Race as a failed biology — Boas, clines, India lists

Race is a social classification with a biological costume. Say that early; then give the measurements people misused.

• Earnest Hooton’s typological race (shared looks, a ‘gene pool’) is a 20th-century museum label, not a subspecies.
• Humans interbreed; isolation is regional and temporary — no stable subspecies cut.
• Traits cline: skin, nose, hair vary continuously. Japanese once counted ‘white’, Chinese ‘coloured’ — the label follows politics.
• Franz Boas: about 18,000 immigrant families; US-born children changed cephalic index — skull shape is plastic, not a racial soul.

• Morphology: skin, eyes, hair (leiotrichous / cymotrichous / ulotrichous in the old lexicon).
• Nasal index, cephalic index, dermatoglyphics (arch, loop, whorl) were ranking tools — now forensic/population hints at best.
• Racist IQ ranking and Galtonian eugenics are the afterlife of the same tables.

• Risley: nasal index and caste as race — colonial administrative science.
• B.S. Guha’s six-fold scheme (Negrito to Nordic) overplayed migration and a Negrito layer.
• S.S. Sarkar’s six races (Australoid as earliest, and so on) — still a type list.
• T.H. Eriksen: race and ethnicity both constructed; groups get racialised or ethnicised by power.
• Exam close: quote the scheme if asked, then one sentence on why it is not biology.