Brown people or brown race is a political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification, similar to black people and white people. Politics is the process by which decisions are made within groups. ... For other uses, see Race. ... The term Ethnicity redirects here. ... Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society. ... For other uses, see Culture (disambiguation). ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... Whites redirects here. ...

Historical concepts

See also: Race (historical definitions), Scientific racism , and Color metaphors for race

Carolus Linnaeus original model had just four races, white, yellow, red, and black. His protege, anthropology founder Johann Blumenbach, completed his mentor's color-coded race model by adding the brown race, "Malay", for for both the Malay division of Austronesian (Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Madagascar, Formosans, etc.) and Polynesians and Melanesians of Pacific Islands, and for Papuans and aborigines of Australia. As well as the mixed blood of the Latinos.^[1][2] Blumenbach characterized the racial classification scheme of John Hunter when he wrote, "John Hunter reckons seven varieties:... (6) &e., Turks, Abyssinians, Samoiedes and Lapps;"^[3] In 1775, "John Hunter of Edinburg included under the label light brown, Southern Europeans, Sicilians, Abyssinians, the Spanish, Turks and Laplanders, and under the label brown, Tartars, Persians, Africans on the Mediterranean and the Chinese."^[4] To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Scientific racism is a term that describes either obsolete scientific theories of the 19th century or historical and contemporary racist propaganda disguised as scientific research. ... In some societies, color metaphors are used in place of racial classifications. ... Carl Linnaeus, Latinized as Carolus Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as  , (May 13, 1707[1] – January 10, 1778), was a Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist[2] who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of nomenclature. ... Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (May 11, 1752 - January 22, 1840) was a German physiologist and anthropologist. ...

Some anthropologists added the brown race back in as an Australoid category (which includes aboriginal peoples of Australia along with various peoples of southeast and south Asia, especially Melanesia and the Malay Archipelago),^[5] and viewed it as separate from Negroids (often lumping Australoids in with Caucasoids).^[6] Jean Baptiste Julien d'Omalius d'Halloy differed from Blumenbach, including Ethiopians in the brown race, as well as Oceanic peoples. Louis Figuier adopted and adapted d'Omalius d'Halloy's classification and also included Egyptians in the brown race.^[7] Australoid is a broad racial classification, no longer used by many anthropologists, of Australasian peoples, most notably the Indigenous Australians and Melanesians. ... Jean Baptiste Julien dOmalius dHalloy (1783-1875), Belgian geologist, was born at Liège, Belgium on February 16, 1783. ... There are very few or no other articles that link to this one. ...

As surmized by Carleton Coon in 1939, "He [ Giuseppe Sergi ] also made it clear that the so-called Brown Race, in its dolichocephalic and leptorrhine or mesorrhine forms, was for the most part an extension of the same Mediterranean family into southern Asia."^[8][9][10] Giuseppè Sergi (1841, Messina – 1936, Rome) was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, notable for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. ...

By the 19th century, the notion of a single "brown people" was being overthrown. Cust^[11] mentions Grammar in 1852 denying that there was one single "brown race", but in fact several races speaking distinct languages. The 1858 Cyclopaedia of India and of eastern and southern Asia^[12] notes that Keane was dividing the "brown people" into quaternion: a western branch that he termed the Malay, a north-western group that he termed the Micronesian, and the peoples of the eastern archipelagoes that he termed the Maori and the Polynesian. Anthropologists and scholars were at the least dividing the people of the Pacific into the "dark people" and the "brown people". The "dark people" were the inhabitants of the Western Pacific as far as Fiji. The "brown people" were the people inhabiting the islands to the east of Fiji, as far as Easter Island.^[13] Rapa Nui redirects here. ...

In 1915, Donald Mackenzie conceived a "Mediterranean or Brown race, the eastern branch of which reaches to India and the western to the British Isles and Ireland... [and includes] predynastic Egyptians... [and some populations of] Neolithic man".^[14] The Predynastic Period of Egypt (prior to 3100 BC) is traditionally the period between the Early Neolithic and the beginning of the Pharaonic monarchy beginning with King Narmer. ... Map showing the Neolithic expansions from the 7th to the 5th millennium BC Europe in ca. ...

