'Race' Ethnicity & Development

'Race' Ethnicity & Development

'Race' Ethnicity & Development

Race and ethnicity are two ideas that over time have responded to different meanings and contexts and it is not possible to understand them only in the light of its current uses. This is because since the existence of history, it has been a process by which constructs are transformed into categories and this has unfolded in social and attributes different meanings for different ages, cultures and societies. In this paper, we provide some of the key understanding of the processes of genesis of discrimination and exclusion by race and ethnicity. The explanations of the social and cultural meanings of race and ethnicity and the effect that these have on development can be understood from different social, cultural and political issues that develop. In this regard, three historical and social contexts enable a better understanding of the meaning of "Race". There is the "naturalization of differences"; and what many call the "era of scientific racism", and finally, the last stage is the "social construction of race." Building a terminology and an ideological structure of the old breed of racism which is the greatest development occurs during the period from the 16th to the 18th century in Europe is difficult task. However, the affect that it has on the development of individual and races is not much difficult to discern. The naturalization of race, putting in "scientific key", has its origins in the rise and development of the natural sciences during the Enlightenment (White, 2006, pp 57-58).

The naturalist Karl Linneus (1707-1778), for example, developed a classification system for species and gender, a taxonomy of the natural world, which placed the various human races as species and subspecies. The classification is based on physical and biological differences of listed species, which were associated to certain social and cultural attributes. Thus, the features and physical attributes passed to form a whole, where culture and society seemed to be dominated by a natural constraint. The mechanism for classifying different human groups and cultures was carried out under the same logic qualifying plant or animals (insects, mammals, etc..), but that in practice realized fundamentals physiological sustained operation, so that no differences were naturalized. The anatomical measurements, the head size and the color of skin began to be classified as racial typologies specific traits, correlation of assumptions intelligence levels or stages of civilization. In the Europe of the 16th and the 18th centuries, the concept of race is also constructed from gradual exclusion of those cultures and societies outside the Christian ecumene-the "Christianity" - by building relationships in which the mechanism of self is in opposition to the other). These ideas were developed during the formation of capitalism commercial and reaffirmed by the findings, conquest and colonization of the "New lands ". Indeed, colonialism was to be a major source for the emergence of ideas about racial differences between Europeans and the peoples "discovered". The notion of the superiority European racial contrasted with the supposed inferiority and savagery ...