The Concept of “Race” a Recent Development

The etymology of the word race, as used with regard to people, can be traced only to the sixteenth century. Around 1500 the English word race carried the sense of a group with a common occupation; by the 1540s the word had evolved to refer to a generation of people; and it wasn’t until about 1560 that it was used to denote a tribe, nation. Or people of common ancestry. Race’s “modern meaning of ‘one of the great divisions of mankind based on physical peculiarities’ is from 1774.”

The modern emergence of racism and preoccupation with racial identities can thus be located sometime after…