View source for Biology:Negroid

{{Short description|Outdated grouping of human beings}}
{{pp-semi-indef}}

'''Negroid''' (less commonly called '''Congoid''') is an [[Social:Historical race concepts|obsolete racial grouping]] of various people indigenous to [[Earth:Africa|Africa]] south of the area which stretched from the southern Sahara desert in the west to the [[Place:African Great Lakes|African Great Lakes]] in the southeast,<ref>"A very prominent racial dividing line between African Caucasian and Negroid groups runs west to east, south of the Sahara Desert into Sudan before curving southward toward the Kenyan-Somali border." Stephen Emerson, Hussein Solomon, ''African security in the twenty-first century: Challenges and opportunities'', Oxford University Press (2018), [https://books.google.com/books?id=ZaRTDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA41 p. 41].</ref> but also to isolated parts of [[Place:South Asia|South]] and [[Place:Southeast Asia|Southeast Asia]] (Negritos).<ref>{{cite book|last=Molnar|first=Stephen|title=Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups|year=2006|publisher=Pearson Prentice Hall|isbn=978-0-13-192765-0|page=23|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bMO0AAAAIAAJ}}</ref> The term is derived from now-disproven conceptions of race as a biological category.<ref>{{cite book|author=Templeton, A.|year=2016|chapter=Evolution and Notions of Human Race|editor1=Losos, J.|editor2=Lenski, R. |title=How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society|pages=346–361|place=Princeton; Oxford|publisher=Princeton University Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctv7h0s6j.26}}</ref>

The concept of dividing humankind into three races called Caucasoid, [[Biology:Mongoloid|Mongoloid]], and Negroid (originally named "Ethiopian") was introduced in the 1780s by members of the [[Organization:Göttingen School of History|Göttingen School of History]] and further developed by Western scholars in the context of "racist ideologies" during the age of [[Social:Colonialism|colonialism]].<ref name="AAPARace">{{cite web|author=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|title=AAPA Statement on Race and Racism |website=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|access-date=19 June 2020 |date=27 March 2019 |url=https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/}}</ref> 

With the rise of modern [[Biology:Genetics|genetics]], the concept of distinct human races in a biological sense has become obsolete. In 2019, the American Association of Biological Anthropologists stated: "Race does not provide an accurate representation of human biological variation. It was never accurate in the past, and it remains inaccurate when referencing contemporary human populations."<ref name="AAPARace" />

== Etymology ==
''Negroid'' has [[Social:Portuguese language|Portuguese]] or [[Social:Spanish language|Spanish]] and [[Social:Ancient Greek|Ancient Greek]] etymological roots. It literally translates as "black resemblance" from the Portuguese and Spanish word ''negro'' ([[Black|black]]) from [[Social:Latin language|Latin]] ''nigrum'', and Greek οειδές ''-oeidēs'', equivalent to ''-o-'' + είδες ''-eidēs'' "having the appearance of", derivative of είδος ''eîdos'' "appearance".<ref>{{cite book|title=The American Heritage guide to contemporary usage and style|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Company|year=2005|page=512|isbn=978-0-618-60499-9|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=xb6ie6PqYhwC|author1=Company, Houghton Mifflin}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oid |title=Oid &#124; Define Oid at Dictionary.com |publisher=Dictionary.reference.com |access-date=2012-06-12}}</ref> The earliest recorded use of the term "Negroid" came in 1859.<ref>{{cite web| last = Harper| first = Douglas | title = Online Etymological Dictionary|date=November 2001| url = http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=negroid&searchmode=none| access-date = 2007-11-06}}</ref>

