What does it mean that race is “socially constructed”?
In: Culture
Nobody denies that humans have different phenotypes. But it’s essentially impossible to create a fail-proof system of racial classification. How would you build one? Someone who’s black in the United States may not be considered black in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And even if you were to try pinpointing genetic similarities, you’d notice significant overlap between groups, often becoming lost between gradients or clines.
Do different groups of people in different places often look different from one another? Yes. But it’s practically impossible to draw a boundary between where one group ends and another begins. So race, in everyday discourse, tends to be defined or brokered as superficially physical or reductively physiological difference.
So, in a sense, our conceptions of “white,” “black,” “Asian” or “indigenous” have more to do with cultural takes on what constitutes group membership than any actual scientific criteria–thus race persists as a useful (and sometimes very harmful) mechanism for classification and identification within the context of society and culture but is otherwise tenuous and difficult to accurately define with any real precision.
I’d try to give some specific examples, but I’m already several beers down.
Latest Answers