page_title: Color terminology for race
section_title: Modern physical anthropology
hierarchical_section_title: Color terminology for race / History / Modern physical anthropology
context_page_description: Identifying human races in terms of skin color, at least as one among several physiological characteristics, has been common since antiquity. Via rabbinical literature, the division is received in early modern scholarship, mostly in four to five categories. It was long recognized that the number of categories is arbitrary and subjective. François Bernier doubted the validity of using skin color as a racial characteristic, and Charles Darwin emphasized the gradual differences between categories.
  The modern categorization was coined by the Göttingen School of History in the late 18th century – in parallel with the Biblical terminology for race – dividing mankind into five colored races: "Aethiopian or Black","Caucasian or White","Mongolian or Yellow","American or Red" and "Malayan or Brown" subgroups.
context_section_description: In the 1730s,  Carl Linnaeus in his introduction of systematic taxonomy recognized four main human subspecies, termed
  Americanus (Americans), Europaeus (Europeans), Asiaticus (Asians) and Afer (Africans). The physical appearance of each type is briefly described, including colour adjectives referring to skin and hair colour: rufus "red" and pilis nigris "black hair" for Americans, albus "white" and pilis flavescentibus "yellowish hair" for Europeans, luridus "yellowish, sallow",   pilis nigricantibus "swarthy hair" for Asians, 
  and niger "black", pilis atris "coal-black hair" for Africans.
  The views of Johann Friedrich Blumenbach on the categorization of the major races of mankind developed over the course of the 1770s to 1820s. He introduced a four-fold division in 1775, extended to five in 1779,  later borne out in his work on craniology (Decas craniorum, published during 1790–1828).
  He also used color not as the name or main label of the races but as part of the description of their physiology.
  Blumenbach does not name his five groups in 1779 but gives their geographic distribution. 
  The color adjectives used in 1779 are weiss "white" (Caucasian race), gelbbraun "yellow-brown" (Mongolian race), schwarz "black" (Aethiopian race), kupferroth "copper-red" (American race) and schwarzbraun "black-brown" (Malayan race).
  According to D'Souza (1995), it was "Blumenbach's classification" which had a lasting influence, being memorable because it "neatly broke down into familiar tones and colors".
  However, according to Barkhaus (2006) it was the adoption of both the colour terminology and the French term race by Immanuel Kant in 1775 which proved influential. Kant published an essay Von den verschiedenen Racen der Menschen "On the diverse races of mankind" in 1775, based on the 
  system proposed by  Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, in which  he recognized four groups, a "white" European race (Race der Weißen), a "black" Negroid race (Negerrace), a copper-red Kalmyk race (kalmuckishe Race) and an olive-yellow Indian race (Hinduische Race).
  Blumenbach's division and choice of color-adjectives remained influential, with variation depending on author, throughout the 19th and well into the 20th century. René Lesson in 1847 presented a division into six groups based on simple color adjectives: White (Caucasian), Dusky (Indian), Orange-colored (Malay), Yellow (Mongoloid), Red (Carib and American), Black (Negroid).
  Two historical anthropologists favored a binary racial classification system that divided people into a light skin and dark skin categories. 18th-century anthropologist Christoph Meiners, who first defined the Caucasian race, posited a "binary racial scheme" of two races with the Caucasian whose racial purity was exemplified by the "venerated... ancient Germans", although he considered some Europeans as impure "dirty whites"; and "Mongolians", who consisted of everyone else.  Meiners did not include the Jews as Caucasians and ascribed them a "permanently degenerate nature". 
  Hannah Franzieka identified 19th-century writers who believed in the "Caucasian hypothesis" and noted that "Jean-Julien Virey and Louis Antoine Desmoulines were well-known supports of the idea that Europeans came from Mount Caucasus."  In his political history of racial identity, Bruce Baum wrote,"Jean-Joseph Virey (1774-1847), a follower of Chistoph Meiners, claimed that "the human races... may divided... into those who are fair and white and those who are dark or black."
  Lothrop Stoddard in The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy (1920)
  considered five races,  White, Black, Yellow, Brown and Amerindian.
  In this explicitly "white supremacist" exposition of racial categorization, the "white" category is much more limited than in Blumenbach's scheme, essentially restricted to Europeans, while the separate "brown" category is introduced for non-European Caucasoid subgroups in North Africa, Western, Central and South Asia.
caption: The old flag of Suriname (1954–1975) symbolized unity between the five "races" in the country: red (Amerind), white (European), black (Afro-Surinamese), brown (Indian and Javanese) and yellow (East Asians).