Homeopathic Racism

[Mikefule]

Before I start: this post is about how one aspect of language shines a light on some bizarre historical attitudes to race. I would like to make a personal plea not to divert this into a more general discussion of race relations, particularly in regard to current or recent events. No politics, please. Thanks. I come here because it's a friendly place.

I have known of some of the following words for many years, but I was doing some reading yesterday and was startled by some new words I found.

This is not "Fortean" in the sense of being anomalous or unexplained but I feel that a lot of Fortean discussion these days is about the bizarre and irrational ways that human beings react to the normal and expected.

The concept of "colour" as an indicator of race is so crude as to be almost meaningless. That two people with different genetic, cultural, religious, and linguistic heritages, born on different continents, should be lumped together as "both white" or "both black" is plain stupid.

That said, it sadly remains the case that in many societies, "colour" is a useful statistical indicator of factors like probable levels of social status, wealth, education, and access to health care. This means that the terms black and white still convey some useful information, and most of us would not find them offensive — subject of course to tone and context. (Certain specific words used to describe colour are of course deeply offensive.)

There is an old word for a person with one white parent and one black parent: mulatto. There was even a feminine equivalent: mulatta. This is probably derived from Spanish, mulo, meaning hybrid — related to the word mule.

The concept of a mixed race person being called a hybrid is pretty offensive in itself, but I would go a step further and say it's awful that we felt, and still feel, the need to describe a mixed race person as something different in their own right: neither black nor white, almost as if they were neither fish nor fowl.

However, given the reality that mixed race people are often treated differently by both "communities" I can't deny that a neutral word or expression (such as mixed race) still has its legitimate uses.

But what about quadroon? Yes, there is an English word for someone who is 1/4 black.

And — worse still — there is also an English word, no longer in common use, for someone who is 1/8 black: octoroon.

The fact that there is a special word for someone who had 1 black great great grandparent (and 7 white great great grandparents) seems to me, somehow more offensive than having a word for mixed race. What rational person would differentiate in that level of detail?

I have known about quadroon and octoroon for many years, but yesterday I came across a new one: hexadecaroon. Yes, really.

Hexadecarooon was an English word for someone who is 1/16 black. The word defines a person by one ancestor from 5 generations ago!

A bit more reading found me the following words, although not from English:

• Sang-mêlé — mixed blood — used in Saint-Dominigue to mean someone who is 1/32 black. Yes, they had 1 black great great great great grandparent and 31 white ones.
• Sacatra Also from Saint-Dominigue, meaning someone who is 7/8 black: 1 white great grandparent, and 7 black ones.
• Marabou — a weird one this, from Saint-Dominigue: someone who is 5/8 black and 3/8 white. And yet most people can't even do vulgar fractions these days!
• Griffe (Saint-Dominigue) or Capre (Guadeloupe/Martinique) meaning someone who is 3/4 black, 1/4 white.

I am absolutely not endorsing the use of these words, or the sentiments behind their use.

However, to my mind, this is as "Fortean" as our discussion of conspiracy theorists, flat Earthers, weird sex, or dumb criminals. The very existence of these words — especially in the smaller ("homeopathic") fractions of 1/8. 1/16, and even 1/32 tells us something weird, irrational and, frankly, disturbing about humanity.

 

[pandacracker]

There was a thing known as the Grandfather clause

I believe it was used in America to exclude people from voting. It's explained in the above link.

Edited to add: so if you wanted to exclude a group of people from having some sort of political influence, having an official, mathematically verifiable system with particular words or phrases maybe makes it more acceptable (!?)

 

[EnolaGaia]

The type of referential hair-splitting that Mikefule describes has a connection to certain themes in Charles Fort's writings.

Fort spent a lot of effort in Book of the Damned illustrating the manner in which traditions (e.g., religion; science) carve the world into discrete bits / chunks, then criticizing this very drawing of distinctions by disputing their ability to separate 'this' from 'that'. He argued for recognizing the 'continuity' (of reference; of definition) within which such separate-ness is ascribed. For example, Fort argued that animals and plants share certain features or characteristics and cannot be wholly distinguished as two entirely segregated things.

This issue of 'continuity' represents one of the most important and fundamental aspects of Fort's orientation (to the extent he ever clearly expressed it).

The overblown hair-splitting in blood relationships (with specific regard to racial categories) Mikefule addresses would have served as a feasible illustration of such ridiculously fine-grained referentiality had Fort thought of it.

