In recent years, there’s been a trend among some to claim that “Race doesn’t exist” or “Race is a social construct”. (One can do searches on Google about those topics.)
Now - ignoring, for a moment, the fact that there are indeed clear differences in appearance between most white people, most black people, most Asians, etc. - this brings us to the topic of race-based affirmative action.
The folks who promote such arguments can’t have their cake and eat it, too.
You can’t claim one moment that race doesn’t exist, but then, the next moment, demand race-based affirmative action for minorities. If there is no such thing as race, then how do we give favorable academic admissions on the basis of race?
And on another related note: If there is no such thing as race, then what about movements such as “black lives matter?” Are they meaningless? What about “white privilege?” Does it still exist? Are we going to say, “People of dark skin color are more likely to be targeted by the police, but let’s not call them people of a particular race?” Then that’s just a long-winded way of saying the same thing.
It helps if you understand the claim that’s actually being made, which is that race as a genetic construct does not exist. Race as a social construct does, and it is the inequities in that social construct that AA was designed to counteract.
Also, this isn’t a remotely new idea. Here’s an article from 1998 describing why race isn’t a scientifically valid concept, and also explaining the difference between race as a scientific concept, and race as a social concept.
Your first sentence acknowledges that the argument that race doesn’t exist generally means that “race is a social construct.” Yet you don’t reference that point in the rest of your OP, even though it pretty well answers your question. Did you forget?
You seem to be confused about what’s actually meant by statements like “Race is a social construct”. (ETA: as others have already noted.)
They don’t mean that racial distinctions, categories, discrimination, prejudices, etc., don’t exist in society. They simply mean that race doesn’t exist as a biological classification of human beings.
For example, there are plenty of people who self-identify as black who actually have a higher proportion of European ancestry than some people who self-identify as white. So racial categories aren’t a reliable guide to genetic heritage.
Just because something is socially constructed doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Religious affiliation, for example, is socially constructed rather than being biologically innate (for most people, at least, leaving aside the subset of religious identities that are also to some extent ethnic identities). Yet there are zillions of examples of discrimination, prejudice, etc., based on religious affiliation.
Short answer: No, just because racial categories are socially constructed rather than biologically innate does not mean that racial discrimination isn’t real, or that people who complain about racial discrimination are somehow trying to “have their cake and eat it too”.
Race is a social construct, not a biological or genetic one. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist – government is a social construct, and it exists; law is a social construct, and it exists; etc.
So there is no hypocrisy or contradiction here, you just don’t understand the argument.
Witchcraft is not real, but the claim that someone is a witch has cost people their lives.
Race is similar, the claim of causality is false but the unfortunate effects of the false concept are very very real.
Affirmative action is a program meant to directly target the very real social costs of racism. It does not exist to balance the issues caused some mythical effect that is attributable to the concept of race but to mitigate effects of that false belief.
I guess, but race is at least as much a “real thing” as religion or nationality is.
Just because some aspect of human society is abstract and non-biological doesn’t mean it’s not a “real thing”, at least for widespread standard usage of the terms “real” and “thing”.
Fine, it’s not a meaningful biological term. As a social construct it is a matter of arbitrary and inconsistent perception. The Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are social constructs also, I don’t consider those any more real than race.
:dubious: I certainly agree with you that the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny are not more real than race.
Note, by the way, that the Easter Bunny and its customary festival move around $17 billion of consumer spending annually in the US alone. That’s a pretty big economic impact, imaginary being or not.
Likewise, racial distinctions have massive social impacts, even if you don’t choose to define them as a “real thing”.
You seem to be confused about what’s actually meant by statements like “Race is a social construct”. (ETA: as others have already noted.)