Race... natural or social construct?

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The chadmaster posted a poll that brings out discussion of Race.

This made me wonder what the members here thought about the term Race?

Do you believe it is of the natural world? If so, how is it defined?

Do you believe it is a social construct? If so, how has the definition changed... or how has it remained the same... over the life of the term?

I believe it is purely a social construct that can, and will, change.
Just look at the variances the U.S. Government describes.
And remember... it can be changed!
Certainly not a basis for Race being something created out of nature!

OOOOH! I get the first reply!
I hope!

My opening probably could have been written better, but I'll leave it as is.

Basically, I have watched this whole idea of race fall into the same misuse as all other types of categorization of human beings.

There is no real standard because the terms have been hijacked by special interest groups.
This could be a group as small and simple as the guys who hang out at the same bar every week discussing life's issues, or as large as the United Nations.

After all the years we have been categorizing humans in every way imaginable, you'd think we could get just one, right!

I don't like to be referred to as "white/caucasian" because it doesn't mean anything. I'm Scots-Irish (with a little French thrown in) and damn content that way!

The reason there is no real standard is that race is absolutely social construct, and always has been such.

Races are arbitrary boundaries. Humans vary in appearance from one person to the next - Who's to say where one race ends and another one begins? The purpose of race categorization is to have a hierarchy that puts the categorizers on top. There is no other purpose for it.

No. Race exists. I spent some time in Rwanda, and I am pretty sure there were no Bantu that looked like me. Or else I would not have had little kids chasing me down the street all the time yelling, "Muzungu! Muzungu!" And when I lived in Japan, it was fascinating to see how an oriental baby develops differently from a caucasion baby.
It may or may not be an important social construct. I think it should NOT be important but most of the world does not agree with me. So when I adopted two bi-racial children, I told them most Americans would look at them and think: Black. I wanted them to be just as comfortable with their German or Italian or French or Jewish background as they were with their black. I could give them a sort of understanding of those of us descended from Europeans, and I searched out black aunties and uncles to teach them what I could not about being descended from Africa.
When you work in the medical field, you quickly learn there are racial characteristics. Almost no Japanese have Rh negative blood. Approximately 15 percent of northern european extraction do. There is a drug Italian doctors often give their patients that when given to a Norwegian causes their bone marrow to die. etc etc. Noticing characteristics for me is a neutral exercise.
When I was called Anglo in Texas, I did not mind. I am of Scot-English descent. I did mind when my husband was also called Anglo because he is of Slavic descent. What was worse was every hispanic or lightly toasted person was called a Mexican. I thought that terribly rude to the Guatamalans and Puerto Ricans I knew. If you are going to make mental divisions, you ought to make them correctly.
Classification can be a funny thing. One time the pastor of our church wanted to talk to me about the black couple who had a child in the special ed sunday school class. I looked bewildered at him and said we didn't have a black child in the class. He insisted we did too and after a few minutes of trying to describe them to me, something clicked, and I said, "Oh! You mean the Puerto Rican couple!"
When I first got my beautiful baby boy (who is now serving in the Air Force and I am so proud of him) and I sat rocking him in the church nursery and admiring his curly black hair and pretty brown skin and large egg-shaped head and beautiful brown eyes and sweet lips and gummy smile and on and on, one of the members of the church came in and chatted for a while. And then he asked, "Are you going to tell him he's adopted?" I looked at his little brown arm against my light peach one and burst into laughter. Suddenly the member realized what a stupid question he had asked and sheepishly he slipped away. Later though, as I thought on it, I though it was a sweet question. He wasn't looking at black and white; he was looking at mother and baby.

I guess I really pulled this thread out of the dust, but oh well..

