The neutrality and factual accuracy of this article are disputed. Please see the relevant discussion on the talk page. (March 2008)

Main article: Black people

Negroid is an adjective derived from the term Negro and refers to a presumed race of people mostly from sub-Saharan Africa. ^[1] These people are now generally referred to as black people. Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... Negro is a term referring to people of Black African ancestry. ... For other uses, see Race. ... Satellite image of Africa, showing the ecological break that defines the sub-Saharan area Sub-Saharan Africa is a geographical term used to describe the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara, or those African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara. ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ...

Origin of the term

The term has its etymological roots in the Latin word niger (black), with the earliest recorded use of the term "Negroid" in 1859.^[2] In modern use, the term is associated with "the division of humankind represented by the indigenous peoples of central and southern Africa".^[3] For other uses, see Latins and Latin (disambiguation). ... This article is about the color. ...  Central Africa  Middle Africa (UN subregion)  Central African Federation (defunct) Central Africa is a core region of the African continent often considered to include: Burundi Central African Republic Chad Democratic Republic of the Congo Rwanda Middle Africa (as used by the United Nations when categorising geographic subregions) is an analogous... Categories: Africa geography stubs | Southern Africa ... A world map showing the continent of Africa Africa is the worlds second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. ...

Objection to use of the term

The term Negroid is commonly associated with outdated notions of racial typology which have been widely discredited in scientific circles^[1] — for modern usage it is generally associated with outdated racial notions, and is discouraged, as it is potentially offensive.^[3] Though the term "Negroid" is still used in certain disciplines such as craniometry and epidemiology, its usage is in decline.^{[citation needed]} Even in a medical context, some scholars have recommended that the term Negroid should be avoided in scientific writings because of its association with racism and race science.^[4] This mirrors the decline in usage of the term Negro, which fell out of favor following the campaigns of the American civil rights movement — the term Negro became associated with periods of legalized discrimination, and was rejected by African Americans during the 1960s for Black.^[3] Typology in anthropology is the division of culture by races. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... Epidemiology is the study of factors affecting the health and illness of populations, and serves as the foundation and logic of interventions made in the interest of public health and preventive medicine. ... For the chemical substances known as medicines, see medication. ... Manifestations Slavery Racial profiling Lynching Hate speech Hate crime Genocide (examples) Ethnocide Ethnic cleansing Pogrom Race war Religious persecution Blood libel Paternalism Police brutality Movements Policies Discriminatory Race / Religion / Sex segregation Apartheid Redlining Internment Ethnocracy Anti-discriminatory Emancipation Civil rights Desegregation Integration Equal opportunity Counter-discriminatory Affirmative action Racial quota... The civil rights movement in the United States has been a long, primarily nonviolent struggle to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all citizens of United States. ... African Americans, also known as Afro-Americans or black Americans, are an ethnic group in the United States of America whose ancestors, usually in predominant part, were indigenous to Sub-Saharan and West Africa. ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ...

Congoid used by some as substitute term

Anti-racist activists such as Elizabeth Martinez have suggested that one reason the term is regarded as offensive is because while other races are identified by the geographical places where it was assumed those people most typical of their phenotype live (the Caucasus for those called Caucasoids and Mongolia for those called Mongoloids), Negroids were identified by their color (niger = black). To remedy this, some have suggested substituting the term Congoid (referring to the Congo) ^[5] for those people formerly termed Negroid. Anti-racism includes beliefs, actions, movements, and policies adopted or developed to oppose racism. ... // Martínez graduated from Swarthmore College. ... For the books called Geography by Ancient Greek authors, see Geographia (Ptolemy) and Geographica (Strabo) For the magazine of the Royal Geographical Society, see Geographical (magazine) Geography is the study of the earth and its features, inhabitants, and phenomena. ... Individuals in the mollusk species Donax variabilis show diverse coloration and patterning in their phenotypes. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Caucasus Mountains. ... In some societies, color metaphors are used in place of racial classifications. ...

Most people nowadays simply use the term Black African to avoid being labeled politically incorrect.^{[citation needed]} Political correctness is the alteration of language to redress real or alleged injustices and discrimination or to avoid offense. ...

Scientific use of the term

Use in physical anthropology

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it. Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion. (November 2007)