== History of the concept ==
=== Origins ===
[[Biography:Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|Johann Friedrich Blumenbach]], a scholar at the then modern Göttingen University developed a concept dividing mankind into five races in the revised 1795 edition of his ''De generis humani varietate nativa'' (''On the Natural Variety of Mankind''). Although Blumenbach's concept later gave rise to [[Unsolved:Scientific racism|scientific racism]], his arguments were basically anti-racist,<ref>{{cite journal |author=Bhopal R |title=The beautiful skull and Blumenbach's errors: the birth of the scientific concept of race |journal=BMJ |volume=335 |issue=7633 |pages=1308–1309 |date=December 2007 |pmid=18156242 |pmc=2151154 |doi=10.1136/bmj.39413.463958.80|quote=Blumenbach's name has been associated with scientific racism, but his arguments actually undermined racism. Blumenbach could not have foreseen the coming abuse of his ideas and classification in the 19th and (first half of the) 20th centuries.}}</ref> since he underlined that mankind as a whole forms one single ''species'',<ref>{{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=60|year=1797|quote=Es giebt nur eine Gattung (species) im Menschengeschlecht; und alle uns bekannte Völker aller Zeiten und aller Himmelsstriche können von einer gemeinschaftlichen Stammrasse abstammen. |url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=82|access-date=2020-05-24}}</ref> and points out that the transition from one race to another is so gradual that the distinctions between the races presented by him are "very arbitrary".<ref>German: "sehr willkürlich": {{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=61|year=1797|quote=Alle diese Verschiedenheiten fließen aber durch so mancherley Abstufungen und Uebergänge so unvermerkt zusammen, daß sich keine andre, als sehr willkürliche Grenzen zwischen ihnen festsetzen lassen. |url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=83|access-date=2020-05-24}}</ref> Blumenbach counts the inhabitants of North Africa among the "Caucasian race", grouping the other Africans as "Ethiopian race". In this context, he names the "Abyssinians" and "Moors" as peoples through which the "Ethiopian race" gradually "flows together" with the "Caucasian race".<ref>German: "Aethiopische Rasse": {{cite book |author=Johann Friedrich Blumenbach|title=Handbuch der Naturgeschichte|page=62|year=1797|quote=Die Aethiopische Rasse: Abbild. n. h. Gegenst. tab. 5. mehr oder weniger schwarz; mit schwarzem krausem Haar; vorwärts prominirenden Kiefern, wulstigen Lippen, und stumpfer Nase. Dahin die übrigen Afrikaner, nahmentlich die Neger, die sich dann in die Habessinier, Mauren ꝛc. verlieren, so wie jede andre Menschen-Varietät mit ihren benachbarten Völkerschaften gleichsam zusammen fließt.|url=http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/blumenbach_naturgeschichte_1797?p=84|access-date=2020-06-06}}</ref>

=== In the context of scientific racism ===
==== Before Darwin ====
The development of Western race theories took place in a historical situation where most Western nations were still profiting from the enslavement of Africans<ref name="Sanders" />{{rp|524}} and therefore had an economical interest in portraying the inhabitants of [[Place:Sub-Saharan Africa|sub-Saharan Africa]] as an inferior race. A significant change in Western views on Africans came about when Napoleon's 1798 invasion of Egypt drew attention to the impressive achievements of Ancient Egypt, which could hardly be reconciled with the theory of Africans being inferior.<ref name="Sanders">{{Cite journal |last=Sanders |first=Edith R. |date=October 1969 |title=The Hamitic Hypothesis; Its Origin and Functions in Time Perspective |journal=The Journal of African History |language=en |volume=10 |issue=4 |pages=521–532 |doi=10.1017/S0021853700009683 |issn=1469-5138 |jstor=179896|s2cid=162920355 }}</ref>{{rp|526–527}} In this context, many of the works published on Egypt after Napoleon's expedition "seemed to have had as their main purpose an attempt to prove in some way that the Egyptians were not Negroes",<ref name="Sanders" />{{rp|525}} but belonged to a "Hamitic race", which was seen as a subgroup of the "Caucasian race". Thus the high civilization of Ancient Egypt could be separated from the allegedly inferior African "race".<ref name="Sanders" />{{rp|526}}
[[File:1839 Samuel George Morton Crania Americana 3 Skulls.png|thumb|right|Illustration of Negroid, Caucasoid, and Mongoloid skulls shown from above (Samuel George Morton, 1839)]]

As historian Edith Sanders writes, "Perhaps because slavery was both still legal and profitable in the United States{{nbs}}... there arose an American school of anthropology which attempted to prove scientifically that the Egyptian was a Caucasian, far removed from the inferior Negro".<ref name="Sanders" />{{rp|526}} In his ''Crania Aegyptiaca'' (1844), Samuel George Morton, the founder of anthropology in the United States, analyzed over a hundred intact crania gathered from the Nile Valley, and concluded that the ancient Egyptians were racially akin to Europeans.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Robinson|first1=Michael F.|title=The Lost White Tribe: Explorers, Scientists, and the Theory that Changed a Continent|date=2016|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-997850-2|pages=96–97|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SK-NCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT96|access-date=19 February 2017}}</ref>

