Comment on Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month agoIt’s a social construct that didn’t exist until the 1600s, but it’s a real social construct.
Outside America and other former plantation economies it can be a bit different, and less in-your-face, but it’s almost always still there.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
It’s not purely a social construct, I hate this stupid idea. It’s a phenotype. Babies do not have a randomized skin color at birth, it depends on their ancestry. Calling that a “social construct” is arguably racist in itself.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Skin colour is a complete continuum, and one which doesn’t very in any uniform way based on geography, aside from the darkest people coming recently from Africa.
By this logic, ear size is a race.
Cryophilia@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yes! You’re getting it. Ear size is an aspect of race. As is hair texture and height and all the other inheritable phenotypes. Skin color is just the most visibly obvious one.
barsoap@lemm.ee 1 month ago
So you’re saying race == phenotype? Then you also have to say that race is a continuum, and, therefore, any arbitrary line on that continuum a social construct.
Which is btw blindingly obvious to Europeans, Harris is white in my book: Her palms are not lighter than the back of her hands.
CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
Well, words can mean whatever you want, but usually race refers to the discrete-ish social categories that have been constructed. Black people were a discrete legal category for most of America’s history, and were nominally 3/5 of a person and treated as much less. Now, they have equal legal rights on paper, but the category is still there.