Social Constructivism And Racial Justice

Soc: I think we can both agree that racial justice is a huge issue and we must work to resolve it.
Eli: Agreed. People should just understand that there simply is no such thing as race. People tend to justify its existence as being a natural or social kind but, as an eliminativist, I see it as neither. I believe that if we want to achieve social justice we must acknowledge that as fact.
Soc: But how can that be? As a social constructivist, I firmly believe that race is a social kind. Although I agree with you that race cannot be a biological kind, as there are no deep biological differences between each race, the morphological differences categorize each group into a racist social hierarchy. Historians have even highlighted that racial classification began around the seventeenth century, during the European slave trade, with the sole purpose of classifying the white population as the ‘norm’ and the slave population as the ‘other’ and enforce white privilege. Sally Hasslinger had even defined races are groups whose morphology and geographical associations determine how they are to be treated and viewed by society. That to be a part of a race means to be racialized, or in other words, to be “appropriately” systematically privileged or subordinate. This is similar to the caste system …show more content…
I find it is the perfect answer. By rejecting the existence of race we also reject the preconceptions and prejudices that were tied to them. As for your other argument, all those who identify as a certain race only have false self-conceptions. This happened during the witch trials as well, where the accused began to believe that they were witches because they had internalized being a witch as being part of their identity. The only reason why someone would claim to be of a certain race is because they internalized that false system of classification. Obtaining social justice would be far easier to achieve if we would all simply recognize that races, like witches, do not