Discussions on race among Western scholars during the 19th century took place against the background of the debate between [[Biology:Monogenism|monogenists]] and [[Social:Polygenism|polygenists]], the former arguing for a single origin of all mankind, the latter holding that each human race had a specific origin. Monogenists based their arguments either on a literal interpretation of the [[Religion:Bible|biblical]] story of [[Religion:Adam and Eve|Adam and Eve]] or on secular research. Since polygenism stressed the perceived differences, it was popular among [[Social:White supremacy|white supremacists]], especially slaveholders in the US.<ref>Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning. The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, New York: Nation Books 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-5685-8464-5}}, chapters 4, 7–12, 14, 16 ''passim''.</ref>

Through [[Medicine:Craniometry|craniometry]] conducted on thousands of human skulls, Morton argued that the differences between the races were too broad to have stemmed from a single common ancestor, but were instead consistent with separate racial origins.<ref>Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning. The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, New York: Nation Books 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-5685-8464-5}}, chapter 14.</ref> In ''Crania Aegyptiaca'', he reported his measurements of internal skull capacity grouped according to Blumenbach's five races, finding that the average capacity of the "Caucasian race" was at the top, and that "Ethiopian" skulls had the smallest capacity, with the other "races" ranging in between.<ref>Michael, John S. "A New Look at Morton's Craniological Research". Current Anthropology, vol. 29, no. 2, 1988, pp. 349–354. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2743412. Accessed 15 June 2020.</ref> He concluded that the "Ethiopian race" was inferior in terms of intelligence. Upon his death in 1851, when slavery still existed in the southern United States, the influential ''Charleston Medical Journal'' praised him with the words: "We of the South should consider him as our benefactor for aiding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race."<ref>{{cite book |title=The Mismeasure of Man |author=Stephen Jay Gould |date=17 June 2006 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RTjfmxTpsVsC&pg=PT64|isbn=978-0-393-31425-0|access-date=2020-06-11}} and by: {{cite web |url=https://www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/the-samuel-george-morton-cranial-collection/|title=The Samuel George Morton Cranial Collection. Historical Significance and New Research|author=Emily S. Renschler and Janet Monge|access-date=2020-06-11}}</ref> While a controversy about the correctness of Morton's measurements has been going on since the late 1970s, modern scientists agree that the volume of the skull and intelligence are not related.<ref>Mismeasure for mismeasure. Nature 474, 419 (2011). {{doi|10.1038/474419a}}</ref>

==== In the age of evolutionary biology ====
[[Biography:Charles Darwin|Darwin]]'s landmark work ''On the Origin of Species'', published in 1859, eight years after Morton's death, significantly changed scientific discourse on the origin of humans. British biologist Thomas Huxley, a strong advocate of Darwinism and a monogenist, counted ten "modifications of mankind", dividing the native populations of [[Place:Sub-Saharan Africa|sub-Saharan Africa]] into the "Bushmen" of the Cape region and the "Negroes" of the central areas of the continent.<ref>Huxley, T. H. [http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM3/GeoDis.html On the Geographical Distribution of the Chief Modifications of Mankind] (1870) ''Journal of the Ethnological Society of London''.</ref>

By the end of the 19th century, the influential German encyclopaedia, ''Meyers Konversations-Lexikon'', divided humanity into three major races called ''Caucasoid'', ''Mongoloid'', and ''Negroid'', each comprising various sub-races. While the "Hamites" of northern Africa were seen as ''Caucasoid'', "Australians", "Melanesians", and "Negritoes" were seen as ''Negroid'' sub-races, although living outside the African continent. The only sub-races attributed to Africa were the "African Negroes" and the "Hottentots".<ref>The German legend of the map shows the following names: Hamiten, Australier, Melanesier, Negritos, Afrikanische Neger, Hottentotten.</ref>

