Post #2914226

RE: https://mastodon.world/@davidnjoku/116585810098428572 Great question! One answer is that race is a social construct because it doesn't exist as a scientifically definable one. We can talk about entropy in a scientific way because there is highly precise language used to talk about it and we can easily sort out what is or isn't entropy. Race isn't so clear cut: it's inherently fuzzy. But this doesn't mean we can't correlate specific definable demographic groups with specific genetically heritable traits. Many insular religious communities have identifiable clusters of genes, for instance — or consider European royalty and hemophilia — or the ones you mention. Science requires a precision that's missing from the concept of race. This means race might be said to exist as a scientific concept in the fields of sociology or psychology, but the more rigorously-defined the discipline becomes the less useful fuzzy concepts become to discussions in those fields. And, of course, this also limits the utility of those fields, too. A differential equation has no concept of race, but that also means it can't help someone arrested for driving while black, either.