I’m currently educating myself about racism and anti-racism, and I keep reading that “race is a social construct”. I see how much subjective social views condition our ideas of different races. And yet, people from different places have certain traits that are quite obvious, and shared in common. If I’m not mistaken, that can apply to more than just visible things – things like susceptibility or resistance to certain diseases, if I’m not mistaken. Obviously no one deserves to be mistreated for any of these traits. But what I’m reading and what I seem to experience don’t add up. Anyone able to clarify things for me?
In: Biology
Race isn’t a social construct, as you’ve pointed out. Attitudes about race are what’s socially constructed. The idea that race is a social construct is an logical tool for justifying a complicated set of ideas which tend to amount to “race is a real, important thing for people X to identify with, and make decisions around – but people y are simultaneously not allowed to do any such thing”. Essentially it’s a justification for selective racism.
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