Edit for context:
My view is transracial isn’t valid and this person is trying to dogwhistle. I’ve already blocked this person, and now they’re going after my friend saying my friend is transphobic because they disagreed with them about transracial being a thing (they’re purposefully leaving the context out so my friend looks transphobic when what my friend really said was transgender is valid but transracial isn’t)
Saying that race isn’t real is not the same as saying that we live in a post-racial society.
it is actually because how could racism exist without race? the only people who claim race isn’t real are white
If the earth isn’t flat, how can there be flat-earthers?
Race can be pseudo-scientific bullshit, and still have a bunch of racists around. The idea of race is, at its core, a racist idea.
I don’t really think I can come up with a more concise way of summarizing the idea than anthropologist Audrey Smedley did on the first result of the Google search “race social construct”
I would recommend you read something like “Feminism and ‘Race’” from Oxford Readings in Feminism or some of bell hooks’ work to understand the idea better.
extremely simple question for you, if bell hooks believed race isn’t real then why does she call herself Black? do you seriously believe she means that in a “race doesn’t exist” way? 🤦♀️
You do not need to believe race is a biological reality to acknowledge that the perception of others as you (+ your ancestors) being a member of a race has materially affected your identity
so I never said it’s a biological reality, just that it’s real because white supremacy is real. seems like we agree
I agree, it feels like we’ve been arguing over semantics. When I (and I’m assuming the person you originally responded to) say “real”, I don’t mean to claim that it doesn’t have material effects, I mean that it has no biological basis - i.e. it is socially constructed.
yes thanks for elaborating. the reason why I got defensive is because most of the time when I argue with other white people, they abuse the socially constructed race theory to make me concede that racism doesn’t exist or that whites can experience “reverse racism”.
Oh yeah no fair enough, thanks for hearing me out. Those kinds people are exhausting
“Race” was invented by racists. There was a lot of fake science here in Germany in the 30s to “prove” that not only “human races” exist, but even so that they have different worth.
So this is what I always still hear when someone is using the word - and commonly they are racists.
I do understand where you’re coming from, and I totally agree that there are a fucking lot of supremacist people and yes - if I had been a teenager in the 30s, people would have seen I’m blonde, blue-eyed and tall. So I would have that privilege and still it is a privilege in the modern world.
Prejudices about skin color exist, I absolutely agree. Racists exist, I agree. Just “race” - every time I hear that, it’s like something out of the Nazi textbooks my grandfather had to use at school.
OK, so at least you’re conscious that the word race makes you uncomfortable. and I’ll ask this in good faith, why do you think that is? maybe because acknowledging that your white phenotype, something you have no control over and could never change, gives you privilege over non-white people?
I promise you that the words you use or don’t use won’t make racism go away, confronting internalized racism will. and that’s what white privilege is, the opportunity for us to go our entire lives without ever having to acknowledge race still exists, white supremacy is commonplace, and we’re part of that system because of societal brainwashing that begins at birth and is lifelong unless we deconstruct said programming.