ding to these backgrounds. These kinds of classifications can be very hurtful to peoples sense of who they are. These actions can be equally devastating on communities as a whole, as this is often the reason many gangs are formed. Classifying people according to their race can often lead to racism. One major reason that people have always felt the need to classify people according to their ethnicities is because mankind is a very ethnocentric beast. In every way people can be different, they must also feel that they are better. This can be observed in culture, religion, sexual preference, and many other personal beliefs. People are very ignorant!
             According to a historical researcher by the name of Glyde Whitney, attempts have been made to classify humans since the 17th century when scholars first began to separate types of flora and fauna (Infoplease.com). Johann Friedrich was the first to divide humanity according to skin color. In the19th and early 20th century, other people such as Joseph Arthur and Houston Stewart Chamberlain, mainly interested in pressing forward the supposed superiority of their own kind of culture or nationality, began to attribute cultural and psychological values to race. This approach is now called racism. This same approach complicated the movement in the United States and underlayed the former segregation policies of the Republic of South Africa.
             To classify humans on the basis of physiological traits is difficult. Previous
             scientists attempted to classify humans for the coexistence of races through conquests, invasions, migrations, and mass deportations that had produced a heterogeneous world population. Race classification became initiated by limiting the criteria to such traits as skin pigmentation, color and form of hair, shape of head, stature, and form of nose. Although anthropologists have used science to create a way to generalize humans, more than forty seven percent of the people in...