The justification for racist Jim Crow laws was provided by [[Unsolved:Pseudoscience|pseudo-scientific]]<ref>Roy L. Brooks uses the adjective "scientific" inside quotation marks in his discussion of that entry and its connection with Jim Crow laws: Brooks, Roy L., editor. "Redress for Racism?" ''When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy Over Apologies and Reparations for Human Injustice'', NYU Press, 1999, pp. 395–398. {{JSTOR|j.ctt9qg0xt.75}}. Accessed 17 Aug. 2020.</ref> opinions on "negro" psychology like those expressed by the entry for "Negro" in the Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th edition (1910–1911):

==== Franz Boas and ''The Race Question'' ====
Since the 1920s, Franz Boas and his school of anthropology at [[Organization:Columbia University|Columbia University]] were criticising the concept of race as politically dangerous and scientifically useless because of its vague definition.<ref name="ways" />{{rp|248}}[[File:LA2-NSRW-1-0038.jpg|thumb|right|Illustrations of "racial types" from ''The New Student's Reference Work'' (1914), edited by Chandler B. Beach and Frank Morton McMurry]]

In 1950, [[Organization:UNESCO|UNESCO]] published their statement ''[[Social:The Race Question|The Race Question]]''. It condemned all forms of racism, naming "the doctrine of ''inequality'' of men and races"<ref name="UNESCO1950">[http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001282/128291eo.pdf "The Race Question"], UNESCO, 1950, 11pp</ref>{{rp|1}} among the causes of World War&nbsp;II and proposing to replace the term "race" with "ethnic groups" because "serious errors{{nbs}}... are habitually committed when the term "race" is used in popular parlance."<ref name="UNESCO1950" />

==== Carleton Coon ====
American anthropologist Carleton S. Coon published his much debated<ref name="ways">{{cite journal| last = Jackson Jr.| first = John| title="In Ways Unacademical": The Reception of Carleton S. Coon's The Origin of Races| journal = Journal of the History of Biology| volume = 34| issue = 2| pages = 247–285|date=June 2001| doi = 10.1023/A:1010366015968 | jstor=4331661| s2cid = 86739986}}</ref>{{rp|248}} ''Origin of Races'' in 1962. Coon divided the species ''Homo sapiens'' into five groups: Besides the ''Caucasoid'', ''Mongoloid'', and ''Australoid'' races, he posited two races among the indigenous populations of sub-Saharan Africa: the ''[[Biology:Capoid race|Capoid race]]'' in the south, and the ''Congoid race''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Carleton S. Coon|title=The Origin of Races|year=1962|pages=3–4|quote=[The Congoid race] comprises the Negroes and Pygmies of Africa. I have named it Congoid after the region (not a specific nation) which contains both kinds of people. The term ''Negroid'' has been deliberately omitted to avoid confusion. It has been applied both to Africans and the spiral-haired peoples of Southern Asia and Oceania who are not genetically related to each other, as far as we know.}}</ref> In 1982, he used ''Negroid'' and ''Congoid'' as synonyms.<ref>{{Cite book | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DwGBAAAAMAAJ&q=congoid | title=Racial adaptations| isbn=978-0-8304-1012-5| last1=Coon| first1=Carleton S.| year=1982|page=11| publisher=Nelson-Hall|quote=The five primary races are the Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Congoid (more commonly called Negroid), and the Capoid}}</ref>

Coon's thesis was that ''[[Biology:Homo erectus|Homo erectus]]'' had already been divided into five different races or subspecies. "''Homo Erectus'' then evolved into ''Homo Sapiens'' not once but five times, as each subspecies, living in its own territory, passed a critical threshold from a more brutal to a more ''sapient'' state."<ref>Cited according to {{cite journal| last = Jackson Jr.| first = John| title="In Ways Unacademical": The Reception of Carleton S. Coon's The Origin of Races| journal = Journal of the History of Biology| volume = 34| issue = 2| page = 248|date=June 2001| doi = 10.1023/A:1010366015968 | jstor=4331661| s2cid = 86739986}} The reference given there is to "Coon, ''Origin of the'' [sic] ''Races'', 1963 [sic], p. 657".</ref> He thought the ''Caucasoid'' race had passed the threshold to ''Homo sapiens'' about 200,000 years earlier than the ''Negroid'' race,<ref name="ways" />{{rp|248}} thus giving segregationists in the southern US the opportunity to make political use of his thesis in their fight against the civil rights movement.<ref name="ways" />{{rp|249}} Although Coon publicly assumed a neutral stance regarding segregation, some fellow anthropologists accused him of being racist because of his "clear insensitivity to social issues".<ref name="ways" />{{rp|249}} In private conversations and correspondence with his cousin Carleton Putnam, a prominent supporter of [[Social:White supremacy|white supremacy]], he went much further, helping Putnam "hone his arguments against integration".<ref name="ways" />{{rp|256}}

