Musings on race

Biological terminology can only exist within a cultural matrix, it does not arise from a conceptual vacuum. The "biological reality" MAY be that different populations have genetically differentiated enough so that having them be classified under separate terms is scientifically useful (and only that, useful), but any system or means you use to do so is necessarily a "social construct". Things like "white", "black", "cacausoid", "negro", etc. are not biological realities but are models of them. This is what many critics of "race" are pointing out, as they reject the organizing of society around these models by pointing out that many other groups in different times and places have used widely different models, making any attempt to organize a society around racialist principles in a just manner suspect among other things.

It is as when people criticize IQ. It is not so much they are arguing that some persons, or perhaps even groups of person, are not more or less intelligent than others, but they are saying it is unlikely for the idea of intelligence to correspond with reality fully enough, being limited to certain cultural presuppositions, to justify using IQ scores to enforce or maintain a social order, since those very presuppositions end up just reinforcing themselves in a thought loop. I do not understand the attempt to scientifically prove the existence of race which is the pre-occupation of so many racialists as it does not really address the more intelligent criticisms of race, which focus on the ethics of attempting to apply the idea of race culturally.

Furthermore, scientific models are rather prone to be constantly shifting with the times, attempting to latch onto the mantle of 'science' may strengthen your position for a while, only to make it suspect later when new evidence arises, hence attempting to construct an order around scientific racialist models inherently unstable. This is why "irrational" things like tradition and taboo exist, precisely because they are not subject to scientific criticism and serve to maintain stability. I think people would better off trying to argue for the virtues of localized, homogeneous, etc. communities philosophically (which I would agree with), rather than trying to "prove race exists" scientifically, but many racists just seem to latch on to the masculine vibe associated with racism and hence seem exactly the same to me as capitalist imperialists, except with a fetish for a certain aesthetics of imagery.