Is 'race' a synonym of 'species,' or is this just a common mistake?

Question

It's very common -- especially in fantasy and science-fiction -- to use race instead of species.

For example:

• “In Middle Earth (...) Aragorn (race: men) (...) Bilbo (race: hobbit)” 1
• “Tarkin's motivation was the enslavement of the Wookiee race for use as manual (...)”2
• “The human race has only one really effective weapon and that is laughter.”3

Shouldn't species be used instead?

From the Oxford Dictionary:

species.

Biology. a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. The species is the principal natural taxonomic unit, ranking below a genus and denoted by a Latin binomial, e.g. Homo sapiens.

race².

each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics: people of all races, colours, and creeds.

Answer 1

No. In its entry for race the ‘Oxford English Dictionary's ’ first definition is 'A group of people, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin.'

Answer 2

At one level, the answer to your question "shouldn't [they] use 'species' instead?" is "Why should they use a technical, scientific word rather than an ordinary English word?".

Looking at it a different way, the set of circumstances we're talking about is the interaction of humans with something that's like humans but not quite human. In the present day, that is a purely fictional scenario - but in earlier centuries it was a reality, when Europeans encountered people who did not look or behave like them. Whether or not these others were of the same species or not was not apparent (and I'm not sure that the question would have been intelligible to many at the time) but it was immediately obvious that they were of different "race".

In time some scholars certainly decided that they were of different species (see for example Samuel Morton) but the divisions have always been referred to as "races" - though as Barrie says, the word has other meanings as well.

From our modern perspective, we know that all extant humans are of one species, so any subdivision can only be races (though nowadays such subdivisions are not regarded as meaningful by most scientiests). But I suggest that the experience of European explorers who first encountered different kinds of humans was very much akin to that of Terran explorers in Science Fiction who make the first contact with humanoid aliens.

Answer 3

It all comes down to sex - can they breed?

So you would probably have to troll the murkier corners of fan fiction to find sufficent examples of man-on-dwarf action to determine if they can interbreed.

Species is becoming a less useful term in biology with more genetic information and it's definition is now a bit fuzzy. Race is a good literary alternative.

Answer 4

The dictionary also defines 'literally,' as meaning 'literally,' and 'virtually.'

Dictionaries and common usage can only take us so far.

Scientific definitions are much more useful. In SCIENCE, species are defined by speciation. If two individuals can produce viable offspring, they are of the same species.

This is a ricketey definition, as life itself is largely misunderstood. Science struggles to issue a definition even there.

However, calling aliens a different race is merely yet another ideological tool in the belt of racists. Some use it unknowingly, even innocently, but that does not stop their actions from hurting others.

When black kids see the newest Hollywood movie about an alien 'race,' they understand that the language is built against them. It perpetuates a feeling of alienation.

In short: races are like breeds of dogs. Maybe our ears are bigger or shorter, but we're all the same species.

Aliens are a different species.

If Fantasy settings were subjected to real-world scientific rigor (not necessary at all - indeed I believe such rigor would make the setting sci-fi with fantasy trappings) then Orcs, Humans, and Elves (if they could produce Half-Elves, Half-Orcs, etc.) would all be of the same species. However, if each has an origin story involving magical deities, or being shaped out of mud or emerging from a blooming flower, then all bets are off.

Answer 5

In your specific examples 'race' could be used interchangeably with 'species'.

From Dictionary

species

noun, plural spe·cies.

2. Biology. the major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, regarded as the basic category of biological classification, composed of related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species.

In the present day we have only one species of human -- the human race if you like.

The Dictionary entry has a 'usage note' for race.

Genetic evidence has undermined the idea of racial divisions of the human species and rendered race obsolete as a biological system of classification. Race therefore should no longer be considered as an objective category, as the term formerly was in expressions like the Caucasian race, the Asian race, the Hispanic race. Instead, if the reference is to a particular inherited physical trait, as skin color or eye shape, that salient feature should be mentioned specifically: discrimination based on color.