Just as broadly, Fort also explicitly and fundamentally addressed 'relativity' / 'relations' as the essential nature of such exercises in definition. The elaborate indexing of racial proportions within a kinship / lineage structure would similarly have served as a decent illustration of this relational primacy had Fort thought of it.

 

[JamesWhitehead]

A Fascinating Look at "Octoroon" as an Indentity in New Orleans.

"By incorporating the story of the octoroon into her brand, Lulu White reoriented her tragic fate into a modern sexual fantasy, and promised its fulfillment at Mahogany Hall, also known as the “Octoroon Club.” "

 

[feinman]

The book Caste, discusses a lot of this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste:_The_Origins_of_Our_Discontents

 

[Mikefule]

Fort spent a lot of effort in Book of the Damned illustrating the manner in which traditions (e.g., religion; science) carve the world into discrete bits / chunks, then criticizing this very drawing of distinctions by disputing their ability to separate 'this' from 'that'. He argued for recognizing the 'continuity' (of reference; of definition) within which such separate-ness is ascribed. For example, Fort argued that animals and plants share certain features or characteristics and cannot be wholly distinguished as two entirely segregated things.

An interesting approach to the sorites paradox. The paradox of the heap. How many grains of sand make a heap? (How many whiskers make a beard?)

Choose a number and subtract one: is it still a heap? Does one grain of sand make all the the difference? However, we all know that there is a qualitative difference between a heap and a "not heap" or between a beard and clean shaven, even if we cannot give a precise quantitative answer.

There are at least four possible approaches to this:

• Simply asserting that there is a fundamental difference on religious, traditional or similarly dogmatic grounds.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum with some uncertainty or overlap at the boundaries of adjacent categories. When does "in his prime" become "middle aged"? Is this song "rock and roll" or "rockabilly"? In English statute law, this is often dealt with by words like "reasonable" or "substantially" which give the courts some wiggle room on difficult cases.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum and apply an arbitrary upper or lower limit. The law often has to do this with things like the speed limit, the age of consent, or thresholds for taxes or benefits. Sadly, in some countries, the law has historically imposed similar arbitrary definitions on race.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum and take the simplistic view that if you cannot precisely define the distinction then two things are the same.

"By incorporating the story of the octoroon into her brand, Lulu White reoriented her tragic fate into a modern sexual fantasy, and promised its fulfillment at Mahogany Hall, also known as the “Octoroon Club.” "

An interesting reversal. When writing my opening post in this thread, I had in mind that the use of words like octoroon and hexadecaroon implied a feeling that even such small proportions of "black blood" were historically seen as "contamination".

Lulu White appears to have turned this on its head. A white prostitute for the discerning client, but "with just a hint of naughtiness." It reminds me of the old advert for Grecian 2000: "You look so much better with just a hint of grey." I can't fault her for finding a marketing niche, but the fact that it worked highlights the depravity and hypocrisy of the time.

 

[Ascalon]

Having read, and very much enjoyed, Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, he so completely destroys notions of race, nation and 'people', as to make them absurd.

It makes theses hair splitting discussions something skin to which end of the egg to tap.

However, the nature of these antecedent markers being preserved is like a sinister version of the cherished lineage markers you see in certain cultures, though I'll refrain from invoking a label that reinforces the trope.

For example, there would be families that have a poet or a musician or song writer in their tree somewhere, and the fact would be celebrated with some kind of appended moniker.
Now it may well be that not a one of them had a rasher of talent in that direction in two generations, but yet the label would persist.

These words are reminiscent of this, but in a hugely negative way. It invokes such terrible phrases as "a touch of the tar brush" to denote the "other".

It is fascinating to see the depth and extent of the labels, and would be intriguing to see just how they would be applied and their consequences.

 

[stu neville]

There are at least four possible approaches to this:

• Simply asserting that there is a fundamental difference on religious, traditional or similarly dogmatic grounds.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum with some uncertainty or overlap at the boundaries of adjacent categories. When does "in his prime" become "middle aged"? Is this song "rock and roll or "rockabilly"? In English statute law, this is often dealt with by words like "reasonable" or "substantially" which give the courts some wiggle room on difficult cases.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum and apply an arbitrary upper or lower limit. The law often has to do this with things like the speed limit, the age of consent, or thresholds for taxes or benefits. Sadly, in some countries, the law has historically imposed similar arbitrary definitions on race.
• Acknowledge that there is a continuum and take the simplistic view that if you cannot precisely define the distinction then two things are the same.

