Race Social Construction

Race is a social construction. A social construction consists of three components. First it is an idea, reality or way, known and shared by a human society. Secondly these ideas aren’t stagnant, they develop over time, they are ideas that connect the way we do things and it is reflected in our culture. This can be represented as interpersonal connections. Third, social constructions organize our way of life. This can be represented as the systematic, socio-political and economical decisions made based of social constructions. We’ve seen how the idea of race has developed over time through power relationships based off social identities and the process of “othering” certain groups of people by the government. For example early forms of census

For example we’ve seen how the media often times created and reinforced stereotypes and prejudices against people of color, in which society also internalized such views and shared them with one another creating dominant racial ideologies through white racial discourse and the “White Habitus” white people have created. The complex development of America’s ideas on race has both justified slavery and the abolishment of slavery; similarly race has been a key component in many unjust policies and practices in the U.S along the line. Race is a social construction with real interpersonal and systematic consequences, that determine the way of life of many. This is why we study race, and this is why we can’t ignore it. To use the non-existing connections of race and biology as an excuse to ignore race and the role it has had historically in the U.S is to ignore the humanity of many. In order for the government to serve it’s people it needs to understand and reflect its

In the scholarly paper “Racial Formations” the writers make this powerful and much needed expectation for all those who study and speak of race, “Once we understand that race overflows the boundaries of skin color, super-exploitation, social stratification, discrimination and prejudice, cultural domination and cultural resistance, state policy (or of any other particular social relationship we list), once we recognize the racial dimension present to some degree in every identity, institution and social practice in the United States—once we have done this, it becomes possible to speak of racial formation.”(Omni, Winant, p.6) Many social scientist and politicians struggle to see the complexities of race simply because they treat it as something fixed through a single lens, without deconstructing what race means and does. We studied how early politicians funded studies to create connections between race and biology, as studies failed they quickly tried to seek other forms of metrics like the I.Q test to create differences between races without fundamentally questioning their policies, media and the way they spoke about race