Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid, Australoid

Caucasoid, Negroid (Capoid and Congoid), Mongoloid, Australoid are terms that were once widely used in physical anthropology to delineate different races of humans. Caucasoid denoted people indigenous to Europe, North Africa, Western Asia, South Asia and the Western portion of Central Asia, although the 19th century anthropologist Hans F.K. Günther considered Tibetans to be a Caucasoid and Mongoloid mix. Negroid denoted those indigenous to sub-Saharan AfricaDifferences between Pakistanis and Indians. 2004. August 14, 2006. <http://www.geocities.com/pak_history/differences.html>.</ref> and anthropologist Thomas Huxley also classifies India as predominately Australoid. Geneticist Cavalli-Sforza however decribes Pakistanis and Indians as Caucasian. Mongoloid designated the people of East Asia especially North-East Asia (South-East Asians, including South Chinese, have significant Australoid type admixture), the Eastern portion of Central Asia, the Americas, Greenland, Polynesia and the easternmost regions of South Asia, although 19th century anthropologist Egon Freiherr von Eickstedt considered Eastern and Central Europeans to be Mongoloids as well and Thomas Huxley considered the Greeks and Western Turks to be a Mongoloid-Caucasoid mix. Australoid denoted the indigenous peoples of Melanesia, Micronesia and Australia, although anthropologist Thomas Huxley considered Western Europeans, Southern Europeans, North Africans, Middle Easterns to be a Caucasoid and Australoid mix and Central India to be pure Australoid. Finally, Capoid (denoted the Khoi and San populations of Southern Africa) and Congoid are the two main divisions within Negroids.

These terms originally denoted skull types and sprang from the technique known as craniofacial anthropometry, but have fallen somewhat in scientific use over the past century. The terms appear in two main usages today. They are used in forensic anthropology, and they are used in several fields as euphemisms for racist terms that came to be seen as offensive about thirty years ago. In the past, they were more widely used in craniofacial anthropometry in phylogeography.

• For an explanation of human genetic variation, see human genetic variation.
• For an overview of the different social interpretations of race, see social interpretations of race.

Origin of the terms in craniofacial anthropometry

In professional peer-reviewed venues today, the terms Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid are used in two different ways. First, they are used in the strict original sense of defined skull types. This usage is found today only in forensics. Second, they are used less precisely as labels for the classification of human populations, classifications that are usually called "races" but are sometimes euphemized as clusters, clines, ethnicities, and the like. There are people specifically in each asian region which have halves of each social group. eg. Tsinoy, Mestizo

The terms' original strict usage as skull types sprang from a technique known as craniofacial anthropometry. The technique is used in physical anthropology and comprises precise and systematic measurement of the bones of the human skull. Among its more important applications are: forensics, facial reconstruction, and paleoanthropology. The field of phylogeography, on the other hand, once relied heavily on this technique but no longer does so. For more on skull types as determined by craniofacial anthropometry, please see that specific article.

Strict usage as skull types in forensics

Forensic anthropology is the application of the science of physical anthropology and human osteology (the study of the human skeleton) in a legal setting, most often in criminal cases where the victim's remains are more or less skeletonized. A forensic anthropologist can also assist in the identification of deceased individuals whose remains are decomposed, burned, mutilated or otherwise unrecognizable. The adjective "forensic" refers to the application of this subfield of science to a court of law.

Due to the requirements of the U.S. judicial system, U.S. forensic practitioners are sometimes asked to classify remains into one of the three U.S. endogamous groups: Black, White, or Asian. In legal practice, these are sometimes termed, respectively, "Negroid," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloid" (although "Black," "White," and "Asian" are the more common usage.) For a simple example of how this is done, see: Example of "Racial" Determination.

Although their methodology is seemingly objective, forensic anthropologists agree that attempts to apply criteria from craniofacial anthropometry, regularly yield counter-intuitive results depending upon the weight given to each feature. Their application invariably results in finding some East and South Indians to have "Negroid" skulls and others to have "Caucasoid" skulls, for example, while Ethiopians, Somalis, and some Zulus have "Caucasoid" skulls, and the Khoisan of southwestern Africa have "Mongoloid" skulls. It should be noted that Ethiopians lack the broad features of other Negroids and genetic studies find they have 40% Caucasoid genetic admixture.

