The central goal of this Wikipedia entry on race seems to be to promote the social constructionist theory of race.
The first sentence of the first non-introductory section is:
There is a wide consensus that the racial categories that are common in everyday usage are socially constructed, and that racial groups cannot be biologically defined.This is absolutely stunning to my mind. I know--Wikipedia is a dicey game. But there's so much that it's good for as a starting-point that it's easy to become complaisant... And it has acquired a kind of authority...
And, of course, I disagree with the view, so I'm not neutral on this. But grabbing a loony quasi-philosophical theory on a significant topic and building a whole encyclopedia (quasi-encyclopedia?) article on it is just creepy as hell... It's as if the entry on punishment started off with a declaration that compatibilism about freedom is true, and then the whole thing were built around pushing that view.
I've noticed this about other topics that the academic and quasi-academic left is obsessed with... Wikipedia strikes me as being similar to academia--it's a salient that a small, dedicated political movement can occupy, and from which it can exercise disproportionate influence...
Today's bout of paranoia brought to you by insufficient sleep...and the letter 'R'...
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