“We define racial formation as the sociohistorical process by which racial categories are created, inhabited, transformed, and destroyed. Our attempt to elaborate a theory of racial formation will proceed in two steps. First, we argue that racial formation is a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized. Next we link

Charron formulated a theory of race in his book De la sagesse (1601) based on noble families, mentioning nothing of color. The idea that Charron had about race was one that went a lot more in-depth than Foxe’s idea did. Pierre Charron created a five part description of mankind, taking into account all that would define “man” (Hannaford 174). The first four aspects of the idea were nature, spirit, accident of estate, and accident of condition and profession. It was not until the fifth aspect that race began to play a role in the theory. When race finally did become a factor in this theory, there was still no mention at all of physiognomy being the basis for distinctions in race. Instead, race to Charron was based on whether or not you were a member of a noble family. According to Hannaford:

This is just one of many theories that have been formulated over the years dealing with the notion of race; and it will not be the last theory formulated either. The concept of race has always been in a process of formation, beginning in the 15th century, and drastically changing in the 17th and 18th centuries due to the desire of the Europeans/European-Americans to exert their power over those people who looked different from themselves and also to distinguish between slaves and free men.

2. The rest of Asia…who live beyond the Ganges, beyond the Caspian Sea and Obi toward Nova Zemlya. These people were brownish in color, verging on olive, with straight faces, narrow eyelids, and scanty hair. He subdivided them into two varieties:

4. The rest of America: The inhabitants were copper colored, had a thin habit of body, and scanty hair.

Some topics in this essay:
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