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
The fact that race is a social construct is best illustrated by an example. The apartheid regime in South Africa, which discriminated heavily based on race. When a lucrative trade deal with Japan was in jeopardy because Japanese would be considered non-white and therefore discriminated against, the South African government simply declared all Japanese persons to be “honorary whites”. Chinese persons, who are virtually indistinguishable from Japanese persons, were still considered non-white.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honorary_whites
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