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Template:Totally-disputed Negroid is an adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a presumed race of people mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. The term has its etymological roots in the Latin word nigrum (black), with the earliest recorded use of the term "Negroid" in 1859. In modern use, the term is associated with "the division of humankind represented by the indigenous peoples of central and southern Africa", and is commonly associated with outdated notions of racial typology which have been widely discredited in scientific circles — for modern usage it is generally associated with outdated racial notions, and is discouraged, as it is potentially offensive.

Though the term Negroid is still used in certain disciplines such as craniometry and epidemiology, its usage is in decline. Even in a medical context, some scholars have recommended that the term Negroid should be avoided in scientific writings because of its association with racism and race science. This mirrors the decline in usage of the term Negro, which fell out of favor following the campaigns of the American civil rights movement — the term Negro became associated with periods of legalized discrimination, and was rejected by African Americans during the 1960s for Black.

Scientific uses of the term

In physical anthropology the term is one of the three general racial classifications of humans — Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Under this classification scheme, humans are divisible into broad sub-groups based on phenotypic characteristics such as cranial and skeletal morphology. Such classifications remain in use today in the fields of anthropology and forensics to help identify the ethnicity, lineage and origin of human remains.

Later extensions, such as Carleton S. Coon's "Origin of Races" placed this theory in an evolutionary context — Coon divided the species homo sapiens into five groups, Caucasoid, Capoid, Congoid, Australoid, and Mongoloid, based on his belief of their date of evolution from homo erectus. Labeling Congoids the "African Negroes" or "Pygmies", he divided indigenous Africans into two distinct groups based on their date of origin, and loosened classification from mere appearance — however, this lead to disagreement between approaches to dating divergence, and consequent conflicting results.

These theories were quickly criticized on the basis that such "sorting criteria" do not (in general) produce meaningful results, and that evolutionary divergence was extremely improbable over the given time-frames. As Monatagu (1963) said,

The notion that five subspecies or geographic races of Homo erectus "evolved independently into Homo sapiens not once but five times" at different times and in different places, seems to me a very far-fetched one. Coon has striven valiantly, to make out a case for this theory, but it simply does not square with the biological facts. Species and subspecies simply do not develop that way. The transmutation of one species into another is a very gradual process

Today, most scientists view human variation as distributed clinally, often without any sharp discontinuities. While acknowledging the existence of human variation among groups, anthropologists have abandoned the view that clearly delineated, discrete racial entities exist, since there often is considerable overlap in characteristics among the populations. Furthermore, in at least one study most of the variation in physical traits found was among individuals within the so-called racial groups.

In modern craniofacial anthropometry Negroid describes certain stereotypical features associated with skull types of people indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. This classification system was primarily used in the racial determination of skeletal remains in the United States. However, even this system of classification has been criticized for only working in the situations such as the United States, where the populations are derived from geographically distant locations. For example, a recent study of ancient Nubian crania concluded:

The assignment of skeletal racial origin is based principally upon stereotypical features found most frequently in the most geographically distant populations. While this is useful in some contexts (for example, sorting skeletal material of largely West African ancestry from skeletal material of largely Western European ancestry), it fails to identify populations that originate elsewhere and misrepresents fundamental patterns of human biological diversity.

Vincent Sarich, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California defines race as "populations...within a species that are separated geographically from other such populations...and distinguishable from them on the basis of heritable features." With 73 appropriate DNA markers, according to Sarich, it is possible to state with close to 100 percent accuracy whether the ancestors of the individual who supplied them came from Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Americas. Sarich notes that the latest data suggest the migrations from Africa began only around 50,000 years ago. Then, pointing to the observed heritable differences among the resulting populations--differences not only in skin color but also in body size, cranial capacity and brain size, intelligence, physical ability, and personality--he argues that so much adaptation in so little time means that racial differences had to be enormously important for survival. The differences were not trivial, and could not have been driven by chance.

See also

• -oid
• Africoid
• Race (historical definitions)

References

1. ^ O'Neil, Dennis (2007-07-03). "Modern Human Variation: Glossary of Terms". Behavioral Sciences Department, Palomar College. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
2. Harper, Douglas (November 2001). "Online Etymological Dictionary". Retrieved 2007-11-06.
3. ^ "Ask Oxford - Definition of Negroid". Oxford Dictionary of English. 2007. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
4. Agyemang, Charles (2005). "Negro, Black, Black African, African Caribbean, African American or what? Labelling African origin populations in the health arena in the 21st century". Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. 59: 1014–1018. doi:0.1136/jech.2005.035964. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite journal}}: Check |doi= value (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
5. Jackson Jr., John (June 2001). ""In Ways Unacademical": The Reception of Carleton S. Coon's The Origin of Races". Journal of the History of Biology. 34 (2): 247–285.
6. ^ Keita, S.O.Y. (September 1987). "The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence". American Anthropologist. 99 (3): 534–544. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
7. ^ Dobzhansky, Theodosius. "Two Views of Coon's "Origin of Races" with Comments by Coon and Replies". Current Anthropology. 4 (4): 360–367. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
8. Carlson, David (September 1971). "Problems in Racial Geography". Annals of the Association of American Geographers. 61 (3): 630–633. {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
9. "Race: The Power of an Illusion - Background Readings". PBS/California Newsreel. 2003. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
10. "American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race"". American Anthropological Association. 1998-05-17. Retrieved 2007-11-06.
11. L’engle Williams, Frank (April 2005). "Forensic Misclassification of Ancient Nubian Crania: Implications for Assumptions about Human Variation" (PDF). Current Anthropology. 46 (2): 340–346. Retrieved 2007-11-06. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)

• Race (historical definitions)