What does it mean that race is “socially constructed”?
In: Culture
Our ideas on race are not based on anything quantifiable.
Yes, we can see how people have different skin tones based on genetics but our concepts of race go back way farther than genetic theory and so trying to map our contemporary understandings of race to genetics quickly falls apart.
You can also tell this just at looking how concepts of race vary from country to country. What counts as “black” in the USA is very different from what counts as “black” in a country like the Dominican Republic even though obviously no one’s skin is getting darker and lighter.
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