How is race a social construct?

1.91K views

I know this question sounds incredibly ignorant but i have been trying to understand for some time. My main reason for asking is because if we have dna testing that can show someone’s ancestry is this much % Italian and this much % Korean, how is that a social construct if it’s in our dna?

Please understand I’m not saying race isn’t a social construct, I am just trying to understand how it is a social construct.

In: Biology

27 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

So there are three concepts: nationality, ethnicity, and race.

While there can be overlaps, they are each their separate and own things.

Nationality denotes “legal” citizenship, whether born or naturalized. Ethnicity denotes cultural aspects of a specific group; traditions, language, foods, clothing, hairstyles, etc. Race denotes physical, or phenotypical, traits that people of the same group may posses; skin color, facial features, hair textures and so on.

While the above are simply truths, the concept of *identifying* race in itself is a socially constructed idea and is purely divisive in nature. We are all the same species, though we have different cultures, lands, and practices but despite those variances, when it come down to it we are all the same. So back to race, it is obvious and true that we all *look* different though! People who have unfair and ungrounded biases like to use race as a divisive tool to set people apart. Example: Asians are smarter and more strict than other races, instead of; it is a *cultural* difference and the way they are raised. Or: Black people are more likely to be poor, instead of; they and the countries their ancestors are from have been exploited for resources and labor.

While race *inherently* is not bad or fake, it’s morphological concept *is* bad and fake.

(I hope this was eli5 enough??)

You are viewing 1 out of 27 answers, click here to view all answers.