Biblical concepts

Main article: Shem

It is known in the Bible that Noah had three sons; Shem, Japheth and Ham. The word "Semite" refers to a descendant of Shem. The 13th century Christian scholar Ibn al- Ibrī (Bar Hebraeus), known for the fidelity with which he reproduces earlier writers, asserts that Noah divided the world among his three sons, with Ham getting the Land of the Blacks (sūdān), Shem the Land of the Browns (sumra), and Japheth the Land of the Reds (łuqra).^[15] Shem (Hebrew: , Standard  Tiberian  ; Greek: Σημ, SÄ“m ; Arabic:  ; Geez: Sham ; renown; prosperity; name) was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. ... For other uses, see Bible (disambiguation). ... Shem (Hebrew: , Standard  Tiberian  ; Greek: Σημ, SÄ“m ; Arabic:  ; Geez: Sham ; renown; prosperity; name) was one of the sons of Noah in the Bible. ... Japheth (Hebrew. ... Ham (Hebrew: , Standard  Tiberian  ; Arabic: , IPA: , hot), according to the Genealogies of Genesis, was a son of Noah and the father of Cush, Mizraim, Phut, and Canaan. ...

20th and 21st century concepts

The appellation "brown people" has been applied in the 20th and 21st centuries to several groups, usually mixed race ones. (Forbes,^[16] in pointing out the disconnection between the colour labels and actual skin colour, observes that "[b]lack and white when mixed as pigments may produce gray, but when 'black' and 'white' humans mix the result is usually some type of 'brown'".)

Both Forbes and Telles point out that this classification is biologically invalid. However, as Telles notes, it is still of sociological significance. Irrespective of the actual biological differences amongst humans, and of the actual complexities of human skin colouration, people nonetheless self-identify as "brown" and identify other groups of people as "brown", using characteristics that include skin colour, hair strength, language, and culture, in order to classify them. Forbes remarks upon a process of "lumping", whereby characteristics other than skin colour, such as hair colour or curliness, act as "triggers" for colour categories "even when it may not be appropriate".^[17][18] For the song by Girls Aloud see Biology (song) Biology studies the variety of life (clockwise from top-left) E. coli, tree fern, gazelle, Goliath beetle Biology (from Greek: Βιολογία - βίος, bio, life; and λόγος, logos, speech lit. ... Historical data for native populations collected by R. Biasutti prior to 1940. ...

Middle Eastern

Most Middle Eastern populations can be considered "brown", especially Shadi.

Coloureds in South Africa

Main article: Coloured

In 1950s (and later) South Africa the "brown people" were the Coloureds, who were largely, and erroneously, believed to have been the production of black-white sexual union out of wedlock. The Afrikaans terms, which incorporate many subtleties of heritage, political agenda, and identity, are "bruin" ("brown") ,"bruines" ("browns"), and "bruinmense" ("brown people"). Some South Africans prefer the appellation "bruinmense" to "Coloured".^[19][20] In the South African, Namibian, Zambian and Zimbabwean context, the term Coloured (also known as Bruinmense, Kleurlinge or Bruin Afrikaners in Afrikaans) refers to a heterogeneous group of people who posess some degree of sub-Saharan ancestry, but not enough to be considered Black under South African law. ... Look up Appendix:Afrikaans and Dutch Swadesh lists in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...

The South African pencil test is one example of a characteristic other than skin colour being used as a determiner. The pencil test, which distinguished either "black" from "Coloured" or "Coloured" from "white", relied upon curliness and strength of hair (i.e. whether it was capable of retaining a pencil under its own strength) rather than upon any colour factor at all. The pencil test could "trump skin colour".^[21][22] Pencil test has multiple meanings. ...

Stephen Biko, in his trial in 1976, rejected the appellation "brown people" when it was put to him by Judge Boshoff:^[23] Stephen Biko Stephen Bantu Biko (December 18, 1946 - September 12, 1977) was a noted anti-apartheid activist in South Africa in the 1960s. ...