In addition, about one-third of so-called "White" Americans have detectable African DNA markers that would forensically categorize them as "Negroid." And about five percent of so-called "Black" Americans have no detectable "Negroid" traits at all, neither craniofacial nor in their DNA. In short, given three Americans, one who self-identifies and is socially accepted as U.S. White, another one who self-identifies and is socially accepted as U.S. Black, and one who self-identifies and is socially accepted as U.S. Hispanic, and given that they have precisely the same Afro-European mix of ancestries (one "mulatto" grandparent), there is quite literally no objective test that will identify their U.S. endogamous group membership without an interview. In practice, the application of such forensic criteria ultimately comes down to whether the skull "looks Negroid," "Caucasoid," or "Mongoloid" in the eye of each U.S. forensic practitioner.

Although such subjectivity makes the practice of forensic anthropology an imperfect science, it does not invalidate it in the eyes of its practitioners or of the U.S. judicial system. The point made is that the "racial" type of any specific skull need not (and sometimes does not) reflect the socio-political ethnic group with which which the skull's owner was affiliated in life. For details, see: Challenges to the "Races" of Skulls.

Imprecise usage as labels for human classification

The terms "Caucasoid," "Negroid," "Mongoloid," and similar ones with the "oid" suffix are also used in several fields as euphemisms for racialist terms that came to be seen as offensive about fifty years ago. Scientific support for the Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid terminology has fallen steadily over the past century. Where 78 percent of the articles in the 1931 Journal of Physical Anthropology employed these or similar synonymous terms reflecting a bio-race paradigm, only 36 percent did so in 1965, and just 28 percent did in 1996. In February, 2001, the editors of the medical journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine asked authors to no longer use "race" as explanatory variable nor to use obsolescent terms. Others prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as the New England Journal of Medicine and the American Journal of Public Health have done the same. Furthermore, the National Institutes of Health recently issued a program announcement for grant applications through February 1, 2006, specifically seeking researchers who can investigate and publicize among primary care physicians the detrimental effects on the nation's health of the practice of medical racial profiling using such terms. The program announcement quoted the editors of one journal as saying that, "analysis by race and ethnicity has become an analytical knee-jerk reflex."

Two criticisms are often leveled at the usage of these terms in scientific venues. The first objection to Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid and similar terms is that they perpetuate the simplistic and demonstrably false notion that H. sapiens can genetically be divided into a specific set of 3-8 distinct groups, clusters, clines, races, breeds, varieties, or subspecies, which can then be objectively delineated. Humanity can be grouped or classified in many different ways, of course, either genetically (as, for instance, by blood type, lactose tolerance, skin tone, or the neutral markers of prehistoric migrations) or politically (as in EEOC regulations or the exhortations of Pan-Black Afrocentrists, for example). And whether any such classification scheme matches any particular individual's notion of "race" depends entirely upon the individual. As R.S. Cooper puts it, "Each time the technical facade of these racialist arguments is destroyed, the latest jargon and half-truths from the margins of science are used to rebuild them around the same core belief in Black inferiority. Because race is in part a genetic concept, the advent of molecular DNA technology has opened an important new chapter in this story. Unfortunately, the article... begins from mistaken premises and merely restates the racialist view using the terminology of molecular genetics." For a more complete discussion of this debate, see the main article Race.

The second objection is more pertinent to this discussion. It is that since such terms lack a current consensus denotation in science, their use makes papers difficult if not impossible to understand. A sampling of such criticisms in scholarly peer-reviewed professional papers include:

• "Race equality as a matter of governance has gained momentum in most Western countries and is reflected in race/ethnicity data collection in administrative systems and the attention accorded to terminology by census agencies. However, the vocabulary of health care--both in its literature and the language of officialdom--has proved resistant to the use of this lexicon of acceptable terms.... What makes such language racist is the historical legacy it carries--that is, its symbolic importance."
• "We find that commonly used ethnic labels are both insufficient and inaccurate representations of the inferred genetic clusters.... We note, however, that the complexity of human demographic history means that there is no obvious natural clustering scheme, nor an obvious appropriate degree of resolution."
• "Although quality research in this field is most welcome, concern is mounting over the confusing and often inappropriate labeling of populations under study."
• "Given the widespread and often inconsistent use of this terminology in both text and tables, resulting in confusion or ambiguity about the populations being described, it is important that this issue is addressed."
• "Medical definitions of race have lagged behind [in the elimination of the imprecise and inaccurate terms Caucasoid, Negroid, and Mongoloid]...."

Some critics go on to affirm that usage of these terms (Caucasoid, Negroid, Mongoloid) has declined in recent years. According to a current undergraduate physical anthropology text, "...Europeans, Africans, and Asians (often referred to by the archaic terms 'Caucasoid,' 'Negroid', and 'Mongoloid,' which are almost never used in scientific research today)." According to M.A. Winkler "thankfully the former Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) terms such as Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and Australoid rarely appear in biomedical literature."

