Edit: this question has been answered now. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help me understand.
the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour.
Okay… But we can take a DNA test and get our ancestry, telling us what percentage of what races make up our overall ethnicity. So how is race a social construct and not a biological feature, when we have a scientific method to determine our race? This part of the philosophy has been bothering me ever since I read it, and I’ve been hesitant to ask because of how offensive people get when you question this system.
Everyone has different DNA and nobody refutes that, but the lines at which race are defined are completly arbitrary. Are you considered black if you have 50% sub Saharan African DNA? Most would say yes. Are you black at 25%? How about at 5 or 10%? The slew of different answers is a clue that race is just a social construct borne of perception rather than hard fact.
Similarly, a lot of groups that are considered “white” today would not have been in the slightest if you were to go back 100+ years. The Irish, Italians, Greeks, among others were not considered white until more recently than you might believe.
Thats the crux of it, race is only truly defined by these arbitrary lines in the sand that people draw, and these lines are different for different groups and individuals. Race is only real because people perceive it to be. We could divide up society based on hair color or if your ear lobes hang or are directly connected to your head and it would make just as much sense, which is to say not much.
Edit: I might add that there’s more genetic diversity in sub Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world but they all get lumped together as black because “skin dark”. It’s stupid when you examine it.
My go-to examples are Melanesians and Indigenous Australians. They sometimes have darker skin than people we in the West call black, and if we saw one of them walking down the street in a Western country, we would think they were black. But they are quite genetically distant from Sub-Saharan Africans. They just also have very dark skin pigmentation.
So are they both the same race? If not, what are we calling race here? Because I’ve only ever heard it described in terms of skin color.
(throw in blond-haired melanesians)
Ah, so it’s the race, like what you would put on a government form that they’re disputing, not the fact that we all have ethnicities which make up our person. I guess that makes sense, although it seems like splitting hairs to me. Nationality and ethnicity are already two different concepts. I suppose “race” in this context would be like you said, saying someone is “white” as opposed to saying they’re of English ethnicity. Is that right?
CRT focuses on how this arbitrary idea of race shapes how people are treated, especially on a societal scale. We divide people by wealth, by where they’re born, what gender they are, etc. All of these things affect how people are treated. I find most of the pushback is because some white people feel attacked when someone points to the fact that whiteness is a status.
If you start from false premises, it’s only logical you’ll end with the confused incomprehensible racist rant that is this post.
What is the false premise in your eyes? How is asking how race is a man made concept when there’s scientific methods to determine our race, racist?
they determine your racial makeup, not your race
Because there are, categorically, no biological evidence or basis to races in human genetics. Your premise is false and your post is racist bait. The scientific method does not support your racism.
Your accusations and refusal to actually explain anything in a meaningful way is an example of why people who don’t fully understand a new concept outright reject it, instead of discussing it more until they reach an understanding. But I have other meaningful responses that are actually helpful. Good day.