Boshoff: But now why do you refer to you people as blacks? Why not brown people? I mean you people are more brown than black.

Biko: In the same way as I think white people are more pink and yellow and pale than white.

Boshoff: Quite ... but now why do you not use the word brown then?

Biko: No, I think really, historically, we have been defined as black people, and when we reject the term non-white and take upon ourselves the right to call ourselves what we think we are, we have got available in front of us a whole number of alternatives ... and we choose this one precisely because we feel it is most accommodating.

Oakes^[23] characterizes Biko's argument as picking "black" over "brown" because for Biko it is "the most valid, meaningful and appropriate representation, even though in an individualistic decontextualized sense it might appear wrong" (Oakes' emphasis).

This contrasts with Piet Uithalder, fictional protagonist of the satirical column "Straatpraatjes" (whose actual author was never revealed but who is believed to have been Abdullah Abdurahman) that appeared in the Dutch-Afrikaans section of the newspaper APO between May 1909 and February 1922. Uithalder would self-identify as a Coloured person, with the column targeted at a Coloured readership, introducing himself as "een van de ras" ("a member of the race") and characterizing himself as a "bruine mens".^[19]

Pardos in Brazil

Main article: Pardo

In Brazil, the "brown people" are the "pardos", one of the official racial classifications ("branco", "pardo", "preto", "amarelo", and "indigena" being Brazilian Portuguese for "white", "(grey) brown", "black", "yellow", and "indigenous", respectively) that have been used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics since 1950. It is a broad classification that encompasses people of mixed race, mulattos, and assimilated indigenous people ("caboclos"). In the first census in the 20th century to ask a colour question, the census of 1940, the three available categories were white, black, and yellow. Colour was chosen by the census enumerator, and any respondent who did not fit one of the three was classified as "pardo". In the 1950 census, "pardo" was added as a choice, and colour was chosen by the respondent.^[18][24] In Brazil, the Pardos are a mixture of Europeans, Blacks and Amerindians, varying from light to dark complexion, as used by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in censuses since 1950. ... Brazilian Portuguese (português do Brasil in Portuguese) is a group of dialects of Portuguese written and spoken by virtually all the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a couple of million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan, and Paraguay. ... The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics or IBGE (Portuguese: ), is the agency responsible for statistical, geographic, cartographic, geodetic and environmental information in Brazil. ... Mulatto (Spanish mulato, small mule, person of mixed race, mulatto, from mulo, mule, from Old Spanish, from Latin mūlus. ...

Unofficially, Brazilians also use a racial classification of "moreno", also meaning "brown". In a 1995 survey, 32% of the population self-identified as "moreno", with a further 6% self-identifying as "moreno claro" ("light brown"). 7% self-identified as "pardo".^[18]

Note that despite "moreno" is commonly used by some uneducated persons as a racial classification (mainly in Brazil), "moreno" is, in fact, the Portuguese equivalent to the English word "burnet(te)". It is used to describe a brown, dark brown or black haired person opposing to a blond (loiro/loira/louro/loura) one. In Portugal, it is also used to refer to skin colour, it is used usually referring to a heavily tanned white person. It is often preceded by the adjectives more or less, and is used to compare one person's colour to another. Recentley "mais moreno" (more "moreno") has been used to refer to black or brown peoples (specially non white Brazilians).

Mestizo and Hispanic

Main articles: Hispanics and Mestizo

In the United States some Hispanic Americans and mestizos are referred to by some as "brown people". There is a strong division over this, however. At opposite ends of the spectrum are those that take pride in calling themselves "brown", and those who assert that there is no such scientific classification and totally reject the idea. In the middle are those that assert that the combination of indigenous Indian and Spanish heritage has led to a group of people who are, informally, "brown".^[25][26] Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize US citizens, permanent residents and temporary immigrants, whose background hail either from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America or relating to a Spanish-speaking culture. ... Mestizo is a Spanish term that was formerly used in the Spanish Empire and continues to be used today in Latin America to refer to people of mixed European (Spaniard) and Amerindian ancestry living in the region of Latin America. ... For other uses, see Native Americans (disambiguation). ...

