When people say “race is a social construct”, for the most part, what they mean is that racial categories are divided in ways that are ambiguous and that tend to change over time. Obviously people have different physical features and genetics, but what physical features make one a member of one race or another, where you draw those lines, and what racial distinctions are “important” and which aren’t, are all social constructs.
To someone without any that social context (say, an Australian aborigine living in the year 1500 who had never met anyone outside of his own ethnic group previously) it wouldn’t immediately be obvious to him that someone from Norway and someone from Greece are both “the same race”, but that someone from Greece and someone from northern Africa are “different races”.
There was also an interesting study that demonstrated that people’s perception of what race someone else was, or even what their own race is, sometimes tends to change over time based on social circumstances.
When people say “race is a social construct”, for the most part, what they mean is that racial categories are divided in ways that are ambiguous and that tend to change over time. Obviously people have different physical features and genetics, but what physical features make one a member of one race or another, where you draw those lines, and what racial distinctions are “important” and which aren’t, are all social constructs.
To someone without any that social context (say, an Australian aborigine living in the year 1500 who had never met anyone outside of his own ethnic group previously) it wouldn’t immediately be obvious to him that someone from Norway and someone from Greece are both “the same race”, but that someone from Greece and someone from northern Africa are “different races”.
There was also an interesting study that demonstrated that people’s perception of what race someone else was, or even what their own race is, sometimes tends to change over time based on social circumstances.
http://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/02/11/275087586/study-stereotypes-drive-perceptions-of-race