Those who assert that race is a social construct are ignoramuses, fools or liars, or quite possibly more than one of the above.
Skin color is not the most important aspect of human diversity, although it's not insignificant either, but the beauty of skin color in the discussion of human race is that the facts about it are obvious and irrefutable, which means that, from skin color, the basic facts about of human racial differentiation can be inferred from what everyone knows.
For example, no black women bears a white child — ever, except in the extremely unusual event that the sperm or egg that went to form the zygote carried a rare mutation for albinism (in which case the child will likely be murdered by their relatives and
it's body parts sold to a witch doctor). Conversely, no white woman gives birth to a black child unless she has had congress with a black man.
From these universally known facts, we can draw two irrefutable and obvious conclusions:
- Skin color is inherited, which is to say it is genetically determined;
- White people and black people have for long existed in more or less totally separate breeding populations, for otherwise they would have lost their distinctive skin pigmentation.
From those conclusions we discover two essential features of any human population constituting a distinct race:
- It is an interbreeding population living in complete or partial reproductive isolation from other populations by barriers of geography, politics, tribe, religion, class or caste;
- It is genetically distinct from other similarly isolated populations.
Further to these facts, a basic understanding of human racial diversity requires only an understanding of how reproductively isolated populations become genetically distinct. The answer to that question is not simple, although the basic idea is evident enough to common sense, as Darwin realized when he wrote his famous treatise:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. In fact, mere contemplation of the full title of Darwin's most famous work gives you a pretty good idea as to how reproductively isolated populations diverge to become physically or psychologically distinct races.
Reproduction generates variation as the result of a variety of more or less random processes and, among the variants, survival is greatest among those best suited to the prevailing conditions of life.
So there you have it. Environmentally dependent selection among spontaneously arising variants results in modification of population genetic constitution. To take the case of skin color, for example, dark skinned variants that protect against carcinogenic ultra-violet radiation are favored under tropical skies, lighter skinned variants that allow more ultra-violet radiation to penetrate the skin and convert 7-dehydrocholesterol into vitamin D are favored under the weaker sun of more temperate zones.
Thus genetic differences among populations reflect past or present differences in the conditions of life, both physical and social, the latter including the political and religious order, the density of population, the mode of insuring that there is food in the refrigerator — if there is a refrigerator. All of these environmental factors exert a differential effect on the reproductive success of the various genetic forms, thereby altering the genetic make-up of the population as a whole. What that means is that populations living under different conditions come to differ from one another in multiple ways that adapt each race to its specific environment within the scope allowed by chance mutations and the other processes that give rise to genetic variation.
But to understand the significance of human racial diversity it is essential to understand that the effects of evolution are not just skin deep. Everything about humanity has a genetic base — the color of skin, hair, eyes, the frequency of sweat glands, the smell, the sense of smell, the coarseness of hair, the shape of teeth, resistance to particular diseases, malaria, influenza and smallpox, for example, intelligence, passion, musicality, speed of muscle contraction, tolerance to core temperature cooling, adaptation to high elevation. Thus it is that human races can and do vary in a multitude of ways.
Mostly these differences are invisible and only come to light under special circumstances. A global pandemic of a novel disease, perhaps, or where races compete internationally. For example in the last 30 or more years there has been no Olympic 100 metres finalist without West African ancestry, which effectively demolishes liberal claptrap about there being no such thing as racial superiority.
But not only are racial differences largely invisible, most are barely even thought of. Did you know, for example, that Australian aborigines have a
larger proportion of brain devoted to processing visual information than other races,
which corresponds with exceptional aboriginal skill in visual memory tasks, a useful characteristic among people living in a land of tractless bush and a further example of racial superiority.
So when ignorant, idiotic or lying liberals tell you that race is a social construct, what they are really saying is: "screw human biodiversity." Or more explicitly, the money power wants a mongrel, global slave proletariat and if that means destroying 50,000 years of human evolutionary adaptation and differentiation, so be it.
Related:
CanSpeccy: In Praise of Diversity.