Or indeed, any or all of the above dependent upon context. One of my major bugbears - as everyone knows by now - is the polarisation of opinion on almost any matter, but especially prevalent socially and culturally and as Fortean thought is noticeably prismatic for both we see it a lot. There has become a pervasive movement towards entirely binary thought: if you do not subscribe to A then you must therefore entirely subscribe to Z, instead of hovering somewhere around M or N depending on what day it is and what the weather's like (this is especially noticeable in gender politics, which I seriously do not intend to prod at here, suffice to say that the whole trans-exclusionary debate catches a huge number of people in the crossfire simply because they dare not to have a firm opinion.)

The whole "if you're not with us, you're against us" motif impedes discussion at every level: this entirely fallacious idea that people wholeheartedly believe or propound one idea that is rigidly applicable in every case, be it absolute belief or absolute disbelief is as we know actually far more nuanced. It's more a Venn Diagram than a spectrum in reality, which in turn is fairly fractal: some people may cardinally believe in all UFOs as alien craft (we'll call them 'A') and therefore believe in Roswell, whereas cardinal UFO unbelievers ('Z') will not believe in Roswell by default as their overall personal credo automatically invalidates it. What this misses is the huge B to Y category of people who may believe in some UFOs as alien craft but not believe in Roswell, others who believe something happened at Roswell but it was nothing to do with aliens, and all flavours in between. This sort of enforced, stark, "everything is either A or Z" thinking is inimical to full analysis: the often seen syllogism of "Case X was disproved therefore the entire phenomenon has been disproved" is sadly common. The fact that the Santilli film is fake doesn't automatically mean that there are no real alien autopsy films, or by extension no alien autopsies, or further still no aliens: however, there is a strong thread outside of Fortean thought that this is indeed the case - "The film was fake therefore there aren't aliens", see also "You didn't see a ghost because ghosts don't exist", etc.

Having read, and very much enjoyed, Adam Rutherford's A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, he so completely destroys notions of race, nation and 'people', as to make them absurd.

I was about to come around to this - I highly recommend Rutherford's book, as well. Under the skin we are 99.9% identical, such variances as there are (eg thicker blood for mountain dwellers) are very, very minor overall. The overt differences only represent evolutionary adaptations to climate and environment, no different in that respect from snow-chains on a car in Alaska vs urban driving settings and automatic parking on a family saloon in a city. The appalling, mind-bending attempts by various nineteenth (and long after..) century scientists to prove that one race is inferior to another were only ever sustained by their own logic, but of course any prejudice will find justification where it can be it scientific or religious dogma. Hook your own beliefs on the words from someone in a robe, dog-collar or lab coat and the confirmation bias can run riot.

 

[Mikefule]

Or indeed, any or all of the above dependent upon context. One of my major bugbears - as everyone knows by now - is the polarisation of opinion on almost any matter, but especially prevalent socially and culturally and as Fortean thought is noticeably prismatic for both we see it a lot. There has become a pervasive movement towards entirely binary thought: if you do not subscribe to A then you must therefore entirely subscribe to Z, instead of hovering somewhere around M or N ...

The false dichotomy: if something is not A it must be B, ignoring options like C, D, or 42.

Then there is the equally simplistic idea which assumes a single spectrum: You must be either A, or B, or somewhere in between.

When there are 3 main parties in a political system, one is typically characterised as "moderate" and sitting somewhere between the "extremes" of the other two. In reality, it may be the third corner of a triangle.

In the case of race, the nasty thing is the dichotomy between "white" or "not white". I dislike the expression "people of colour" which lumps together the British Indian, the black West Indian, the very dark skinned Nigerian, and and the Australian aboriginal as "one type of thing" because they are not white, and yet accepts that the dark haired Irish of Celtic extraction, the red haired Scot, the tall blond Norwegian all somehow "qualify" as white.

People seek easy answers to complex questions.

 

[escargot]

I can't see what's hard to understand. Going back to race, it's about power and contamination.

If a society believes a certain section of its citizens to be racially inferior, then individuals with some amount of 'inferior' heritage will be regarded as racially contaminated.

This proportional contamination creates a racial hierarchy, expressed by the terms mulatto, quadroon, octoroon etc come in: each of those categories contains people with less and less non-white heritage, useful in a society where whiteness is prized and people of mixed heritage can be set against each other. Divided people are easier to control.

Here's another racial description: high yellow. A high-yellow person has non-white heritage but may 'pass for white' and so be treated better in a legally segregated society such as existed up to the 1960s in the American South. Punishments for this were severe but the rewards were seen by many as worth the risk.

