Thank you a thousand times. So many people insist — yes, even the social justice related groups I frequent — that race is a distinct category inherent in humans. They continue to hold onto this pseudoscientific belief with the same conviction someone might have about their religion or favorite football team.
It’s maddening that an idea invented by colonialism still holds such a powerful grasp in academic discussions, and doubly so that people with progressive ideas often can’t let go of it either. Absolutely nothing in contemporary science points to the existence of discrete categories of human, god forbid only three or four of them.
…
That said, there’s an addendum to this. Racial categories are like money or any other abstract thing: so long as society thinks it’s real and treats it like it’s real, it’s real. Racism is a very real byproduct of a very fake ideology.
It’s not appropriate, for example, to remind everyone in the room of the fakeness of race in a conversation about differences between black and white communities in the same city. People believe in those categories, bullshit regardless, so they become real through white flight, de jure and de facto segregation, exaggeration of actual measurable differences like language, etc. Even the dumbest ideas can have incredible consequences.
It’s like marching into an economics lecture with a megaphone and shouting, “MONEY ISN’T REAL, NOTHING IS WORTH ANYTHING, CASE CLOSED!” You’d be 100% right, but you’d also be ignoring the substance of the discussion. You’re the most technically correct asshole in the building.
Understanding when it’s appropriate to bring this stuff up is essential, because if it becomes obnoxious, these facts — the cold, hard truth — won’t be taken seriously. We can’t have that.
There’s my two cents, if you cared for them :-)