So different 'human races' is scientifically specious. It is a relatively modern concept which has been used to justify various injustices such as slavery and Nazi ideologies. I would say if you still want to use 'race' then the combination 'the human race' or an 'alien race' for sciencefiction is probably ok. Presumably there are characteristic human genes which would distinguish them from an alien race/species. However, like the previous poster noted, since 'race' has been used in a discriminatory way for centuries it can push the wrong buttons. Probably better avoided.

Answer 6

The OED, updated 2008, has 8 entries each of which has about 3 subsections. Race, in this 'group' meaning, is a word that has many connotations and is somewhat imprecise, and even context does not always help as can be seen from the accompanying notes.

Race and species differ. Species is the greater. A safe definition to distinguish race from species is:

OED

Race 5.a. A breed or stock of animals or plants; (Biology) an interbreeding population within a species that is genetically and morphologically distinct from the members of other such populations of the same species, esp. through cultivation or breeding or as a result of geographical or ecological isolation.Sometimes equivalent to subspecies; sometimes (esp. in Botany) used to denote a rank between subspecies and variety.

1973 BioScience 23 523/1 We are dealing with a single species of honeybee, Apis mellifera, the races of which differ very little in appearance or structure.

The difficulty arises when the subject is human and politics and sensitivities come into play...

**Race I. A group of people, animals, or plants, connected by common descent or origin.In its widest sense the term includes all descendants from an original stock, but may also be limited to a single line of descent or to the group as it exists at a particular period.

1.a. A group of people belonging to the same family and descended from a common ancestor; a house, family, kindred.

2000 E. S. Belfiore Murder among Friends i. 16 The Argive women supplicate Theseus on the basis of kinship, since they, like him, belong to the race of Pelasgos.

b. An ethnic group, regarded as showing a common origin and descent; a tribe, nation, or people, regarded as of common stock. In early use frequently with modifying adjective, as British race, Roman race, etc. Frequently overlapping with, and difficult to distinguish from, sense 1c and in some cases also sense 1d.

2005 D. McWilliams Pope's Children xxiv. 271 Back in mainland Europe, it feels like the Jews and the Paddies are the only two entrepreneurial races in Europe.

c. A group of several tribes or peoples, regarded as forming a distinct ethnic set.Esp. used in 19th-cent. anthropological classification, sometimes in conjunction with linguistic groupings. Frequently overlapping with, and difficult to distinguish from, both sense 1b and sense 1d.

2004 R. Weitz Rapunzel's Daughters i. 20 In his influential 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race , Madison Grant argued that ‘the citadel of civilization will fall’ if the Nordic race..wiped itself out through intermarriage with the ‘brunet’ races of southern and eastern Europe.

d. According to various more or less formal attempted systems of classification: any of the (putative) major groupings of mankind, usually defined in terms of distinct physical features or shared ethnicity, and sometimes (more controversially) considered to encompass common biological or genetic characteristics.

In early use usually applied to groups of people with obviously distinct physical characteristics such as skin colour, etc. An influential early system was that of J. F. Blumenbach De Generis Humani Varietati Nativa (1775), which, on the basis of skin colour and conformation of the head, divided the human species into five races, the American, Caucasian, Ethiopian, Malay, and Mongolian, and assigned them qualitative ranking. A similar division into six was proposed by Goldsmith (cf. quot. 1774). In particular contexts (e.g. former European colonies or areas of the United States) adherents of a theory of race have frequently applied only a simple two-term distinction (such as ‘black’ and ‘white’).

Now often used more generally to denote groups of different cultural or ethnic origin (esp. as forming part of a larger national community), in which context it frequently overlaps with, and can be difficult to distinguish from, senses 1b and 1c; examples have been placed at this sense where distinct physical features play an important role in how race is conceptualized. In recent years, the associations of race with the ideologies and theories that grew out of the work of 19th-cent. anthropologists and physiologists have led to the word often being avoided with reference to specific ethnic groups. Although it is still used in general contexts, it is now often replaced by terms such as people(s), community, etc.

1997 Sciences Mar. 22/1 True races may not exist, but racism does.

2005 P. S. Parker Race, Gender, & Leadership i. 1 A White middle class feminine ideal that paradoxically excludes the leadership experiences of women of different races and class statuses.