Coon's evolutionary approach was criticized on the basis that such sorting criteria generally do not produce meaningful results, and that evolutionary divergence was extremely improbable over the given time-frames.<ref>{{cite journal| last1 = Carlson| first1 = David| last2 = Armelagos| first2 = George | title = Problems in Racial Geography| journal = Annals of the Association of American Geographers| volume = 61| issue = 3| pages = 630–633|date=September 1971 | doi = 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1971.tb00812.x }}</ref> Monatagu (1963) argued that Coon's theory on the speciation of Congoids and other ''Homo sapiens'' was unlikely because the transmutation of one species to another was a markedly gradual process.<ref>{{cite journal| last = Dobzhansky| first = Theodosius |author2=Ashley Montagu |author3=C. S. Coon| title = Two Views of Coon's "Origin of Races" with Comments by Coon and Replies| journal = Current Anthropology| volume = 4| issue = 4| pages = 360–367| doi = 10.1086/200401| year = 1963| s2cid = 145245427 }}</ref>

Since Coon followed the traditional methods of physical anthropology, relying on morphological characteristics, and not on the emerging [[Biology:Genetics|genetics]] to classify humans, the debate over ''Origin of Races'' has been "viewed as the last gasp of an outdated scientific methodology that was soon to be supplanted".<ref name="ways" />{{rp|249}}

=== Cheikh Anta Diop and "Negroid" primacy ===
[[Social:Afrocentrism|Afrocentrist]] author [[Biography:Cheikh Anta Diop|Cheikh Anta Diop]] contrasted "Negroid" with "Cro-Magnoid" in his publications arguing for "Negroid" primacy. Grimaldi Man, Upper Paleolithic fossils found in Italy in 1901, had been classified as Negroid by Boule and Vallois (1921). The identification was obsolete by the 1960s, but was controversially revived by Diop in his work, "The African Origin of Civilizations" in 1974<ref>{{cite book |last1=Diop |first1=Cheikh Anta |title=The African origin of civilization: myth or reality |date=1974 |publisher=L. Hill |location=New York |isbn=1-55652-072-7 |page=266 |edition=1st}}</ref> and republished in 1989.<ref name="Masset">Masset, C. (1989): [http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/bspf_0249-7638_1989_num_86_8_9389 '' Grimaldi : une imposture honnête et toujours jeune''], Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française, vol. 86, n° 8, pp. 228–243. "Cornevin seems to ignore the depth of morphological differences that exist between the Black and the White when he dates these differences back to Antiquity as recent as the eleventh millennium B.C. By doing so he opposes the one hypothesis at the disposal of scholars to confer upon the Whites an antiquity equal to that of the Blacks. He errs most regrettably in claiming that the Asselar man looks more like the Cro-Magnoid European of Grimladi and the Bushman than like modern Blacks. By definition, the Grimaldi Negorid is not Cro-Magnoid, and he is the only one the Asselar man could possibly resemble; he shares no feature with the so-called Cro-Magnon man who lived later in the same cave and is the prototype of the White race as the 'Negroid' is the prototype of the Black race." C. A. Diop, ''The African Origin of Civilization: Myth Or Reality'' (1989), p. 266.</ref>

== Physical features ==
=== General appearance ===
The Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–1911), lists the following "well-defined characteristics" of the "Negroid" populations of Africa, southern {{wipe|India}}, Malaysia, and [[Place:Australasia|Australasia]]: "A dark skin, varying from dark brown, reddish-brown, or chocolate to nearly black; dark, tightly curled hair, flat in traverse section, of the woolly or the frizzly type; a greater or less tendency to [[Medicine:Prognathism|prognathism]]; eyes dark brown with yellowish [[Medicine:Cornea|cornea]]; nose more or less broad and flat; and large teeth".<ref name="EB1911"/> The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' sees a tendency towards a "tall stature" and "[[Biology:Cephalic index|dolichocephaly]]" (long-headedness), with the exception of the Negritos who are described as showing "short stature" and "brachycephaly" (short-headedness).<ref name="EB1911"/>

