by Zola Ray

“Race is a social construct.” I saw this sentence on the projector in my Race and Ethnic Relations class and jotted it into my notebook. Figuring that the statement was simply being used as an indication of how ridiculous and harmful racism is, I was on board with it. I even used it in conversation a couple times.

During a discussion in another course, a fellow student of color mockingly repeated the phrase, “Race is a social construct.” At first, I had to wonder why this phrase was worthy of mockery. Perhaps some people find it too lofty, I thought. But soon I realized that the idea of race as a social construct can sometimes bring us to a conclusion that is anything but progressive.


Yes, race is socially constructed rather than biologically based. Bill Nye has said so himself. From a scientific standpoint, he is right. However, I fear many people will use his sentiment, and other similar ideas, as a way to discount racism. Many people mistakenly view the term “social construct” as being synonymous with non-existent. As a result, people take this view even further by trying to silence people of color when we speak about instances of racism or take pride in our racial identities.

A while back, my Facebook News Feed was filled with friends sharing a spoken word poem by a black poet named Patrick Ea, in which he says, “I am not black; you are not white.” He goes on to say, “These labels were made up to divide us,” and he challenges his audience to shed racial labels.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I found parts of the video beautiful. But I can’t ignore the glaring problem. The poem disregards a large chunk of history. The poet says that race was created to divide us, but that’s only part of the story. Race was constructed as a means to justify the oppression and economic exploitation of people of color, and that’s the important part that leads his argument astray. Within the past couple of years, we’ve seen Raven-Symoné choosing not to identify as African-American in what turned out to be the first of many controversial comments. This mentality of shedding one’s racial identity to create a “colorblind society” may be the result of some not understanding the context in which race is discussed as socially constructed.

This lack of contextualizing and understanding is what makes so many people of color cringe at the expression “race is a social construct,” as my classmate did. For some of us, hearing that idea sets off the “alarm.” The alarm is a term coined by W.E.B. DuBois that is described accurately by Nicholas Powers in the following passage from his article for the Indypendent, titled “Why I Yelled at the Kara Walker Exhibit”:

The ‘alarm’ is a reflex most minorities have, it’s a rising anxiety that signals you are surrounded by people too privileged to know they’re hurting you. Or who would not care if they did. It can beep quietly. Or blare like a foghorn. The alarm is part of the psychological package that W.E.B. Du Bois described in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk as, ‘double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others.’

If you are a member of any oppressed group, this feeling is probably familiar.

The reason the alarm goes off upon hearing that “race is a social construct” is not because of the statement itself—rather, it is because of the fear of what is likely to come out of the person’s mouth next. It is all too common for this same person to tell us to “stop making everything about race.” Many people believe the only way to end racism is to throw away the concept of race altogether. However, what many people of color hear is: We should not be proud of our racial identities.

What many people who believe in “colorblindness” do not understand is that many people of color are now proud to wear the labels that were once used to stigmatize us. It shows what we have prevailed through years of oppression, but others think identifying this way is just further fueling racism. Thinking critically about race does not contribute to racism. And a colorblind society is not the solution to racism. In fact, the conclusion we reach should be quite the opposite. The only way to fully end racism is to think about race critically and frequently. We need to realize that racism lives within every one of us and within many facets of our society. Then we need to work to fix it.

This includes talking about who constructed the idea of race and why. Europeans used race to justify their colonization and oppression of people of color. It was the justification for murders, rapes, conquest, slavery and many other forms of dehumanization. Because of this so-called “social construct,” white supremacy has continued to poison our society for centuries. The lives, opinions, and well-being of people of color are valued significantly less than those of whites. Although race was “constructed” centuries ago, innocent Black men, women, and children are still beaten and killed by authorities every day.

Many white people view race as having a significant correlation to human worth, and have for centuries. Conveniently deciding to ignore race now can’t undo all of that oppression. If white supremacists are treating people of color as if we’re lesser beings, the way to counter this is not by saying, “Race isn’t even real.” That’s hardly a strong enough argument against the oppression people of color continue to experience. To be on the right side of history, we must fight back by calling people out when they say or do something racist. We must let them know their opinions are based on harmful ideas created years ago to justify the dehumanization of people of color.

Yes, race is a social construct. No, that does not make it—or the impact of racism— trivial.

So does this mean people should stop saying that race is a social construct? After all, the phrase itself is not inherently racist, but it can be associated with racist ideas that involve silencing the voices of people of color. I believe that if there’s a common association between a phrase and a problematic idea, then using the phrase may lead to criticism. When oppressed people hear something associated with an oppressive concept, the alarm goes off in our heads. This is the same alarm that sounds when we experience microagressions, which cause us to feel less safe or comfortable, even if we are not experiencing direct or overt bigotry.

