Ta-Nehisi Coates: What We Mean When We Say 'Race Is a Social Construct'

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I like Coates's work a lot, and there's stuff to like even about this piece. But it comes down to basically the same fallacious arguments that always populate attempts to convince people that race is "socially constructed."

First, of course, "socially constructed" is a disaster as a term/concept. At best its ambiguous as between almost opposite meanings, at worst it's not even clear enough to be determinately ambiguous. "x is socially constructed" is sometimes used, very roughly, to mean we made x, and sometimes used to mean we made x up...but more often it's used by people who don't quite mean either thing, but slide back and forth between the meanings--indiscriminately or tactically...

Second, there's the some people who believe that race is real also believe racist things argument. This is obviously fallacious, so there's no need to discuss it.

Third, there's a cluster of arguments about vagueness, continuua and changing beliefs. Are the Jews a race? Are the white? Are the Irish a race? Or what?  But the fact that opinions about race have changed is no more an argument for the unreality of race than is the fact that ideas about species have changed an argument for the unreality of species. Arguments from difference of opinion are always weak arguments (though sometimes not entirely weightless). And frequently a bad strategy to try to extrapolate from borderline cases. Look at the clearest cases first--that's sound advice.

To cut to the chase: Are there any real, physical, racial distinctions?

The answer is obvious when the question is asked correctly. Of course there are real, physical differences between Norwegians and Nigerians, Jews and Japanese. It should tell you something about the contemporary left that they are willing to deny a plain fact that everyone knows on the basis of an abstruse theory that barely makes sense. It's a very bad sign when a group is willing to deny plain facts for political ends...

Anyone who denies that there are such differences is welcome to take this bet: take 100 randomly-selected Swedes. Call this group A. Take 100 randomly-selected Sudanese. Call this group B. An average person will be able to tell, at a rate better than chance, which group is from where.

It is utter madness that anyone is having this discussion at all.

The core problem, to my mind, however, is the first problem, the radical, debilitating unclarity of "socially constructed." Begin with a defective concept, and the rest of the conversation will be infected, and defective.

Coates tries to deal with the obvious objection, but, sadly, ends up simply falling into confusion again, writing:

Race clearly has a biological element -- because we have awarded it one.

This may be begging the question by covertly asserting that biology, too, is "socially constructed," or it may be some other kind of confusion...it's almost impossible to tell. But it couldn't be clearer that this response to the biology objection does not work. The differences between groups we are talking about has nothing to do with anything we "awarded" them. They were there before anyone ever thought of them or discussed them. And if you wiped out all our history and all our memories, it wouldn't be long before we noticed them again. If Martians contact us tomorrow, it won't be long before they notice the differences. And that is because the differences in question are real.

There are some real, physical, biological differences between groups of humans. These differences typically correspond to the differences we call racial ones. Humans think a lot of crazy things about race, but nobody is trying to say that everything anyone has ever thought about race is true. All sorts of beliefs about race have been false, and not a few have been pernicious.

But none of that means that there are no real, physical differences between groups of humans.

So: is race "socially constructed"? The question makes little sense because "socially constructed" makes little sense. But, to the extent that the question does make sense, the answer is clearly no.