In physical anthropology the term is one of the three general racial classifications of humans — Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. Under this classification scheme, humans are divisible into broad sub-groups based on phenotypic characteristics such as cranial and skeletal morphology. Such classifications remain in use today in the fields of anthropology and forensics to help identify the ethnicity, lineage and origin of human remains. For example, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza freely uses the term in his 1994 book The History and Geography of Human Genes to distinguish between various groups that have inhabited and do inhabit Africa. ^[6] Image File history File links This is a lossless scalable vector image. ... Physical anthropology, often called biological anthropology, studies the mechanisms of biological evolution, genetic inheritance, human adaptability and variation, primatology, primate morphology, and the fossil record of human evolution. ... Human beings are defined variously in biological, spiritual, and cultural terms, or in combinations thereof. ... Typical Caucasoid skull Caucasoid is a racial classification usually used as part of a phenotypal system, also including other classifications such as Australoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, and sometimes others such as Capoid. ... Typical Mongoloid Skull A portrait of the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan; the Mongolians, for which the term Mongoloid was named after, are an example of the prototype Northern Mongoloid. ... Individuals in the mollusk species Donax variabilis show diverse coloration and patterning in their phenotypes. ... Cranium can mean: The brain and surrounding skull, a part of the body. ... For other uses, see Skeleton (disambiguation). ... The term morphology in biology refers to the outward appearance (shape, structure, colour, pattern) of an organism or taxon and its component parts. ... Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza (born January 25, 1922) is an Italian population geneticist born in Genoa, who has been a professor at Stanford University since 1970 (now emeritus). ...

Later extensions, such as Carleton S. Coon's "Origin of Races" placed this theory in an evolutionary context — Coon divided the species homo sapiens into five groups, Caucasoid, Capoid, Congoid, Australoid, and Mongoloid, based on his belief of their date of evolution from homo erectus.^[7][8] Labeling Congoids the "African Negroes" and "Pygmies", he divided indigenous Africans into these two distinct groups based on their date of origin, and loosened classification from mere appearance — however, this led to disagreement between approaches to dating divergence, and consequent conflicting results.^[8][9] Carleton Stevens Coon, (23 June 1904 – 3 June 1981) was a American physical anthropologist noted for books on race. ... This article is about biological evolution. ... Homo sapiens (Latin: wise man) is the scientific name for the human species. ... Main article: Khoisan One of the five macro-racial groups often recognized by physical anthropologists (along with Negroids, Australoids, Caucasoids and Mongoloids). ... Australoid is a broad racial classification, no longer used by many anthropologists, of Australasian peoples, most notably the Indigenous Australians and Melanesians. ... Binomial name (Dubois, 1892) Synonyms † Pithecanthropus erectus † Sinanthropus pekinensis † Javanthropus soloensis † Meganthropus paleojavanicus Homo erectus (Latin: upright man) is an extinct species of the genus Homo. ...

These theories were quickly criticized on the basis that such "sorting criteria" do not (in general) produce meaningful results, and that evolutionary divergence was extremely improbable over the given time-frames.^[10] As Monatagu (1963) said,

Today, most scientists view human variation as distributed clinally, often without any sharp discontinuities. While acknowledging the existence of human variation among groups, anthropologists have abandoned the view that clearly delineated, discrete racial entities exist, since there often is considerable overlap in characteristics among the populations.^[11] Furthermore, in at least one study most of the variation in physical traits found was among individuals within the so-called racial groups.^[12] In population genetics, a cline is a gradual change of a character or feature (phenotype) in a species over a geographical area, often as a result of environmental heterogeneity. ... See Anthropology. ...

Use in craniofacial anthropometry

In modern craniofacial anthropometry, Negroid describes features that typify skulls of Black people. These include a broad and round nasal cavity; no dam or nasal sill; Quonset hut-shaped nasal bones; notable facial projection in the jaw and mouth area (prognathism); a rectangular-shaped palate; a square or rectangular eye orbit shape^[13]; and large, megadontic teeth.^[14] STill widely used internationally in the identification of human remains, some have challenged its accuracy in different human populations which have developed in close proximity to one another and those of mixed ethnic heritage. For example, one recent study of ancient Nubian crania concluded: Typical Caucasoid skull Typical Mongoloid skull Typical Negroid skull Craniofacial anthropometry is a technique used in physical anthropology comprising precise and systematic measurement of the bones of the human skull. ... Though most indigenous Africans possess relatively dark skin, they exhibit much variation in physical appearance. ... This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ... For the Star Wars planet, see Nubia (Star Wars). ...

Views of anthropologist Vincent Sarich

Vincent Sarich, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California defines race as "populations...within a species that are separated geographically from other such populations...and distinguishable from them on the basis of heritable features." With 73 appropriate DNA markers, according to Sarich, it is possible to state with close to 100 percent accuracy whether the ancestors of the individual who supplied them came from Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Americas. Sarich notes that the latest data suggest the migrations from Africa began only around 50,000 years ago. Then, pointing to the observed heritable differences among the resulting populations--differences not only in skin color but also in body size, cranial capacity and brain size, intelligence, physical ability, and personality--he argues that so much adaptation in so little time means that racial differences had to be enormously important for survival. The differences were not trivial, and could not have been driven by chance.

The above views of Sarich are very controversial. Other factors are responsible for the IQ test score gap- such as culture and socioeconomic class. Thus it is unknown the sign and magnitude of genetic racial mental disparities.

See also

• -oid (suffix)
• Africoid peoples
• Race (historical definitions)

-oid is a suffix much used in the sciences and mathematics to indicate a similarity, not necessarily exact, to something else. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, -oid is derived from the Latin suffix -oides taken from Greek and meaning having the likeness of. Thus, asteroid means like a star... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

References