On the Inadequacy of Calling Race a Social Construct
By Bob Gordh
It has become customary among those of us who oppose racism to acknowledge in our writings and conversations that “race” is a “social construct.” What is acknowledged thereby is the very important truth that “race” is not found in nature but is rather manufactured by groups of human beings. Granted, then, that the term “social construct” is accurate, the question I want to raise is how useful it is in conveying the role “race” has played and continues to play in human affairs. Prompted to reflect on this question by reading the brilliant, thought-provoking book Race Craft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, by the two sisters Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields, I have concluded that describing race as a social construct is correct but woefully weak. We can and should do better. I am writing here not to propose one particular new-and-improved phrase but to encourage us all, myself included, to characterize “race” with more creativity and passion.
The main problem with both “social” and “construct” is not what they express but what they fail to express. “Social” correctly suggests that groups of people construct “race.” However, it does not even hint at the fact that certain groups of people have constructed “race” and continue to re-iterate this construction for the primary purpose of rationalizing the infliction of brutal exploitation and callous, voracious dispossession upon other groups. “Social” to me sounds almost convivial. It reminds me of a social gathering in which everyone is welcome and everyone is equal. At the very least, “social” by itself conveys nothing about conflict, domination or injustice.
“ Construct” is equally deficient. As Fields and Fields point out, there are constructs and there are constructs. Money is a construct. A church is a construct. Borders and nations are constructs. A concentration camp is a construct. The sport of baseball is a construct. A baby shower is a construct. Constructs can be useful and beneficial, or they can be counter-productive and destructive. Much of the time they are some of each. The point is that merely calling “race” a construct neither praises nor condemns. We need language that does condemn. Fields and Fields express this point in a very powerful way:
The London Underground and the United States of America are social constructions; so are the evil eye and the calling of spirits from the vasty deep; and so are murder and genocide. All derive from the thoughts, plans and actions of human beings living in human societies. Scholars who intone “social construction” as a spell for the purification of race do not make clear . . . that race and racism belong to different families of social construction, and that neither belongs to the same family as the United States of America or the London Underground. Race belongs to the same family as the evil eye. Racism belongs to the same family as murder and genocide.(pp. 100–101)
“Race,” then, is a terrible lie and deception, a kind of vicious superstition that has been manufactured (on the foundations of forms of othering that preceded fully elaborated modern racism) and inculcated by racists and utilized by them in the perpetration of crimes of unspeakable enormity, e.g. slavery, genocide, Jim Crow, mass incarceration, etc.
If this is true, then we can see, I think, that the phrase “social construct,” as a characterization of the nature of “race,” is much, much, much too tame, too mild, too unilluminating, too morally neutral, too non-judgmental, too academic, too restrained, too polite, too inoffensive, too pleasant, etc., etc.
I myself have often characterized “race” as a social construct. I am now realizing that in doing so I have inadvertently adopted a stance of detached objectivity. Instead I need to be coming from a place of engaged moral outrage. At the same time, I need to choose my words carefully, with due consideration for context and audience, and with the goal of expressing and conveying both heat and light.
