Race is always discussed as a definitive scientific truth, like gravity or some other scientific truth that I don't know. We never stop to think about what the "scientific properties" of race are though. We don't learn in school the biological basis for race, or the scientific studies that went in to prove the scientific legitimacy of race as a concept used to separate people from one another. In fact, we never even think of race as the issue of division in this country or others; we think about individual reactions to race as creating these boundaries. So then, what is race, and why do we accept it so wholeheartedly as a definitive truth?

Race hasn't always existed. In fact, before race became a concept (which was only some hundreds of years ago), religion was the main way that people were separated from one another. Christianity was the dominant religion, and the Roman Catholic Church had political control over most of Europe. Wars were fought, not over racial superiority, but to spread Christianity. The Church deemed anyone not Christian as pagan, but this included white Catholics as much as people of color that practiced Islam, or any number of indigenous religions. But then the Roman Catholic Church fell, and imperialism began. European settlers of America claimed that indigenous people were pagans, per usual, but many indigenous folk were converted to Christianity, both out of a need to survive and out of an interest in the religion. So now what? Europeans had already set up a social hierarchy with themselves on top and the indigenous people on the bottom. Could they just accept their new source of labor as equals? Of course not.

Audrey Smedley discusses the development of race in the United States in her Race in North America. In this, she points out that Africans were not always slaves when introduced to the new colonies. They were originally indentured servants, alongside their European counterparts. In fact, many men of color actually lead expeditions into the "New World," piloting ships, settling colonies, and planting crops on the land. The development of a codified slave system did not come until later, when the colonists decided they needed an easily identifiable, cheap, large source of labor. They couldn't simply rely on indigenous folk; they were dying out from disease and organizing raids against colonies that had stolen land from them. And thus, slowly, over the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, laws were introduced reducing Africans to the status of permanent, hereditary slavery.

Well at this point, white scientists needed to have a scientific reason for this hierarchy. So, in the late 18th century-notably after slavery was introduced in the Americas- these scientists went all around the world, practicing anthropometry- measuring the body parts and proportions of the human body. The results of these studies permitted Euro-American justification of a racial hierarchy. The scientists claimed that the skulls of Europeans were "perfect," while the skulls of Africans and other geographical regions were "inferior." They claimed the skulls of Africans were closer to those of the apes, and therefore less evolved and less "human." This kind of scholarship was continued well into the 20th century, and the Nazi regime even cited American scientific research into race as part of the inspiration for the Holocaust.

Over the rest of the 20th century, race has been codified into law in housing, the job market, and the census. If the government tells us that our race is an essential part of our identity, we believe it, right?

But race isn't scientific. There is actually no scientific basis for race. There are no clear hereditary traits that are only found in one "race." Skeletal structure is often cited as proof of the biological basis for race. And oftentimes, forensic scientists can guess a person's race based on their skeleton. But this is because our skeletons are developed based on the environment that we grow up in. Franz Boas, that father of American Anthropology, did a study in the early 20th century where he compared the skulls of immigrant parents and their children. If race were biological, he should have found striking similarities between their skulls, but he didn't. He actually found that they were quite different. This is because the parents grew up often in the countryside, where they received adequate nutrition. The children, on the other hand, were born in the United States, and were raised in cramped apartments, living a much more poor life than their parents. This severely affected the development of their skulls and skeletal structure. When forensic scientists guess a person's race based on their skeleton, they are guessing, because different "races" are relegated to different environments in the United States because of housing laws, and laws against miscegenation- intermarriage- that lasted until 2000. People of color are generally confined to more low income areas where nutrition is not as readily available, and white people are generally more high income and therefore receive proper nutrition. Any forensic scientist worth their salt would tell you that this is becoming steadily more difficult, because people of color are slowly working their way up the economic ladder, and more and more people of color are living in high income areas.

This is not to say that race isn't real. Race is an extremely important cultural concept, one that should not be ignored. We need to have open and introspective discussions about race to dispel internalized ideas about the certainty of race, and to understand the implications that our race has on our socioeconomic positions in this country. But race is not scientific. It was created by white scientists to uphold a hierarchy with Euro-Americans on top and the colored working class on the bottom.