Social Construction Of Race Essay

Race is a social concept used to categorize humans into large and distinct populations or groups by anatomical, cultural, ethnic, genetic, geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and/or social affiliation. When it comes to this social concept, vision is used, which is what one uses to tell themselves that people look different. But, one must ask them self, how different are people under the skin? That is why racial passing and the lack of a genetic basis both come into play when thinking about race. In certain conversations about race, many individuals say that, due to racial passing and no genetic basis, race is a social construction. However, many others disagree and believe that race is an actual entity in our society. Because …show more content…
I will support this claim by going in detail about what exactly racial passing is and the lack of a genetic basis within race.
In order for race to exist it has to be seen first, but it must be recognizable to be imposed. If one cannot recognize someone as a single race, people may label that as racial passing. Racial passing is when a person is classified as a member of one racial group, but also passes as a member of a different racial group (Wald 10). An example of this would be light skinned individuals, a mulatto for instance, someone who has one black and one white parent or both black and white ancestors. The phrase, racial passing, was and is still continually used particularly in the United States when mixed-race individuals are integrated into the white race. Passing is very …show more content…
Not one characteristic, attribute, or genetic factor classifies all members of one so-called race from all members of another so-called race. Many different societies take different individual populations and put them in so-called racial groups based on traits, ancestry, and socio-economic status. As most people know, medicine, technology, and biology are all progressing rapidly. Due to this, it is easier to see that race is not genetic. Then again, it is still very easy to find similar traits among certain populations who also have similar ancestors, which then makes it very easy to deem people as a certain race. However, Michael Jeffries in an excerpt from his book Paint the White House Black, says “humans do not have separate subspecies or races the way some animals do, and genetic traits like skin color are inherited separately from other physical and mental traits” (Genius). To simply put it, there is no possible way to see, through human genetics, the difference between races. But, since some societies believe certain characteristics, attributes, and genetic factors do determine ones race, racism still lingers in our society. An article in Harvard Magazine sums it up beautifully by stating that, “when you peer beneath the surface at the underlying level of genetic variation, we are all more similar than we appear to be” and “there is no clear, sharp delineations” between human beings and their