[[Biology:Forensic anthropology|Forensic anthropologists]] writing around the turn of the millennium described "Negroid"<ref>A critical reflection on the use of "Negroid" and related terms in this context is given by: {{cite journal |last1=Diana Smay, George Armelagos |title=Galileo wept: A critical assessment of the use of race of forensic anthropolopy |journal=Transforming Anthropology |date=2000 |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=22–24 |url=http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTGA/Web%20Site/PDFs/Galileo%20Wept-%20A%20Critical%20Assessment%20of%20the%20Use%20of%20Race%20in%20Forensic%20Anthropology.pdf |access-date=13 July 2016 |doi=10.1525/tran.2000.9.2.19 |archive-date=18 August 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180818073338/http://www.anthropology.emory.edu/FACULTY/ANTGA/Web%20Site/PDFs/Galileo%20Wept-%20A%20Critical%20Assessment%20of%20the%20Use%20of%20Race%20in%20Forensic%20Anthropology.pdf }}</ref> skulls as having a broad and round nasal cavity; no dam or nasal sill; Quonset hut-shaped [[Biology:Nasal bone|nasal bone]]s; notable facial projection in the jaw and mouth area ([[Medicine:Prognathism|prognathism]]); a rectangular-shaped palate; a square or rectangular [[Biology:Orbit (anatomy)|eye orbit]] shape;<ref>{{cite book |editor=George W. Gill |editor2=Stanley Rhine |title=Skeletal Attribution of Race: Methods for Forensic Anthropology|date=1990|publisher=Maxwell Museum of Anthropology|isbn=978-0-912535-06-7|oclc=671604288}}</ref> a large interorbital distance; a more undulating supraorbital ridge;<ref name=Wilkinson>{{cite book|last1=Wilkinson|first1=Caroline|title=Forensic Facial Reconstruction|date=2004|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-82003-5|pages=84–85|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NKWm9Q0vbT4C|access-date=2 June 2015}}</ref> and large teeth.<ref name=Brace1993>Brace CL, Tracer DP, Yaroch LA, Robb J, Brandt K, Nelson AR, [https://archive.today/20101102012403/http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/110532242/ABSTRACT ''Clines and clusters versus "race:" a test in ancient Egypt and the case of a death on the Nile''], (1993), Yrbk Phys Anthropol 36:1–31, p.18</ref>

=== Neoteny ===
[[Biography:Ashley Montagu|Ashley Montagu]] lists "[[Biology:Neoteny in humans|neotenous]] structural traits in which{{nbs}}... Negroids [generally] differ from Caucasoids{{nbs}}... flattish nose, flat root of the nose, narrower ears, narrower joints, frontal skull eminences, later closure of premaxillary [[Biology:Suture (anatomy)|sutures]], less hairy, longer eyelashes, [and] cruciform pattern of second and third molars."<ref name=Montagu2>Montagu, Ashley <u>Growing Young</u> Published by Greenwood Publishing Group, 1988 {{ISBN|0-89789-166-X}}</ref>{{rp|254}} He also suggested that in the extinct Negroid group termed the "[[Unsolved:Boskop Man|Boskopoids]]", pedomorphic traits proceeded further than in other Negroids.<ref name=Montagu2 /> Additionally, Montagu wrote that the Boskopoids had larger brains than modern humans (1,700 cubic centimeters cranial capacity compared to 1,400 cubic centimeters in modern-day humans), and the projection of their mouth was less than in other Negroids.<ref name=Montagu2 /> He believed the Boskopoids were the ancestors of the Khoisan.<ref name=Montagu2 />