So if people can be graded into white/mulatto/quadroon etc, right back to hexadecaroon, why does it matter?

It matters (in a racist society) because of the 'principle of the two barrels'. We all know what that means so I needn't elaborate.

 

[EnolaGaia]

Mikefule has posted another example of linguistic hair-splitting that serves to benefit or support the hair-splitter(s) - the establishment of an elaborate theological taxonomy that partitions the set of theistic / deistic orientations yet tacitly ignores or dismisses the concept of an orientation that rejects the fundamental basis of the taxonomy (a deity or equivalent higher thing to which everyone presumably takes a position).

https://forums.forteana.org/index.php?threads/atheism.29882/post-2040960

This taxonomy, just like the racial heritage taxonomy, imposes a tacit framework for reference that sets a particular context one has to address on a "take it or leave it" basis and hence biases any discussions or decisions undertaken in light of it.

The theological taxonomy serves the purposes of only those who believe God is fundamental. The racial heritage taxonomy serves the purposes of only those who believe race is a fundamental characteristic that makes a difference.

 

[Mikefule]

Mikefule has posted another example of linguistic hair-splitting

Well, that depends on exactly what you mean by "linguistic hair-splitting"...

Many years ago, working in a claims office, I was in one of those difficult discussions with a customer in which I was making a carefully argued legal point that he did not want to agree with and he said to me, "That's just semantics."

Quick as a flash, I replied, "It all depends on what you mean by semantics." He knew he was beaten.

More seriously, I don't tend to worry too much about "dictionary definitions" except when it is necessary to clarify a technical term. What I do think is important is identify the important differences between superficially similar ideas. Otherwise, "X resembles Y" can soon become understood to mean "X is exactly the same as Y."

A Yeti is not a Bigfoot; the Loch Ness Monster is not a "sea serpent"; and the existence or otherwise of a Greek or Roman god is a different proposition from the existence or otherwise of the all-powerful god of the monotheists. In each of these 3 pairings, it is possible to believe in both, or either, or neither.

As for the racial definitions, my point is not that there are differences between the words, but that at one time, these distinctions between people were so important that such words were felt to be necessary.

I like words, and they interest me, but communication of ideas is more important than the words chosen to do so.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

It matters (in a racist society) because of the 'principle of the two barrels'. We all know what that means so I needn't elaborate.

I actually don't know what it means but if explaining it opens a can of worms, then I understand if it's just left there.

 

[escargot]

I actually don't know what it means but if explaining it opens a can of worms, then I understand if it's just left there

I don't mind explaining.

Imagine two barrels side by side. One contains wine, the other sewage.

If you were to take a cupful of wine and pour it into the sewage barrel, the wine barrel would still contain wine and the sewage barrel sewage.

However, if you were to do this the other way round and pour a cupful of the sewage into the wine barrel, the wine would be contaminated and both barrels would then contain sewage.

The analogy here is how racists see a 'pure' bloodline being corrupted by even the smallest trace of impurity.

 

[Ogdred Weary]

I don't mind explaining.

Imagine two barrels side by side. One contains wine, the other sewage.

If you were to take a cupful of wine and pour it into the sewage barrel, the wine barrel would still contain wine and the sewage barrel sewage.

However, if you were to do this the other way round and pour a cupful of the sewage into the wine barrel, the wine would be contaminated and both barrels would then contain sewage.

The analogy here is how racists see a 'pure' bloodline being corrupted by even the smallest trace of impurity.

I see. I think some people do think in much that way but most above averagely white racist people probably stop caring if somone looks white and sounds more or less like them. Equally, I imagine racists of other skin tones are likely the same. I say "above averagely racist" as I think most people have some degree of prejudice towards one or more "others", much like the discussion above it might be difficult to determine where it crosses over into the realm where the epithet "racist" can be applied. Most aren't cos playing in hoods or calling for race wars.

People, they're all arseholes.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

The language associated with so-called race has always been scientifically unsupportable and downright ridiculous.
It's about time that the human race (for there is only one race) lost its idiotic tribal obsession with skin colour, which is why I choose to have nothing to do with any campaigns, cultural events or political movements that centre around skin colour.

 

[Xanatic*]

Yeah, screw that Blue Man Group!

 

[ramonmercado]

Yeah, screw that Blue Man Group!

And those blue dogs. Bloody Huckleberry Hound imitators.