Judith Ortiz Cofer notes that appellation varies according to geographical location, observing that in Puerto Rico she is considered to be a white person, but in the United States she is considered to be a brown person.^[27] Judith Ortiz Cofer (born Judith Ortiz in 1952 in Hormigueros, Puerto), is an acclaimed Austrailian author. ...

The 1960s in the United States saw the creation of "brown pride" movements such as the Chicano Movement and La Raza. However, in contrast, many people classified, mainly for cultural reasons, as "Mestizos" assert that they are white, and reject any assertion that they are not, finding such assertions to be offensive. Contreras, a syndicated newspaper columnist in the United States, states that "in fact, there are a lot of 'brown' people", observing that he sees this colour whenever he looks in a mirror. He states that "[w]e, who trace back to the union of the Spanish Conquistadors and Indian women, can choose one of three paths. [... We] can insist upon being white if, of course, we can prove at least 50.1% white blood. Or we can ignore our white blood and be 'indigenous' and refuse to participate in America [...]. Or we can assert ourselves as a new people, we of brown skin, of Spanish and Indian blood. [...] We are Mexicans and Americans of Mexican descent.".^[28][26][25] The Chicano Movement, also called the Chicano Civil Rights Movement, the Mexican-American Civil Rights Movement, and El Movimiento, is the part of the American Civil Rights Movement that searched for social liberation and power for Mexican Americans. ... This article is about Latin American cultural identity. ...

South Asians

It is said that the racial qualities mentioned by Elliot Smith were the exact same as those mentioned by Giuseppe Sergi who wrote of the "mediterranean race". Sergi too spoke of a brown race^[29][30] although he discussed their distribution through Eurafrica. Perhaps this Mediterranean category can be extended to even Caucasoids of Latin America as Latin Americans descend from Iberia, which is classified by many within the Mediterranean race. Many see South Asia as an extension of the brown race.^[31] Giuseppè Sergi (1841, Messina – 1936, Rome) was an influential Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, notable for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of ancient Mediterranean peoples. ... Languages French Occitan Greek Italian Portuguese Spanish Catalan Religions Predominantly Roman Catholic Protestant Orthodox The Mediterranean race was one of the three sub-categories into which the people of Europe were divided by anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, following the publication of William Z. Ripleys... Latin America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... The Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe, and includes modern day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar. ...

The term 'Brown' was also used by British Empire as a derogatory term for Natives of Indian sub-continent, south Asia, and Australia. For a comprehensive list of the territories that formed the British Empire, see Evolution of the British Empire. ... This article is about the South Asian people. ... Location of Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is a subregion of Asia. ...

See also: Government classification of Indian Americans

Some South Asian Americans still identify their race as brown.^[32] Sociologist A. Rajagopal thinks South Asian Americans identify as brown to identify with Hispanic Americans who may also identify as brown.^[32] Indian Americans and Hispanic Americans who identify their race as brown may not identify each other as the same race.^[32] It has been suggested that Indian American be merged into this article or section. ... Hispanic, as used in the United States, is one of several terms used to categorize US citizens, permanent residents and temporary immigrants, whose background hail either from the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America or relating to a Spanish-speaking culture. ...

References

Further reading

• Alexander Winchell (1890). "XX. Genealogy of the Brown Races", Preadamites: Or, A Demonstration of the Existence of Men Before Adam. S. C. Griggs and company, xvii et seq.. 

See also

• Bronze race
• South Asia
• Hispanic

Bronze race (Spanish: raza de bronce) is a term used by early 20th century Latin American writers of the indigenista and americanista schools to refer to the mestizo race that arose in America with the arrival of European (particularly Spanish) colonisers and their intermingling with the New Worlds indigenous... Map of South Asia (see note on Kashmir). ... Hispanic (Spanish: ; Portuguese: ; Latin: , adjective from Hispānia, the Roman name for the Iberian Peninsula) is a term that historically denoted relation to the ancient Hispania and its peoples. ...

External links

• The first Asian boat people