This is especially silly and misleading. Race is considered a "social construct" under the theory of Social Constructionism. For people who don't subscribe to the theory of Social constructionism, race is not a "social construct". Social constructionism itself is not based on biological and evolutionary fact. It is a philosophical approach to the world that conveniently disregards biology, genetics, behavioral ecology, and enormous scale (n=millions) of statistical studies. When you remove Social Constructionism from your thesis, your entire argument falls apart.
Most people do not believe in discredited theories like social constructionism. The other posters in this thread are asking you to rework your argument without appeals to Social Constructionism, and you show you are unable to do so.
This is patently untrue, though.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you saying a Roman in Africa didn't notice the guys around him had black skin?
>For example, in the colonial era, how was it decided in Louisiana if one man was black or not? The answer is, less than 1/32 of his ancestry must be of "black blood"[0]. This sort of thinking and arbitrary ruling is how race was established as a social construct.
This is non-responsive. You're talking about the legal response to race, which is irrelevant to the question of whether race actually exists.
In fact, you've written nothing that addresses the point. When a white guy and a black guy are walking down the street, do you have trouble when someone asks you to point out the white guy?
"Romans in Africa vs. black skin" is actually a different point. Differences existed between people, but the notion of "race" did not. I'm trying to explain what the history of the notion of "race" was, because we take it for granted now. If you would read the history of race, especially the colonial time around the 17th to 19th century[0], you can see that that is when the notion of "race" as we know it really started to develop as a result of anthropological studies and colonial goals (but NOT genetic, modern scientific studies).
>For example, in the colonial era, how was it decided in Louisiana if one man was black or not? The answer is, less than 1/32 of his ancestry must be of "black blood"[0]. This sort of thinking and arbitrary ruling is how race was established as a social construct.
This is an example of how arbitrary and socially constructed race is.
Not sure if you read my second paragraph, but I wrote this: "In modern science we know that there is enough variation in people that it is basically impossible to concretely associate certain genes with certain races[1]."
You seemed to be convinced that "race is a social construct" has no scientific basis, but my argument is that there is no strong basis for race in science. The only alternative choice then seems to be social.
It's not really true that race is a "socially construct". It's a specific belief about the nature of human beings, attributable to a specific person.
As a fun side note, being "racist" means believing that race is a real thing. It has nothing to do with what one thinks of different races, how one feels about them, or whether or not one feels differently about them at all. Just be living that "race" names something true about humans makes a person a racist.
Many Mexicans and east Indians look visually similar to each other that people confuse they for the other. But one is Hispanic and the other is not.
Yes, no kidding.
>Many Mexicans and east Indians look visually similar to each other that people confuse they for the other. But one is Hispanic and the other is not.
True, but irrelevant. All I need to do to disprove "race is a social construct" is come up with a single case where it's obviously not the case.
First, historically, race was only firmly established as a legacy of the colonial era. For example, in the colonial era, how was it decided in Louisiana if one man was black or not? The answer is, less than 1/32 of his ancestry must be of "black blood"[0]. This sort of thinking and arbitrary ruling is how race was established as a social construct.
Science at the time, based on the physiology of skull shapes and other body features, was shaped in order to draw a line between the "superior" race and the "inferior" race; this is a belief we sometimes still carry. In modern science we know that there is enough variation in people that it is basically impossible to concretely associate certain genes with certain races[1]. So in fact, race IS a social construct; race is the generalizations we unfairly make.
[As a bonus, any two humans average 99.5% the same DNA]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-drop_rule
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_genetics