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this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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That's not how social contructs work. Money is a social construct, yet people talk about it and need it to live. Language is a social construct but it has a huge impact on communication. And we acknowledge that all these constructs are real and keep affecting us.
The problem with race isn't just that it's a social construct, but the fact that it's a social construct used to make a hierarchy out of arbitrary traits. It's still maintained and keeps affecting people.
Therefore the only way to address the consequences of that construct is by looking at certain issues through its lenses.
For example, if we would look at poverty in marginalised groups without taking into account that construct, the conclusions would be that these marginalised groups are poor because they "made poor decisions" and deserved it.
However, if we take it into account, we can acknowledge the fact that the discrimination that marginalised groups face, aswell as their family background (ex: slavery) contributes a lot to the reasons as too why they are poor than people that aren't marginalised.
It shouldn't have been a race issue, but because of how race keeps affecting these issues, it is. So we address it that way.
Yeah a social construct is only theoretically meaningless. In society it's everything.
Person A: "cops should stop overwhelmingly killing people who look like me!"
Person B: "fascinating, how did you come to this conclusion? You know some cops are good people, and even look like you."
Person A: "there's plenty of evidence, here..."
Person B: "oh I see your problem, this is about race-based bigotry - actually that's a social construct, so it doesn't matter"
Person A: "look it's pretty simp--"
Person C: "pardon me, but the real problem is how both sides keep talking about race"
Person B: "agreed, but have you considered purely economic factors..."
And on and on and on. But thankfully social constructs can be changed. We could make race a meaningless factoid about a person, like eye colour, but right now it's not. So that's the reality we have to deal with (and try to change).
Anway I'll stop there at the risk of becoming "Person D" here.
No, it doesn't ignore that. Analysing the social construct of race shows that, in most cases, white people are treated better than people of colour.
I never "excused" the behaviours in my initial reply, I explained them. But we know why it happens, and the decades of racism that people of colour faced (and still do) contributed to it. The best way to solve the problem is to adress it, not to ignore it.
If a black person does something bad because of this social construct, we would adress it by trying to prevent the conditions that make someone do this. Better education, social safety nets and sensitization helps a bunch.
The same goes for a white person. If they do something bad becauwe of this social construct, we also adress it. We can educate them by explaining why what they did had racist undertones, or, in this case, to not be one of the not marginalised people who talk over someone who is marginalised in an antagonistic way. Be compationate, stop playing the devil's advocate all the time and just listen.
Poiting out the injustice going on between races isn't racist. That's like saying that if you tell someone that they are being rude to you (and they are), that you're being rude by pointing that out.
Empircally, race doesn't matter, but we made it matter in our society. Just look up what a social construct means.