 

[blessmycottonsocks]

Was trying to make a serious point about how ridiculous it is to categorise people by skin colour, but hey ho.

 

[pandacracker]

It invokes such terrible phrases as "a touch of the tar brush" to denote the "other".

When I told my Trinidadian friend's mother that one of my grandfathers was half Indian (which, for the purpose of this thread, makes me octoroon ) She declared gleefully and with wonderful Trinidadian accent "Oh, you've got a touch of tar, love. You've got a touch of tar"

She of course meant it positively, it brought us closer and was also a nod to her island.

 

[BlackPeter]

Have a friend of West Indian descent who is married to a white woman (local schoolteacher) who says he has no objection to being called black or his wife white but he objects to his children being called 'mixed race' on the grounds that it is an illogical change of category and says that they should be described as 'brown'

 

[pandacracker]

I once met (well, chatted up actually but lets not drag my failures into it) a black gentleman who said he replaced the word 'mixed-race'
with 'harmony'

 

[dream_decoder]

My experience has led me to believe there are far less racist people out there than the media would have us believe.
If you look hard enough you will find a few intolerant people in most races, and the media will always focus on them for a cheap headline.

 

[GNC]

I hope you're right and the stories about complaints made about what are regarded as "right on" issues are from a minority. Ditto the death threats people in the public eye get for daring to have opinions the trolls disagree with, from all across various divides.

But the complainers and trolls are getting a lot of press these days, is this to fuel the tut-tut impulse in the public who will read the stories and generate sales and clicks, or is it because polarisation has become a way of life for millions of people worldwide? I dearly hope it's not self-fulfilling, in Forteana or anywhere else.

 

[Mikefule]

The opening post was about how one aspect of language shines a light on some bizarre historical attitudes to race. I repeat my personal plea not to divert this into a more general discussion of race relations, particularly in regard to current or recent events. No politics, please. Thanks. I come here because it's a friendly place.

 

[GNC]

The opening post was about how one aspect of language shines a light on some bizarre historical attitudes to race. I repeat my personal plea not to divert this into a more general discussion of race relations, particularly in regard to current or recent events. No politics, please. Thanks. I come here because it's a friendly place.

You're right, of course, but the idea of race has become so charged - well, it always was. I don't have a problem with people identifying with their race, everyone wants to belong somewhere, and those who say they're blind to it may not be as truthful as we would prefer. It is a fact of life, and it will throw up all sorts of weird excuses and behaviours. But for that reason, it's going to be a can of worms at this stage in time.

 

[Frideswide]

The opening post was about how one aspect of language shines a light on some bizarre historical attitudes to race. I repeat my personal plea not to divert this into a more general discussion of race relations, particularly in regard to current or recent events. No politics, please. Thanks. I come here because it's a friendly place.

Adding Mod support to this. Please do not let this thread degenerate.

Frides

 

[AnonyJ]

Before I start: this post is about how one aspect of language shines a light on some bizarre historical attitudes to race. I would like to make a personal plea not to divert this into a more general discussion of race relations, particularly in regard to current or recent events. No politics, please. Thanks. I come here because it's a friendly place.

I have known of some of the following words for many years, but I was doing some reading yesterday and was startled by some new words I found.

This is not "Fortean" in the sense of being anomalous or unexplained but I feel that a lot of Fortean discussion these days is about the bizarre and irrational ways that human beings react to the normal and expected.

The concept of "colour" as an indicator of race is so crude as to be almost meaningless. That two people with different genetic, cultural, religious, and linguistic heritages, born on different continents, should be lumped together as "both white" or "both black" is plain stupid.

That said, it sadly remains the case that in many societies, "colour" is a useful statistical indicator of factors like probable levels of social status, wealth, education, and access to health care. This means that the terms black and white still convey some useful information, and most of us would not find them offensive — subject of course to tone and context. (Certain specific words used to describe colour are of course deeply offensive.)

There is an old word for a person with one white parent and one black parent: mulatto. There was even a feminine equivalent: mulatta. This is probably derived from Spanish, mulo, meaning hybrid — related to the word mule.

The concept of a mixed race person being called a hybrid is pretty offensive in itself, but I would go a step further and say it's awful that we felt, and still feel, the need to describe a mixed race person as something different in their own right: neither black nor white, almost as if they were neither fish nor fowl.

However, given the reality that mixed race people are often treated differently by both "communities" I can't deny that a neutral word or expression (such as mixed race) still has its legitimate uses.

But what about quadroon? Yes, there is an English word for someone who is 1/4 black.

