• more ethnic/national origin choices
• allow people to choose more than one option
• cultural identification
• appearance
• heritage--what would happen if we said if you are half or more of some heritage that is your classification
  

laws prohibited mixed race marriages (anti-miscegenation laws) in southern states until overturned by the Supreme Court in 1967:

How is race understood today:

• what does it mean to be Japanese: a way you look and also family history
• in South Africa race is defined as black, white, or mixed
• in the US race is a mix of ancestry, color, and culture, but if someone is a mixture they tend to be identified with whatever part of the mixture is considered inferior
• Definition of "White" used in the 2010 census:
  
• “White” refers to a person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. The White racial category includes people who marked the “White” checkbox. It also includes respondents who reported entries such as Caucasian or White; European entries, such as Irish, German, and Polish; Middle Eastern entries, such as Arab, Lebanese, and Palestinian; and North African entries, such as Algerian, Moroccan, and Egyptian. (source)

consider the meaning of the term "race"

• it is important to consider the purpose of systems of classification
• scientists used the term race to as an alternative to varieties or subspecies in writing about plants and animals
• race began to be used to describe human differences in the 17th--18th century
• before that people had prejudices about ethnicity or religion, but they didn't use the concept of race
• race was initially an effort to draw larger categories, but they were often differently drawn than we would expect (for example north Africans were considered European
• Christian leaders generally maintained that all humans were equal before God, but supported colonialism as a way to bring Christianity to areas where it was not known or not common
  
• naturalists saw races of animals as adapted to different environments, not superior or inferior, but for humans they spoke of superior races
• some argued that the different races of humans were created separately by God or were separate species, but the majority of scientific opinion was that they were one species
• legal definitions of race in the US
  
• 1662 Virginia: one drop rule (hypodescent)
• 1705: if you have at least one black grandparent (1/8) you cannot be labeled white
• 1911 Arkansas law: you are black if you have "any Negro blood whatever"
• 1970 Louisiana law defines as black anyone with 1/32 African American blood upheld in court in 1985

the idea that Caucasians of western European heritage were a superior race was widely assumed

• it justified colonialism and segregation
• the prejudices of scientists crept into their science, but also that racist science was used as justification for colonialism and denying opportunities to African-Americans
  
• they saw other races as degenerated from some ideal type, which seems odd from an evolutionary point of view
  
• early 20th century eugenicists saw race mixing as diluting the superior race with inferior genes, but they were more concerned about what they saw as the larger problem of inferior eastern and southern Europeans and Irish
• the anti-miscegenation laws in some states also prohibited marriage between whites and Chinese and Japanese and in a few cases Indians
  

Scientific opinion (much influence by prejudice) tended to be that race mixing would lead to disharmonious crosses

• Eugenicists argued on very weak evidence that a chaotic mixing of the different characteristics of the races would lead to unhealthy offspring
• or at least the characteristics of a superior race would be diluted
  
• scientists inbred varieties of plants and animals to create pure lines, an idea that could be applied to humans
  
• but they also knew that outbreeding would increase vigor, an idea that they were very reluctant to apply to humans
  
• this was applied to humans only for closely related superior races (such as English and Scotch)

The empirical evidence was very weak

• Davenport did a study in Jamaica and concluded that some mixed race people had superior traits but many were inferior to purer members of either race
• his evidence was very weak but that didn't cause him to change his mind
  
• he was reduced to arguing that non-whites had undesirable moral traits that he believed to be genetic, so mixing was unwise
• argued for dilution of desirable characteristics rather than for hybrid vigor
•