Who Invented the Concept of Race?

Abstract

Who invented the scientific concept of race? This question admits of a variety of answers depending on what one takes to be decisive about the concept and on whether one believes that what defines the moment in which a technical term is introduced is the first usage of the word in the required sense or the definition that secures its status and influence. It will quickly become clear that by “the inventor of the concept of race” I mean the one who gave the concept sufficient definition for subsequent users to believe that they were addressing something whose scientific status could at least be debated. The terms and basis of the definition might continue to be scrutinized, but, so long as the term was being used only loosely, it made no sense to contest the concept. The invention of the concept of race in this sense took place some time after the introduction of the broad division of peoples on the basis of color, nationality, and other inherited characteristics that could not be overcome subsequently, as religious differences could be overcome by conversion. 1 One need only think of the purity of blood statutes of fifteenth-century Spain that were used against the conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity but who were still not accepted. Then there were the debates in sixteenth-century Spain when the opponents of Bartolome dé Las Casas justified the mistreatment of Native Americans on the grounds that they were not human. One can also look at the Atlantic trade in African slaves that began in the sixteenth century and was already a large operation in the seventeenth century. It was possible for the Spanish or the English to exploit Jews, Native Americans, and Africans, as Jews, Native Americans, and Africans, without having the concept of race, let alone being able to appeal to a rigorous system of racial classification. We have no difficulty identifying these as cases of racism, but they were not sustained by a scientific concept of race. However, the introduction of that concept lent an air of apparent legitimacy to these practices. By investing the concept of race with a scientific status, members of the academy certainly have in the past contributed to making racism more respectable and have even seemed to provide a basis for it, but the academy of itself is now virtually powerless to undo those effects. However, we can at least try to throw some light on that history.