Russell Bomer

SOC 4560: Race and Minority Relations

28 August 2015
Critical Thinking Exercise #1: Social Construction of Race

Task 1 Article 1: The 'Bell Curve' Agenda

This opinion article from the New York Times reviews a controversial book published in

1994 about intelligence quotients (IQ) importance in analysis of social class, race, and other
elements of human life. The most contentious section of the book involves the assertion that
intelligence quotient, and, by implication, the concept of human intelligence, is a result of
varying genetic makeups, including the differences in genetic make-up between races.
The findings of the book in question are contentious for a variety of reasons. One they
are foundationally based upon the value of IQ as an accurate metric for intelligence,
something that has been contested for a long time and remains unproven to this day. Second,
the findings state that intelligence dictates societal stratification and markers of that such as
success and wealth, thereby opting to ignore structural and systemic injustices to minorities
and the impoverished. Finally, they imply that genetic variation between races is extremely
significant, when it has been proven systemically that genetic variance within races is much
more significant than between races.

Task 1 Article 2:
Shaun King, an activist involved in the Black Lives Matter movement, has had his racial

identity called into question following a leak of his birth certificate showing that his father
was, in state sanctioned terms, a white man. King self identifies as black. The only other time
than these times that Kings racial identity was contentious was during an assault case when a
police officer checked his race as white without asking.

King was deemed white by an officer due to his physical appearance, ignoring his
personal and ethnic identification. Kings presence as a leading activist in the Black Lives
Matter movement relates his passability as a black man, and the fact that he self-identifies as
black are all reasons to accept the legitimacy of this element of Kings identity. However, his
physical traits are given priority as signifiers of racial identity, in this way relating biological
traits as definite indication of race.

Task 2:
The social construction of race is the confluence of the many elements of social life that

constitute and/or justify race as a legitimate classification. These include, but are not limited
to, physical traits, wealth, education, and ethnicity. These traits are usually defined as a
binary, one or many sides being deemed bad, and another side being deemed good. In the
U.S., this has historically been split with whiteness being equated goodness, and blackness
being equated badness. Whiteness is more than just skin color, though; it is wealth, a high
level of education, cultural affinity for the status quo. Conversely, blackness is not just skin
color; it is impoverishment, low levels of education, cultural affinity outside of the
mainstream.
Rachel Dolezals self-identification as black is indicative of this construction of race.
Dolezal did not have the dark skin color that many individuals hold up as the prime attribute
necessary to be deemed black, but as she said in an interview with Vanity Fair I do know
that from my earliest memories I have awareness and connection with the black experience.
So whether it was her identification with a culture of blackness or with indicators such as
wealth or status or something else, the flexibility of race as a construct facilitated in some
way Dolezals integration of some sort of blackness as part of her identity.

This flexibility of the social construction is important as it hints at the inherit weaknesses
of race as a concrete signifier of some inexorable aspect of self or identity. However, this is
not true of the reverse, meaning that it would be difficult for a person deemed black at birth
to inhabit a white role later in life. The fact that Dolezal can slip from a typically white
identity as inherited at birth into the black identity, but a person with a black identity
inherited at birth could not switch to a white identity is an example of the insidiousness of
race, whereby the socially dominant race is afforded privilege over the subordinate race.

Task 3:
If not Race, How Do we Explain Biological Differences? by Mukhopadhyay et al.
explains in detail the manner in which so-called racial traits are not actually evidence of
biological variation among races, but rather the implication of many different subpopulations of the human species various geographical and cultural contexts. The article
asserts that differences in race are evolutionary adaptions to environmental and cultural
conditions of small populations with no significant correlation between traits found in
these populations and what North American macroracial classification they might be
placed. Defining Race by Higginbotham et al. explores the different ways in which racial
classification is constituted, including self-identification, ethnicity, social status, and
biological classification, which is disavowed much in the same way as in the
Mukhopadhyay article.
Rachel Dolezals claim of black identity can be traced back to concepts found in both of

these articles. Though Dolezal can trace a white ancestry and has many physical traits considered
to be white (although many of these traits are altered to appear black or traits that may be more
typically associated as black are emphasized), she was able to pass for many years as black and

only was completely outed as something akin to a pretender when her parents claimed that she
inherited whiteness from them. This is first related to the Mukhopadhyay article because
Dolezals passable black identity in the community at large is evidence of the lack of concrete
and empirical traits proponents of biological race might try to claim as evidence for these
supposed races. Dolezal was able to pass as black not because she has some requisite number of
physical traits to be considered black, but, in fact, because there is no such number of requisite
traits, or any empirically founded and 100% substantial traits that can be said to be black. The
Higginbotham article is equally, or possibly further, represented by the Dolezal situation, in that
Dolezal chooses what seem to be many aspects of the definitions given in the article to define her
own racial identity. She self-identifies as black, seems to identify ethnically, and she passes
biologically/physically, meaning, by the definition set forth in this article, she is black and was,
at least for some time, considered to be black by many around her.
Sources Cited:
"The 'Bell Curve' Agenda." Editorial. The New York Times 24 Oct. 1994: n. pag. The New York
Times. The New York Times. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.
Hauser, Christine. "White Former N.A.A.C.P. Leader Who Said She Was Black Still Does." The
New York Times. The New York Times, 20 July 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.
"Racial Identity of Activist Questioned but Does It Matter?" The New York Times. The New
York Times, 24 Aug. 2015. Web. 28 Aug. 2015.