Essentialism And Social Constructivism Analysis

A person 's “race” is typically understood as referring to the physical, biological traits they possess which differentiate them from other people. The traits utilized to determine race include face and bone structure, eye shape and colour, hair texture and colour, and skin tone. The term “racialization” refers to the practice of defining “human behaviour, identities and bodies” in terms of the arbitrary physical differences we believe to exist between them. Within the discourse about “race,” there are two general theories about how “race” is to be defined: essentialism and social constructivism. The essentialist position typically involves the “naturalization” of race, or the attempt to ground the concept of race in biological “facts”, and …show more content…
While explicitly racist practices are typically sanctioned by the majority of people, the “new racism is more complex and utilizes various discourses such as culture, erasure, and national identity” (311). For this reason, the concept of “race” is still significant, despite its socially constructed nature. According to the Thomas Theorem, something does not have to be rooted in scientific or objective fact in order to have reality. Instead, something is deemed as “real” if it has tangible effects and impact in the world (Thomas, June 13). “Race” is very much a “real” phenomena in the sense that, despite being scientifically disproved, it still shapes the way that people navigate the world and perceive those who are physically and/or culturally different from themselves. Race may not be “real” in any essential or natural way in the realm of science, but it certainly has “real” consequences in that of society. Thinking of the modern era as “post-racial” contains the risk that real inequalities which exist on the basis of the concept of race will be ignored or