3 ms·

Words are a social construct...so I’m not sure what your point is? Everything is a social construct then.

• sincerely 8y ago
  >Race is not a “social construct”. If that were true, I wouldn’t be able to blindly tell your race via a dna test. This statement is not true. The racial information which can be determined via a DNA test does not necessarily match up with what that person, or others, would consider their race to be. Saying "words are a social construct so you could mean anything" is not a good faith contribution to discussion.
  • IanDrake 8y ago
    It is good faith. Words are a social construct. We as a society have constructed them to categorize the world around us, to describe things and actions. When you say race is a social construct because we may visually ascribe a person wrongly to a race seems pointless in an era of dna tests. The possibility of being factually wrong doesn’t suddenly make something a social construct. If I see bear cub from a distance and then find out it was actually a dog, it doesn’t mean I should shrug and say that a bear and a dog are social constructs, so I wasn’t wrong because these distinctions are fluid based on the social norms of our day. Why you seem to deny that science can blindly determine your ancestral origins (and thus race) with astonishing accuracy is beyond me.