Race as a Social Construct: Context, Science, and Power

Introduction

Although genetics certainly define the physical features and characteristics of individuals, "race" itself is an arbitrary classification, much as geopolitical boundaries are. Geopolitical boundaries are "real" in the sense that they can be delineated on a map and are often defined by geological features like mountain ranges or rivers. Yet the "reality" of geographic boundaries is tenuous, and they mainly have ramifications for political relationships and regional power struggles. Much in the same way, race can be based on distinct biological features like skin color or facial features, but those physiological traits are only clustered for purposes of labeling and stereotyping, justifying social hierarchies, and political expediency. Race is a category of convenience, one that attempts to link specific biological markers like skin color or facial features with cultural components such as ethnicity. More importantly, the construction of race as a deterministic classification has direct implications for social, political, and economic hierarchies. Race is socially constructed and reinforced via processes like identity politics and stereotyping.

Context Matters

Race is socially constructed in context. For example, the Nazis and other anti-Semitic people viewed Jews as a "race," whereas in other contexts Jews would be classified as an ethnic or cultural group but not a race, given the tremendous diversity among Jewish people (Weber, 1998). Because context matters when determining what race a person belongs to—or even whether a race exists—race is not a biological reality but a social construction. Moreover, race is constructed arbitrarily, based on the needs of the dominant culture. It was convenient to label Jews as a race in order to stigmatize, scapegoat, and promote genocidal pogroms, thereby establishing the dominance of a self-designated "Aryan race." The same types of contextual variables were at play in the way race was used to designate a category of slaves in the United States, distinct from subordinate classes of whites in the American South.

The concept of race is linked with false empiricism, which gave rise to problems like phrenology and eugenics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as the principles of social Darwinism (Dempsey-Jones, 2018). By diverting attention away from cultural variables and instead attributing behaviors, attitudes, and worldviews to race, the dominant culture creates the illusion that race is a biological, scientific reality when it is not. Race can also be confounded with culture in other ways, such as the designation of people from all over Europe as "Caucasian," disregarding the people who actually come from the Caucasus region. There is an almost infinite variation of physical and cultural features that can be considered "white" or "Caucasian," and therefore none of these things are racial except when people are socialized to believe they are. At one time, "Irish Americans along with Polish and Italians were not considered entirely White" (Johnson, 2017). Thus, race is also relative; a Polish or Italian person would be considered "more white" than a Native American or a person from China.

Likewise, a dominant culture or a misinformed outsider might create a racial category based on superficial perceptions—blanketing Tamil people together with Sikhs, or Navajo with Sioux, for example (Weber, 1998). In fact, one of the best ways to prove that race is socially constructed is to examine the experiences of persons who do not fit neatly into pre-defined racial categories. For example, researchers found that Obama's perceived race was "systematically determined by racial biases of the perceiver, by the political partisanship of the perceiver, and by the temporal proximity of the testing session to an election" (Hodson, 2016, p. 1). Specifically, Republicans viewed Obama as being "blacker," which impacted their attitudes toward the candidate during his initial run for office (Hodson, 2016). The existence of liminal categories—such as mixed-race persons, subcultures, or small tribes that have lived in relative geographic isolation for centuries—also shows how race is more about anthropology, culture, and geography than about biological reality.

For much of American history, the social construction of race became embedded in law. "You could be black in one state, but when you crossed the state line, you are no longer black" (Johnson, 2017). Race was constructed and defined differently in each state, often depending on whether it was a slave state or a free state, and on determining legal access to the privileges afforded only to whites. In some states, being a quarter black meant a person was designated as black, while in other states the stipulations differed (Johnson, 2017). There was no genetic test for determining race; it was simply a matter of how society wanted to manufacture social hierarchies based on visible characteristics. People who were half black but had light skin could choose to "pass" as white in order to access power, privilege, and opportunity, or choose to identify as black. Racial designations determined access to resources and shaped how one was treated by others and under the law. Race is constructed through geographic, cultural, cognitive, and temporal contextual variables, all of which combine to determine perceptions and judgments.

The Science of Social Construction

Sociologists like W.E.B. DuBois first proposed that race is socially constructed, which in the early twentieth century marked a radical departure from prevailing views about race and biological determinism (Gannon, 2016). However, the social sciences could not offer hard evidence showing that race is socially constructed. Genetic research, however, could. Extending as far back as the 1970s, genetic science has bolstered DuBois's view that race is socially constructed. Most notably, early genetic science demonstrated "there is far greater genetic diversity within what are commonly construed as races than exists between these groups" (Hartigan, 2009, p. 165). All human beings trace a common ancestry to sub-Saharan Africa and share almost all of their DNA, which also undermines the efficacy of race classifications among human beings (Mortillaro, 2016). Initial results of genetic research helped medical researchers better understand how environmental factors were far more important causes of disease than genetics (Hartigan, 2009). Biology essentially proves that race is socially constructed.

There has been some, albeit limited, backlash against social constructionism. A few genetic researchers proposed typologies known as "clinal classes," which are akin to race (Morning, 2014, p. 189). Yet as Morning (2014) points out, the designation of "clinal classes" in the research is "empirically jeopardized by the fact that even our best attempts at objectively recording 'natural' human groupings are socially conditioned" (p. 189). Race is similar to genres in film or music: how one perceives and classifies a film or audio track is based on one's own background and exposure to different works in the same category.

As with climate change, the vast majority of scientists uphold the social construction of race, with only a small minority claiming otherwise (Hartigan, 2009). Social scientists and hard scientists alike can agree only that race is connected with ancestry, and that ancestry is linked to geography. Tracing human ancestry shows how different groups of people "lived isolated from each other for long periods and have evolved different physical traits" (Coates, 2013, p. 1). Biological and physiological features—what Omi and Winant (2016) call the "corporeality" of race—sometimes reveal where a person came from, but that knowledge has no bearing on any other facet of that person's life, including their intelligence, personality, or social status (p. 1064). Physiological markers do, however, determine a person's lived experiences: how others perceive them and how they perceive themselves.

Conclusion

Race is only real insofar as it determines how a person is perceived, how a person self-identifies, or whether a person experiences systematic discrimination. The phenomenological aspects of race are important because it is essential to have a dialogue about how racialization impacts lived experience. However, race is not a biological reality, and therefore race does not determine anything other than access to power and privilege in society.

References

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Dempsey-Jones, H. (2018). Neuroscientists put the dubious theory of 'phrenology' through rigorous testing for the first time. The Conversation. Jan 22, 2018. http://theconversation.com/neuroscientists-put-the-dubious-theory-of-phrenology-through-rigorous-testing-for-the-first-time-88291

Gannon, M. (2016). Race is a social construct, scientists argue. Live Science. Feb 4, 2016. https://www.livescience.com/53613-race-is-social-construct-not-scientific.html

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Omi, M., & Winant, H. (2016). Blinded by sight. Law and Social Inquiry 41(4): 1062–1068.

Weber, L. (1998). A conceptual framework for understanding race, class, gender, and sexuality. Psychology of Women Quarterly 22(1998): 13–32.