educate another. ”