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Research Paper: Research Paper: Is Race a Social Construct?

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Introduction

Several social anthropologists have noted that, whether one agrees with the analogy,

the race has become a defining factor in people's day-to-day lives. When we say that race is a

social construct, we must first know what it means to be socially constructed and why it

exists. Ladson-Billings says that G. "A racial construct" is something that does not exist in

objective reality but does exist because of how people interact with each other. It exists

because people agree it does. "Racial constructs are categories, ideas, or ways of thinking that

society makes up and then applies to people of a certain group. In reality, these racial ideas

do not mean anything; they only have the meanings people have given them, often seen as

false. It was imposed just by being there, so people only judged people, places, and things

based on what they saw and heard about them. Religion, family, gender roles, fashion,

marriage, money, and so on can all be seen as racial constructs. If people stop seeing racial

ideas as true, they will go away. People who agree with this idea think that reality is

something that society makes up. This poses the question, "What does it mean to say that race

is a social construct?"

Is there genetic diversity across races?

There is not much genetic variability within the human race, and researchers have

shown that race is not even a good predictor of how varied the world is (Torres, J. B.) (2019).

Race is considered a social construct since it is a classification system that people invented.

In the previous era, as well as in the present, racial construction has been used as a method of

oppression and violence in order to characterize the physical differences that exist between

individuals. The texts "Age, Race, Class, and Sex" by Lorde illustrate how race is mobilized

socially and how it functions as a social construct by depicting what it is like to live in a

society where people are oppressed solely based on their skin color as well as what it is like
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to live in a "White man's world." Inequities can be remedied through community involvement

and bottom-up initiatives accomplished through social mobilization.

Changes in social construct

Social constructions are always evolving, one of which is perceptions of race. Over

the past century, attitudes about persons with varied skin tones have changed and are still

changing. Although the idea of race still exists, its significance has changed. Similar to

Intellectual capacity, race is a famously vague concept. The establishment of race reinforces a

social hierarchy built on the following principles: Some religious beliefs (like the idea that

some races are "divine" and "pure" and others are "unholy" or "soulless"), scientific theories

(like the idea of "natural order" or "survival of the fittest," which says that being "unfit" or

"weak" is the result of being an inferior race instead of being the result of genocide),

medieval ideas about science (like the idea that groups based on visible traits need to be

"civilized"), and medical practices. According to Wagner-Martin, L. (2022), "There is no

such thing as race. Racism is a social construct that serves a purpose." She thought that the

only race in the world was the human race. The future of your race is always changing, and

there are many examples of this in history. In 1929, if you were born in Mexico or had

Mexican ancestors, you were considered white in American society. However, the 1930

census changed that to "non-white" to stop immigration. Then, when the U.S. needed more

people to work, they were changed back to white.

Science and racial constructs

Some people still think there is a biological basis for race, even though we still cannot

find a race chromosome in our DNA. They say that if there is no biological basis for race,

why do some medications work better for some races al construct than others? "Statements

that this is very bad for the health of people of a certain "race." We have been told for

hundreds of years that each race is a separate group of people with different genetic and
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biological traits (Pels, P. (2018). Because of this, we have used race to explain differences in

health: Sickle Cell Anemia is a black person's disease, and Cystic Fibrosis is a white person's

disease. We have also said that people of color are genetically more likely to get diabetes,

high blood pressure, obesity, and other long-term health problems. The FDA has approved

drugs for different races, and we have used "race-based medicine" to set care standards that

vary by race, such as how to respond to a patient' Sickle cell anemia, for example, is a result

of being exposed to malaria. It is common in cultures whose ancestors lived in parts of the

world where malaria is common. So, people with Sub-Saharan African roots are more likely

to have it. However, people with Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Indian roots are more

likely to have it because malaria is or was common in those places.

There is not much of a link between race and biological differences between people of

different races. Most of the time, the dominant group(s) in our society have used the social

construct to set up social boundaries. Notably, the dominant group gets the power to define

racial differences between people with similar genetic makeup (Pels, P. (2018). Nevertheless,

because the dominant group has the power to decide who belongs to which group, race has

been loosely linked to biology. For example, indentured servants are people of African

descent who moved to the United States from Africa. After they had done what they had to

do as enslaved people, they were set free. Before this time, colors should not have been used

to tell things apart. As the number of free Africans in America grew quickly, white people

worried that white Natives would take over and make them the dominant group.

Some communities even think that intelligence is related to race. "Race science" or, in

many cases, "scientific racism" is based on the idea that there is a connection between race

and IQ. Scientists who study race say that differences between racial groups have evolved in

things like life expectancy, educational achievement, wealth, and incarceration rates. Many of

them, especially, say that black people do not do as well as white people because they are not
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as smart. At least as old as slavery and colonialism, the supposed science of race was

generally accepted in many Western countries until 1945. After the Holocaust, a new

generation of scholars and humanists did not agree with it. However, in the 1970s, it started

to come back again, and it has been discussed time after time since then.

The human genome lacks certain variations demonstrated in other animals in terms of

human genome biology. The fact that there have been near-extinction occurrences in the early

history of the human species may be blamed for the lack of variety among humans (Gravlee,

2009). Given the historical basis for human development, it is clear that race is a social

construct that has evolved from political, social, and economic power systems. Although

racial discrimination advocates have utilized minor haplogroup variations to support their

claims, these claims lack a clear biological foundation.

Modern Perspective on Racial Construct

Our perception of what makes someone "white" or "black" results from their social

context. Without taking into account the Civil War, Cromwell's ethnic cleansing of the Irish,

or anti-Semitism, it is difficult to conceive the emergence of a "Southern race," a "Irish race,"

or a "Jewish race." The fact that there is no universally accepted definition of "whiteness" or

"blackness" today does not diminish the importance of race in our society. The racial

categories we are allocated to have an impact on our day-to-day experiences. Understanding

that racial categories are made up may give us a key perspective on where racism originally

arose. They can affect political choices and even decide life and death.

Conclusion

In conclusion, based on the reasons presented above, the race is a social construct that

has been socially constructed with no scientific or evolutionary foundation. This conclusion

has been made because race is a social construct. The pursuit of political and social

correctness has led to the development of theories based on social conceptions, which have
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produced both erroneous and prejudiced biological realities. Therefore, there is no question

that race is a social construction.

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References

Bryant, Brittany E., et al. “Race as a Social Construct in Psychiatry Research and Practice.”

Réseau De Bibliothèques - Library Network, 8 Dec. 2021,

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2786973.

Gravlee, C. (2009). How race becomes biology: embodiment of social inequality. American

journal of physical anthropology, pp. 47–57.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2021). Critical race theory—What it is not! In Handbook of critical race

theory in education (pp. 32-43). Routledge.

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theory%E2%80%94what-gloria-ladson-billings

Lorde, A. (2021). Age, race, class, and sex: Women redefining difference. In Campus Wars

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Pels, P. (2018). Anthropology Should Never Be Fully Decolonized... Etnofoor, 30(2), 71-76.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/26543129

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psych-122414- 033718#_i8.

Torres, J. B. (2019). Race, rare genetic variants, and the science of human difference in the

post‐genomic age. Transforming anthropology, 27(1), 37-49.

https://anthrosource.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/traa.12144

Wagner-Martin, L. (2022). Toni Morrison: A literary life. Springer Nature.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-030-88590-8.pdf