Brown people or brown race is a political, racial, ethnic, societal, and cultural classification, similar to black people and white people. Like these, it is a metaphor for race based on human skin color, reflecting the fact that there are shades of skin color intermediate between "Caucasian" (skin type IV) and "equitorial" (skin type VI). Consequently, the term includes groups that have no connection other than their intermediate skin tone, especially but not limited to mixed race individuals.

Carolus Linnaeus's original model had just four races, white, yellow, red, and black. His protege, anthropology founder Johann Blumenbach, completed his mentor's color-coded race model by adding the brown race, "Malay", for both the Malay division of Austronesian (Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Pattani, Sumatra Madagascar, Formosans, etc.) and Polynesians and Melanesians of Pacific Islands, and for Papuans and Aborigines of Australia. Blumenbach characterized the racial classification scheme of John Hunter when he wrote, "John Hunter reckons seven varieties:... (6) &e., Turks, Abyssinians, Samoiedes and Lapps;" In 1775, "John Hunter of Edinburg included under the label light brown, Southern Europeans, Sicilians, Abyssinians, the Spanish, Persians, Turks and Laplanders, and under the label brown, Tartars, Africans on the Mediterranean and the Chinese."

Piyush "Bobby" Jindal (born June 10, 1971), an American politician, is the 55th and current Governor of Louisiana. Jindal is formerly a member of the United States House of Representatives. He is a member of the Republican Party.

Jindal was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to Amar and Raj Jindal, who came to the United States as immigrants from Punjab, India, six months before he was born. Jindal attended Baton Rouge Magnet High School, graduating in 1988. He competed in tennis tournaments, started a computer newsletter, a retail candy business, and a mail-order software company. He spent his free time working at the concession stands during LSU football games. Jindal was one of 50 students nationwide admitted to the Program in Liberal Medical Education (PLME) at Brown University, guaranteeing him a place in medical school. He was interested in public policy. Jindal also completed a second major in biology. He graduated in 1991 at the age of 20, with honors in both majors.

Jindal was named a member of the 1992 USA Today All-USA Academic Team. He was accepted by both Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, but studied at New College, Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an M.Litt. degree in political science with an emphasis in health policy from the University of Oxford in 1994 for his thesis "A needs-based approach to health care". He turned down an offer to study for a D.Phil. in politics, instead joining the consulting firm McKinsey & Company.