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Well, I would talk about the Spanish word raza and the way in which that was applied first to breeds of dogs and horses; raza as a race of dogs, a race of horses. And then it begins to be applied, however, to people of Jewish and Moorish descent. In other words, the term raza begins to be applied to what we call ethnic groups. And you know, they talked about races of nobility, the nobility was described as being like a race of horses and dogs. There was the idea of people handing on cert...

When it comes to looking at the origin of the term in English, my research shows that in about the 16th century, the English, especially those who were trading with the Spanish, got it from the Spanish. It was a general classificatory word in Spanish, which as George says was usually used for breeds of animals. Even today the Spanish raza has somewhat different connotations than the English term. You can think of breeds of flowers or breeds of animals, but you can also use the term raza ...

Let me take the latter part of that question. All European nations developed a concept of race. But these concepts were quite different from one another. For example, if you go to parts of Latin America, you find very important distinctions being made between blacks, whites, and mulattoes. In the United States with a few exceptions, the primary distinction is just black and white. So why is that?

Well the first thing is that English settlers generally settled in family units, to ...

I think what you have in the Latin American case is a sense of difference based on color, but it's a graded sense, kind of a chromatic hierarchy. In Brazil, they have 30 or 40 different descriptions of peoples' race. The whiter you are, the better, although color is not all determinative; wealth and education also can whiten you, as they say, lighten you. So it is racial, but not in the sense of black versus white. People of mixed race are an intermediate category, or there may be severa...