Persian / Iranians - What race are they?

[Valjean]

Race is a confusing and loaded concept. It's more a cultural construct than anything genetic.
What's the difference between race and ethnicity? Who knows?
Then there are the subcategories: are Aryans, Dravidians, or Hispanics races, or just different flavors of Caucasian?

Different writers posited (past tense -- "race" isn't used much anymore by anthropologists) different numbers of races: three, nine, a dozen, &c.

Race is like color. How many colors are there? Depends how you want to divide up the spectrum -- it's pretty arbitrary.

 

[Mehr Licht]

I think the term Aryan is often used for Iranians because it's used in the Zoroastrian scriptures as a self description for that group of people. I've read that the word "Iran" itself is related to the term Aryanem-vaejo or land of the aryans.

 

[Marble]

Are they white, Semitic, Asian (like Indian Asian)?

Semitic is not a race, as far as I know.
If I'm not wrong here, there are 3 races: Europide, Monoloide, Negroide.
I would say that Persians are Europides, but that's just my feeling.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Persian / Iranians - What race are they?

The same race that you and I are: Homo Sapien.

What's the difference between race and ethnicity? Who knows?

From an anthropological perspective, an ethnic group is a descent group with a shared culture, heritage, language, and certain customs. An ethnic group can include the Amish, Ju/'hoansi, Americans, Japanese, Native Americans, African Americans, etc. It makes the term "race" so useless as it is more accurate and precise as it acknowledges specific groups and their behaviors rather than focusing on skin color which is just too difficult, complicated, and inaccurate to be used effectively. What can be confusing though is discerning the difference between an ethnic group and sub-culture though, so even saying ethnic group can stir some questions over accuracy.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

If I'm not wrong here, there are 3 races: Europide, Monoloide, Negroide.

This is very inaccurate. Technically, because our earliest ancestors emerged from Africa, and genetically we all have the capability of producing pigmentation to be very dark, we are all the so-called "negroide." And from Africa our ancestors moved North into India and into Asia, the "mongoloid", and then eventually they moved to North and South America, and the other part our species migrated North and towards the West, and due to a climate of less sunlight that is much more colder than Africa, the "europide/caucasian" emerged.
But because our biological and genetic knowledge has increased by leaps and bounds since the three races hypothesis, we know there is only one race of humans walking the planet today.

 

[Nashitheki]

To my understanding, the Persians were made up mostly by the Indo-European Medes and people such as the Parthians whom have been said to be akin to the ancient Scythians, both sharing a similar culture.

Certainly the Persians absorbed the ancient Semitic peoples of that region.

 

[6079_Smith_W]

It should be noted that the Persians and Iranians are not one distinct group, but rather an amalgamation of many related cultural and linguistic subgroups, such as Persians, Pashtuns, Kurds, Ossetians, Balochis, Pamiris, and others. (historically, also Medes, Scythians, Bactrians, and Parthians). They are related to Indo-Aryans and Indo-Persians and trace their lineage to the original Aryan/Indo-European peoples who inhabited Western Eurasia millenia ago.

Genetically speaking, Haplogroup J2 is found in most Iranic peoples, indicating a paternal line which is native to the region and also shared by Caucasians. In terms of physiognomy, the Iranians are classified alongside Europeans as being Caucasoid, but there are variations among the physical types of different Iranians. A very common physical type in Iran is that of the "Eastern Mediterranean", but there are also some Indo-Afghans and Irano-Afghans who have certain Proto-Nordic features, others Atlanto-Mediterranean, and yet others, are metrically similar to Celtic peoples (with the exception of pigmentation).

The anthropologist Renato Biasutti the defines the modern "Iranid" type thus:

Brunet-white color, very dark hair and eyes, abundant pilosity; medium stature, slim body; very long and high head with prominent occiput; long face; large and high nose with root at the level of the forehead, straight or convex spine, strongly curved nostrils; full lips, robust chin.

 

[MD]

I'm ethnically mostly persian with a tinge of east indian. I have gotten everything from spanish, italian, arab, north indian etc. Basically beige

 

[LeftHandedRightHandMan]

The current Grand Ayatollah, Khameini is pretty much White. If he shaved off his beard he could pass as being a Southern European.

It's also important to know that Iran is ethnically diverse and there are people that look East Indian and people that look Arab or European and so on and so forth. "Iranian" is a nationalisty and they're not as homogenous as say Koreans or Dutch which refer to a single ethnicity.