Recent Trends in the Study of Minority and Race Relations

The question of the scientific meaning of race embraces at least three topics: definition, origins, and the issue of equality versus superiority. Although these topics fall within the fields of anthropology, genetics, and social psychology more than sociology, they demand at least brief consideration here because their treatment sets much of the tone in which discussions of racial relations take place. In general, the period since World War II has been one in which an approach to racial definition through Mendelian genetics has come to the fore and consolidated its position, supplanting, or at least clarifying the underlying meaning of, an earlier anthropological focus on anthropometric measurements and phenotypic characteristics.1 In this conception, human race is defined as a population which differs significantly from other human populations in regard to the frequency of one

Biological anthropology · Epistemology · Meaning (existential · Population · Race (biology · Sociology · Anthropology · Demography · Gender Studies · Philosophy · Race, Genetics, and Society