Race exists only in people's minds, and the fact that it's such an arbitrary standard depending on who you talk to is the reason I don't take it very seriously. "Race" was originally intended to be a classification of people according to physical characteristics.. the problem is, nobody seems to know where to draw the line as far as which physical characteristics constitute each so-called race. Not to mention that the number of different "races" there are seems to change almost every year depending on who you decide to ask. Then what happens when two people of different "races" have children? .. hmm just call the kids "multiracial" but then that defeats the point of why race was invented in the first place (as a way to pigeonhole different people into distinct groups based on physical appearance).

Bottom line, if "race" really existed there would be a consistent standard on how to define it. I'm not going to be oblivious and claim that cultural/physical differences between people don't exist or are meaningless (far from it) but the whole race concept as a system of labels is complete bunk.

Race exists biologically to the extent that there are measurable differences between human groups (as leila indicated - different average heights, weights, rates of various diseases, etc), but in terms of the formal biological definitions of 'race,' the different human groups from the various continents do not qualify. Sort of like a samoyed dog is perceptably different from a greyhound; an italian human is perceptably different from an icelandic human, but it's ridiculous to refer to 'races' of dogs or 'races' of humans in the strictly biological sense. Neither species has existed long enough to diverge that much.

all you have to do is be sent to the pen to know that race is natural

What if you're mixed, is that considered a race?

To me, race is a Southern concept that involves getting drunk and watching humans going around in circles in big metal things.

If we're talking about skin pigmentation then race is a social construct. Culture is a natural occurrence that involves humans who seperate themselves into groups and develop a set of stupid traditions that they get defensive about when interacting with people from other cultural groups. It's a behavior that is very basic in the primitive human brain.

However, race, at least as a concept is a social construct. People naturally developed skin pigmentation and slight physical differences by region but this was not an issue until humans became more able to travel to areas inhabited by people of generally different skin tone. As this happened, people of different cultures interacted more. People naturally tend to have different cultures based on the area they are from, and because skin tone and culture were both affected by the area a person was born. However, as people who have a natural tendency to defend their stupid, stupid, cultures they found that it was easier to tell if a person had different cultural beliefs based off of skin tone. Then race became a social construct.

Concerning mixed people, generally if a person is half white and half black they are usually considered to be black unless they appear completely white. This rule was made to keep the social construct going because as the skin tones mix, the more difficult it becomes to judge based on skin tone unless rules are made concerning who is considered what.

I would call the term race, when referring to Caucasian and whatnot, a social construct based on valence differences. When it refers to genealogical pedigree, (whether you're Irish, English, Welsh, German, Mayan, Cherokee, or whatnot) actually is more meaningful although values should not be placed upon them.

I am mainly Irish and French, but in part also English, Welsh, Cherokee, and Scottish among other things. Mainly from Japheth though.

Race is natural in all species. Or would you say the differences between a poodle and a schnauzer are the result of a social construct?

That same way, race is natural. There are physical, biological and cultural characteristics between the races. Those differences don't constitute inferiority or superiority, but they do exist.

Poodles and schnaus are not different 'races' of dog. They're different breeds, artificially kept separate and distinguishable by humans through selective breeding.

It's varied over the centuries. a hundred years ago, it was based on nationalism; people spoke of 'the British race', the 'American Race', etc. When I was in college, there were about 7 different 'races'. In biological terms, I tend to think of them as 'varieties', in the taxonomy sense ('ol Linnaeus [sp?]) of homo Sapiens

I look at race as a biological/cultural spectrum. It is easy to see that a wide variety of skin tones, facial features, and other physical characteristics exists among humans, but that does not mean that one group is superior to the others; just that we are all different because of the way we adapted to our environment. I do not think race exists in terms of "breed" but I do think that there have been populations that have been more or less isolated and then there are populations that are pretty mixed.

I don't understand the hangup about skin color, though. Except for blonde jokes, no one really differentiates on the basis of hair color or eye color, so why is skin color any different? Personally I would think it a very boring world if we all had the same skin color. There is great beauty in the variety of skin tones and no one color is better than the others. I work with a variety of people from all over the world so I get to see the whole spectrum.