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Negroid is a term used to describe one of the groups of craniofacial anthropometry, a view now mostly regarded as an over-simplification of the spectrum of human diversity. The concept's existence is based on the now discredited typological method of racial classification. Negroids are the most genetically diverse of the historically defined races, including both the world's tallest ethnic group (African Tutsis) and the world's shortest ethnic group (African pygmies).

Definitions

• The Oxford English Dictionary defines negroid as an adjective relating to the division of humankind represented by the indigenous peoples of central and southern Africa. ..The term Negroid is associated with outdated notions of racial types; it is potentially offensive and best avoided.

A craniofacial category

Forensic anthropologists study 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 or otherwise unrecognizable. The adjective "forensic" refers to the application of this subfield of science to a court of law. Craniofacial anthropometry of a person's remains can help determine what the person looked like when alive. Also, due to the requirements of the U.S. judicial system, U.S. forensic practitioners are sometimes asked to classify remains into one of the U.S. socially-enforced endogamous groups: Black, White, or East Asian. In legal practice, these are sometimes termed, respectively, "Negroid", "Caucasoid", and "Mongoloid", or even the older "Caucasian", "Negro", and "Oriental." Nowadays, the terms "Black", "White", and "East Asian" are the more common usage.

"Caucasoids" are generalized to have the lowest degree of projection of the alveolar ridge bones which contain the teeth, a notable size prominence of the cranium and forehead region, and a projection of the midfacial region. "Negroid" traits are generalized to include more rounded eye sockets; broader, more rounded nasal cavity; a forward-slanting facial profile (prognathism); and a dolichocephalic skull (proportionally longer from front to back).

Challenges

Although it is categorization of a skull is clear given arbitrary parameters, it will not locate the owners geographic ancestry concretely all the time. While one's perception of an individual's race can be affected by cultural aspects, the "race" of his skull is less ambiguous. As Dr. Stan Rhine put it, "...it is clear that race does mean different things to different people. In the context of forensic anthropology, the term race is unambiguous." Although their craniofacial race based on skull indeces is unambiguous, it will not pin point their geographic origins accurately all the time due to variation in skulls within a geographic region. While this method produces useful results for the population of the United States, it is likely that it would not be reliable for populations from other countries. This is due to the fact that the United States has traditionally had groups whose ancestry came from geographically distant locations, and which have generally remained endogamous in this country, for social reasons. As more immigrants from in between regions and as Americans become more racially mixed, such craniofacial identification is problematic.

Classification by craniofacial anthropometry does not necessarily coincide with genetic ancestry or social self-identification. For example, about one-third of so-called "White" Americans have detectable African DNA markers. 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.

References

1. O'Neil, Dennis. "Biological Anthropology Terms." 2006. May 13, 2007. Palomar College.
2. http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/negroid?view=uk
3. http://medstat.med.utah.edu/kw/osteo/forensics/race.html.
4. The Online Companion to California Newsreel's 3 part documentary about race and society, science and history, "Race — The Power of an Illusion", Ask the Experts section
5. Heather E. Collins-Schramm and others, "Markers that Discriminate Between European and African Ancestry Show Limited Variation Within Africa", Human Genetics 111 (2002): 566-9; Mark D. Shriver and others, "Skin Pigmentation, Biogeographical Ancestry, and Admixture Mapping", Human Genetics 112 (2003): 387-99.
6. E.J. Parra and others, "Ancestral Proportions and Admixture Dynamics in Geographically Defined African Americans Living in South Carolina", American Journal of Physical Anthropology 114 (2001): 18-29, Figure 1.
7. Carol Channing, Just Lucky I Guess: A Memoir of Sorts (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002); Gregory Howard Williams, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy who Discovered he was Black (New York: Dutton, 1995)

• Race (historical definitions)