And yet, although many scholarly articles criticize usage of the terms, and apparently no one in scholarly venues defends their use, the terms continue to appear in the literature. Such usages generally fall into two groups: admixture mapping and "ethnic" medicine.

Admixture mapping

A few recent articles use the terms of interest and similar ones as synonymous for continent-of-ancestry regarding ancestry-informative markers. E.g.: "Cuban subjects average 40% Caucasoid, 40% Negroid, and 20% Mestizoid DNA markers," rather than the more common and standard ""Cuban subjects average 40% European, 40% African, and 20% Native American DNA markers." This usage is particularly strange since the coinage "mestizoid" is illogical. Rather than denoting a known phenotype, "mestizo" is simply the Spanish word for a person of indeterminate Spanish with Native American admixture. Even so, it must be said that most admixture mapping articles use the more standard current terms: "European," "African," etc. Click here to see a table showing a typical array of 39 DNA markers used to identify the ancestral continent of origin of New-World peoples.

For details on admixture mapping, see the main article: Admixture Mapping.

"Ethnic" medicine

Some medical research into ethnicity-dependent diseases determines patient/subject ethnicity by questionnaire. This is because asking someone their "ethnicity" is sometimes a more reliable indicator of socio-political identity group than either craniofacial anthropometry or DNA markers. Nevertheless, researchers sometimes report the results of studies of disease and disease resistance associated with questionnaire-based ethnic self-identity as "races," and they employ the old craniofacial anthropometry terms "Negroid," "Caucasoid," and "Mongoloid." It might be simpler, less confusing to the reader, and surely no more offensive, if they just reported the actual terms from their "ethnicity" questionnaire (usually "White," "Black," or "Asian"). The use of these terms is likely in the spirit of professional "expertism".

Past usages

Phylogeography

Phylogeography (see main article) is the science of identifying and tracking major long-distance migrations that bands of humans undertook, especially in prehistoric times. For a detailed account of Human migrations see that article. Before the discovery of the DNA code, the terms of interest were often used. There was never any consistency among the different ways of classifying human populations around the globe, other than mere use of the term "races." Probably the most influential system in the United States was that devised by craniofacial anthropometrist Carleton S. Coon. Almost all such classification schemes have included the term "Caucasoid." Coon's system was unique in that it discarded "Negroid," split sub-Saharan African into Congoid and Capoid, and split the far east into Mongoloid and Australoid. For details, see the article: Craniofacial Anthropometry In Phylogeography.

The terms Negroid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid began to fall out of favor in phylography when the field switched from depending upon craniofacial anthropometry to using DNA markers. DNA reveals that human variation is far more complex (and ironically, that humans are far more alike genetically) than could ever have been imagined in the past.

Another problem with applying terms from craniofacial anthropometry to phylogeography was that some anthropologists saw similarities between European and Neandertal skulls. Recent DNA studies have conclusively shown that Neandertals were a separate species.

Classism via racialism

The terms "Negroid" and "Caucasoid" have been used in the past to justify racism. Because of this usage in the past the terms were also co-opted into supporting the British class system.

After Darwin popularized the idea that humans are descended from apes, the prognathous (protruding) jaw became a sign of lower development and of a closer relationship to primitive man. It also became the basis of much racial stereotyping of the Irish, and racial anthropologists argued that working class people were more prognathous than their social superiors- who were- self-flatteringly described as also biologically superior. In his very influential book, The Races of Man (1862), John Beddoe, the future president of the Anthropological Institute, emphasized the vast difference between the prognathous (protruding) and orthognathous (less prominent) jawed people of Britain. These were terms originally The Irish, Welsh, and significantly, the lower class people, were among the prognathous, whereas all men of genius were orthognathous. (Beddoe also developed an Index of Nigressence, from which he argued that the Irish were close to Cro-Magnon man and thus had links with the "Africinoid" races!) These activities were reminiscent of Pieter Camper's theory of a 'facial angle'. One should emphasize, however, that such craniological and anthropometric studies "always represented a minority" of the papers presented at the Anthropological Institute, 1871-1899. These late nineteenth-century anatomical and anthropological descriptions of 'races' and their characteristics, measurements etc. were later the inspiration for the sort of mid twentieth-century racial anthropology as promulgated in Nazi Germany. (Anthony S. Wohl & John van Wyhe, [2])

External links

• Caucasoid Subraces Classification by Carleton S. Coon.