Comment on What's the best way to respond to someone who says "transracial is just as valid as transgender"?
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months agoI don’t really think I can come up with a more concise way of summarizing the idea than anthropologist Audrey Smedley did on the first result of the Google search “race social construct”
Race is a culturally structured systematic definition of a way of looking at perceiving and interpreting reality.
I would recommend you read something like “Feminism and ‘Race’” from Oxford Readings in Feminism or some of bell hooks’ work to understand the idea better.
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
extremely simple question for you, if bell hooks believed race isn’t real then why does she call herself Black? do you seriously believe she means that in a “race doesn’t exist” way? 🤦♀️
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
You do not need to believe race is a biological reality to acknowledge that the perception of others as you (+ your ancestors) being a member of a race has materially affected your identity
amino@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
so I never said it’s a biological reality, just that it’s real because white supremacy is real. seems like we agree
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 10 months ago
I agree, it feels like we’ve been arguing over semantics. When I (and I’m assuming the person you originally responded to) say “real”, I don’t mean to claim that it doesn’t have material effects, I mean that it has no biological basis - i.e. it is socially constructed.