And — worse still — there is also an English word, no longer in common use, for someone who is 1/8 black: octoroon.

The fact that there is a special word for someone who had 1 black great great grandparent (and 7 white great great grandparents) seems to me, somehow more offensive than having a word for mixed race. What rational person would differentiate in that level of detail?

I have known about quadroon and octoroon for many years, but yesterday I came across a new one: hexadecaroon. Yes, really.

Hexadecarooon was an English word for someone who is 1/16 black. The word defines a person by one ancestor from 5 generations ago!

A bit more reading found me the following words, although not from English:

• Sang-mêlé — mixed blood — used in Saint-Dominigue to mean someone who is 1/32 black. Yes, they had 1 black great great great great grandparent and 31 white ones.
• Sacatra Also from Saint-Dominigue, meaning someone who is 7/8 black: 1 white great grandparent, and 7 black ones.
• Marabou — a weird one this, from Saint-Dominigue: someone who is 5/8 black and 3/8 white. And yet most people can't even do vulgar fractions these days!
• Griffe (Saint-Dominigue) or Capre (Guadeloupe/Martinique) meaning someone who is 3/4 black, 1/4 white.

I am absolutely not endorsing the use of these words, or the sentiments behind their use.

However, to my mind, this is as "Fortean" as our discussion of conspiracy theorists, flat Earthers, weird sex, or dumb criminals. The very existence of these words — especially in the smaller ("homeopathic") fractions of 1/8. 1/16, and even 1/32 tells us something weird, irrational and, frankly, disturbing about humanity.

It does seem to stem from the 18th-20th c. compulsion to categorise, back-name and give a name to varied aspects of human physicality and emotionality. The terms homo- and heterosexual were first coined around the 19th c IIRC to quantify human behaviours as old as our human sub-species.

The terms used then that you detail were coined in a time when no-one knew about the intricacies of human genetics and the actions of genes that can be carried for literally millennia (eg., mitochondrial DNA which is carried solely from the maternal line). Mendel was just starting to undertake his experiments with sweetpeas and other plants that led to the discovery of genetic dominance/recessiveness.

In my own case my appearance shows me to probably have northern European ancestry, however I can only verify that back about 3 or 4 generations. But people travel, they have always travelled. Indians went to Rome, Mongolians travelled the continent to Austria, Syrians lived in Northumberland and north Africans traded tin with the Cornish people - all before the time of the Tudors, even before written history.

In the 21st century we now know that genetic heritage is hugely varied and mixed and just can't be judged by the phenotype (outward appearance) but there are still so many people stuck in the mindset of racial 'types'. We are basically all variations upon the human sub-species theme.

 

[EnolaGaia]

It does seem to stem from the 18th-20th c. compulsion to categorise, back-name and give a name to varied aspects of human physicality and emotionality. ...

Sometimes I wonder whether this sort of categorizing obsession had anything to do with the example set by Linnaeus in creating a comprehensive system for cataloging living things.

 

[gordonrutter]

Sometimes I wonder whether this sort of categorizing obsession had anything to do with the example set by Linnaeus in creating a comprehensive system for cataloging living things.

Classification had been going on for at least 2 000 years before Linnaeus, his system was merely the most widely adopted because he was such a prolific writer and lecturer. He taught his system to so many peoepl who then taught it to others that it just took off by sheer pressure of numbers / usage. And also because it worked.

From 1735 Linnaeus described four “varieties” of human
“Europaeus albus: European white

Americanus rubescens: American reddish

Asiaticus fuscus: Asian tawny

Africanus niger: African black”

For him with them being varieties he felt they were not fixed and the differences were due to the geography/climate they grew up in.

However by 1758 he described them as follows

Species	1	2	3	4	5
Americanus	Red, choleric and straight	Straight, black and thick hair; gaping nostrils; [freckled] face; beardless chin	Unyielding, cheerful, free	Paints himself in a maze of red lines	Governed by customary right
Europaeus	White, sanguine, muscular	Plenty of yellow hair; blue eyes	Light, wise, inventor	Protected by tight clothing	Governed by rites
Asiaticus	Sallow, melancholic, stiff	Blackish hair, dark eyes	Stern, haughty, greedy	Protected by loose garments	Governed by opinions
Africanus	Black, phlegmatic, lazy	Dark hair, with many twisting braids; silky skin; flat nose; swollen lips; Women [with] elongated labia; breasts lactating profusely.	Sly, sluggish, neglectful	Anoints himself with fat	Governed by choice [