I recently opened an online order and discovered an unexpected bonus: As a buffer

against damage, the seller had included a 1906 elementary school textbook called Fryes
First Steps in Geography. Written by Alexis Everett Frye, an American who served as
Cubas first superintendent of schools, the book was filled with facts that would now be
considered false and even pernicious.
To the left, for instance, is an illustration from a chapter that explains the worlds five
racial groups. Although this ideal head happens to look exactly like mine, its
implications are troubling.
According to this textbook, the white race is the most advanced in the world. Most other
races, schoolchildren were taught, tended to have a savage character, living in remote
areas without industry and Western-style education.

As I read these century-old pages, I wonder how quaint and outdated todays racial
theories will seem in 100 years. What fundamental beliefs will have been long
abandoned as advances in sciences and social sciences rendered them obsolete?
Let me venture a few guesses. Barack Obama, Keegan-Michael Key, Jordan Peele,
Drake, and Halle Berry each have one white parent and one black parent. But by todays
definitions, each of them is generally classified as African American: The 2010 U.S.
census form defines black as having origins in any of the Black racial groups of
Africa.
What does race have to do with geography? Plenty, it seems, especially when places and
races are associated with one another, as they were in Fryes First Steps in Geography.
Then, as now, geography class teaches less about mountain ranges and savannahs than
it does about the people who live among them.

What is the difference between a Mexican and a member of the Native American Papago
tribe? Dont ask me; the Papago have occupied what we call Arizona and Mexico for
many centuries. Yet in the U.S., Mexicans are classified as Latino and Papago as Native
American.
The U.S. census also includes a single category for American Indian and Alaska Native,
even though most Native people I knew when I lived in Oklahoma identified themselves
by tribe, not race.

A century from now, textbooks and census forms may recognize that dividing the
worlds population into a few major races is a futile exercise. Each racial group we
distinguish today includes people of many different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
backgrounds. Im more or less white, for instance, but I have a Jewish father, and I
know many Jews who fill in Other: Jew on forms asking for racial identification.
Over the next several decades, these distinctions will likely become less and less
meaningful, perhaps even disappearing altogether. If you find it hard to believe that
racial paradigms could change so drastically in 100 years, go back and take a look at that
ideal head and see if you measure up.