The modern concept of race surfaced to distinguish colonial conquerors from the conquered. Race allowed Spaniards, and other Europeans who followed them, to define themselves by what they were not, using physical characteristics as shorthand for a host of negative attributes. If indigenous peoples were savage heathens, the colonizers were civilized Christians. This racial perspective efficiently packaged that dichotomy into appearance.
Read the rest of this essay/book review about diet culture and race on Mangoprism.