=== Athleticism ===
In the context of prominent successes of African-American athletes like Jesse Owens during the 1936 Summer Olympics, the speed advantage of the "Negroid type of calf, foot and heel bone" was discussed.<ref name="JoSport">{{cite journal|last=Wiggins|first=David K.|title="Great Speed But Little Stamina:" The Historical Debate Over Black Athletic Superiority|journal=Journal of Sport History|volume=16|issue=2|year=1989|pages=158–185|s2cid=27097059|url=http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/00b2/26c22a8220772dd4d286b79e0d457418d35f.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190216032859/http://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/00b2/26c22a8220772dd4d286b79e0d457418d35f.pdf|archive-date=2019-02-16}}</ref>{{rp|161}}<ref name="Kendi">Cited in: Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning. The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, New York: Nation Books 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-5685-8464-5}}, chapter 27.</ref> Black Anthropologist W. Montague Cobb joined the debate in the same year, pointing out that "there is not a single physical characteristic, including skin color, which all the Negro stars have in common which definitely classify them as Negroes."<ref name="Kendi" /><ref name="JoSport" /> Today, suggestions of biological differences in athletic ability between racial groups are considered unscientific.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Saini|first=Angela|date=23 July 2019|title=Sports and IQ: the persistence of race 'science' in competition|journal=Nature|volume=571|issue=7766|pages=474–475|doi=10.1038/d41586-019-02244-w|bibcode=2019Natur.571..474S|s2cid=198191524|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Wiggins|first=David K.|title=More Than a Game: A History of the African American Experience in Sport|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2018|isbn=978-1-5381-1498-8|page=151}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=2003|title=Interview with Robert Graves Jr.|url=https://www.pbs.org/race/000_About/002_04-background-01-06.htm|website=PBS.org}}</ref>

== Criticism ==

The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' states: "The term Negroid belongs to a set of terms introduced by 19th-century anthropologists attempting to categorize human races. Such terms are associated with outdated notions of racial types, and so are now potentially offensive and best avoided."<ref name="oxford">{{cite book|isbn=978-0-19-957112-3|title=Oxford Dictionary of English|year=2010|last1=Stevenson|first1=Angus|publisher=OUP Oxford }} As of 2020, the same text was still present on the website: {{cite web| title = Ask Oxford – Definition of Negroid| publisher = Oxford Dictionary of English| year = 2020| url = https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/negroid| access-date = 2020-08-05| archive-date = 2018-06-30| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180630213914/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/negroid| url-status = dead}}</ref>

=== Criticism based on modern genetics ===

In his 2016 essay ''Evolution and Notions of Human Race'', Alan R. Templeton discusses various criteria used in biology to define subspecies or races. His examples for traits traditionally considered to be racial include skin colour: "[T]he native peoples with the darkest skins live in tropical Africa and [[Place:Melanesia|Melanesia]]." While those two groups would traditionally be classified as "black", in reality Africans are more closely related to Europeans than to Melanesians.<ref name="Templeton2016" />{{rp|359}} Another example is [[Medicine:Malaria|malarial resistance]], which is often found in African populations, but also in "many European and Asian populations".<ref name="Templeton2016" />{{rp|359}}

Templeton concludes: "[T]he answer to the question whether races exist in humans is clear and unambiguous: no."<ref name="Templeton2016">Templeton, A. (2016). EVOLUTION AND NOTIONS OF HUMAN RACE. In Losos J. & Lenski R. (Eds.), ''How Evolution Shapes Our Lives: Essays on Biology and Society'' (pp. 346–361). Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press. {{doi|10.2307/j.ctv7h0s6j.26}}. That this view reflects the consensus among American anthropologists is stated in: {{cite journal|last2=Yu|first2=Joon-Ho|last3=Ifekwunigwe|first3=Jayne O.|last4=Harrell|first4=Tanya M.|last5=Bamshad|first5=Michael J.|last6=Royal|first6=Charmaine D.|date=February 2017|title=Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics|journal=American Journal of Physical Anthropology|volume=162|issue=2|pages=318–327|doi=10.1002/ajpa.23120|pmid=27874171|last1=Wagner|first1=Jennifer K.|pmc=5299519}} See also: {{cite web|author=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|title=AAPA Statement on Race and Racism |website=American Association of Physical Anthropologists|access-date=19 June 2020 |date=27 March 2019 |url=https://physanth.org/about/position-statements/aapa-statement-race-and-racism-2019/}}</ref>{{rp|360}}

== Further reading ==
* [[Biography:Ibram X. Kendi|Ibram X. Kendi]], ''Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America'', New York: Nation Books 2016. {{ISBN|978-1-5685-8464-5}}

== References ==
{{Reflist}}


[[Category:Biological anthropology]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience]]

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{{Sourceattribution|Negroid}}