re: "Race is a social construct"

Zimmerman is darker than Beyoncé

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And I bet one could argue it should be, which is why these things are a social construct.

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I don't see how this follows...

If one could argue that it should be, one would assume that that argument would be backed with good reasons. If its backed with good reasons I don't see how it could then be called a social construct.

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If one could argue that it should be, one would assume that that argument would be backed with good reasons. If its backed with good reasons I don't see how it could then be called a social construct.

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Huh? A social construct doesn't mean it's without merit. It just refers to things that have been constructed subjectively and accepted in society, regardless of how closely is approximates to a more objective reality. In this case, we can obviously see that people in races usually more closely resemble people in their own race than others. At the same time, they may or may not share many, if any, other characteristics with another person in their race. Or depending on our own experiences, we may think people look more closely with others in a race than if we had experiences (people think various Asian populations all look alike).

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So do you think those from India and Japan share enough characteristics to be designated the same race other than just being from the same continent

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Nice straw man

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Huh? A social construct doesn't mean it's without merit. It just refers to things that have been constructed subjectively and accepted in society, regardless of how closely is approximates to a more objective reality.

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"A social construct or construction concerns the meaning, notion, or connotation placed on an object or event by a society, and adopted by the inhabitants of that society with respect to how they view or deal with the object or event.[citation needed] In that respect, a social construct as an idea would be widely accepted as natural by the society, but may or may not represent a reality shared by those outside the society, and would be an "invention or artifice of that society"

- Wiki

This makes it seem like social constructs are arbitrary, which is where my confusion came in when you suggested that it could be argued that Hispanics should be considered their own race.

If it could be argued, then it would seem that there are reasons to accept this as true that are outside of perceptions within our society. Like, we could argue and reason with people who are outside our own society and get them to agree with us. If this is the case then it goes against what Wiki claims a social construct is.

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This makes it seem like social constructs are arbitrary

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He said race is an arbitrary social construct. Which is, of course, ridiculous

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If it could be argued, then it would seem that there are reasons to accept this as true that are outside of perceptions within our society.

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Like, we could argue and reason with people who are outside our own society and get them to agree with us. If this is the case then it goes against what Wiki claims a social construct is.

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No. That's not what it means. It doesn't mean that there isn't any justification for it; it's just that it's largely dependent on varying factors, often based on a lot of subjective interpretation that change with society, and often cannot be easily and accurately verified by objective means.

As I said above, the "Asian" race includes a number of groups who don't even look alike, let alone share any other manor characteristics other than being from "Asia," the largest continent. When you see a Kim Jong Un and think he is obviously the same race as Gandhi?

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Nice straw man

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What? We're discussing whether they're arbitrary. I should have been more specific, as I didn't mean they are completely arbitrary, but the "Asian" race highlights that there had to be some arbitrary classification boundaries. I mean when there isn't an objective way to categorize people independent of subjective human interpretations then there is naturally going to be some arbitrary aspect to it. I mean classifications can be problematic when there are objective means to categorize. Cluster analysis highlights this. It's a great tool, but I've done enough of it to see the flaws, and I wonder why mixture models and latent classifications that use probabilistic methods aren't more commonly used.

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He said race is an arbitrary social construct. Which is, of course, ridiculous

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Race is a social construct.

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Race is a social construct

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Keep saying it