Ethnicity and Race in Anthropology

Disengaging race and ethnicity from biology, though, does not automatically imply equality under the law or in all aspects of political, economic, and social life. As theorists rejected race biology in the mid-twentieth century, a new "cultural fundamentalism" emerged in many places in the world. Anthropologist Marisol de la Cadena eloquently describes this shift: "The academic repudiation of biological notions of race was significant for anthropology, as it meant the emergence of the concept of 'ethnic groups' to explain human differences … it implied the reification of culture, which thus potentially prolonged the naturalization of sociohistorical differences earlier contained in the European notion of biological race" (p. 28). In the twentieth century, ethnicities were just as stable and unchanging whether they were formed out of biology or culture.

As well, the initial glosses of ethnic described above were also etic in nature. That is, most ideas of ethnicity in anthropology before the late twentieth century served as theoretical or methodological techniques of classification from outside the group being classified. Anthropologists and other social scientists were not alone, though, in reifying or naturalizing ethnic groups and ethnicity. From approximately the end of World War II to the 1970s, "ethnics," nonwhite and other marginalized or oppressed people across the world fought for and won greater sovereignty, more influential voices on regional or national political stages, and generally more civil and political rights to self-representation.

This new agency, though patently different in different areas of the world, empowered previously colonized or oppressed people to create and affirm ethnic identities for use in varied political spheres. These uses, though, often included the drawing of fixed boundaries around ethnicities or cultures and the exclusion of individuals who were not perceived to be ethnic enough. For example, most federally recognized Native American nations or tribes use blood quantum, or the proportion of "Indian blood" within a person calculated by the percent within their parents or grandparents, to determine who makes the official membership rolls. Widespread implementation of blood quantum rules have effectively excluded Indian people of African descent from official membership in communities they and their families have lived in for centuries (see Brooks).