Of course, one may acknowledge the roots of how race was constructed in hopes of moving towards ways we can end racism. So, what is the most effective way of doing this? First, it’s important that we point to the origin of this construct and its harmful effects on today’s society. We need to direct our anger at the oppressor, not the oppressed. Then, we need to truly assess the way we look at race. While we should never “stop seeing color,” we need to change the way we see it. We need to remove the lens through which we see whiteness as the default. If race was constructed, then whiteness was constructed too.


Because race was socially constructed by Europeans, white people are seen as “raceless,” whereas people of color are racialized. This leads us to see white people through the lens of personhood before race, while not giving people of color the same treatment. We end up seeing people of color as representatives of their respective races instead of as unique individuals. Ultimately, this rhetoric dehumanizes people of color and perpetuates racism.

It needs to be understood that people of color talking openly about our racial identities is not the same as reinforcing racism. It is the result of being proud of our success and tenacity after being placed at the bottom of a social hierarchy. People of color have adapted to being racialized by owning the labels that society gave us, and this is an important part of fighting racism. It fuels us to enter white spaces unabashedly while also creating our own.

Dismantling racism is a complex issue, but one thing is for sure: Racism is very real and we all need to challenge it within our society. We need not focus on the fact that race does not exist biologically, but rather on the fact that race was created to instill a horrible social hierarchy that continues to exist. Race exists to keep people of color out of power and ultimately to strip us of our basic human rights. The fact that race is a social construct is a reason that we should be talking about it, not a reason to ignore it. “Race is a social construct” shouldn’t be the end of a conversation about race. It should be the beginning.

Photo: Shutterstock

Zola Ray is passionate about exploring race, gender and other aspects of the human experience through her writing. She’s a strong believer in the idea that if your feminism is not intersectional, it’s not true feminism. On her spare time, she can be found admiring cute animals or watching YouTube videos. You can follow Zola on Twitter @zolamray and visit her website: www.zolaray.com.

by Ama McKinley

We met on a January night, when I was out with three girlfriends visiting from other cities. Twerking and drinking took its toll and led to empty stomachs, so at 3 a.m. we called ourselves an Uber. The driver was kind and the ride over was so pleasant that we asked him to dine with us. We’d picked up a new friend! Epic nights always begin like this.

His name was Drew.

He sat next to me at the restaurant and eventually my friends huddled into their own conversation, leaving him and me to fend for ourselves. Good and easy conversation kept us afloat freely, with stories of passport stamps to philosophies. He dropped us off at our hotel, and smoothly asked for my number.


The girls giggled. I blushed… and obliged.

The texting... the calls… the crush began. And then, our first date. What started off as brunch, where we both confessed our intentional avoidance of commitment, turned into 10 hours of non-stop fun, intriguing conversation, and the occasional 3rd chakra palpitating gaze. The date ended with an impressive kiss (we made out). I welcomed his tenacity.

Because after leaving a “good” job, moving to a new state and leaving behind people who love me, switching my spacious waterfront apartment for my aunt’s back bedroom/office, and getting a part-time holiday job at Nordstrom just to keep gas in my Honda, I’d ‘bout maximized my fears and delighted in an opportunity for some revelry.

February came, as did the yearning. I moved into a beautiful and spacious loft with a couple I’d met some weeks before. Drew was there on moving day, lugging the heaviest furniture as family looked on. He stayed over a few nights later, and at a point late in the evening he confessed that he loved me.

A record screeched and stopped in my head.

"What in the hell?! You don’t even know me. You can’t love me."

by Leah C.K. Lewis

Irving, TX, teen Ahmed Mohamed was taken out of school in handcuffs and suspended for three days after bringing his homemade invention, a clock, to show his teachers. While his treatment displays Islamophobia, his arrest is reminiscent of the insanity of Kiera Wilmot’s experience when the then 16-year-old’s biology project prompted her arrested. Kiera faced felony charges, a conviction, and a 10-day suspension.

By Malaika Jabali

As they have in the past, the conservative truth spinners behind the online media outlet Breitbart News Network have initiated an attack against yet another person of color fighting for civil and human rights. The target this time is activist Shaun King, who has been vocal about the police abuse that has permeated our consciousness for over a year. In likening Shaun King to Rachel Dolezal, the network accused King of lying about being half black in order to receive a “Sons of Oprah” scholarship to attend Morehouse College, a historically Black college and university.

A little over a week ago, we published the article "What it Means to be Mixed Race During the Fight for Black Lives" by Shannon Luders-Manuel, which sparked a lot of discussion and was shared nearly 2,000 times.

by Shannon Luders-Manuel

When I talk about my family culture, I’m mixed. When I talk about racism, I’m black. When Trayvon Martin was shot for wearing a hoodie, I was black. When Eric Garner was choked to death for selling cigarettes on the street, I was black. When Sandra Bland was arrested for failing to turn on her blinker, I was black. When churchgoers were shot for being black, I was black.

by Jaimee A. Swift

The term “post-racial” became a common fixture in American society with the election of President Barack Hussein Obama as the first African-American president. Though President Obama’s election was thought to represent a milestone in race-relations, the idealism of race-transcendence has become an ingrained fallacy in the minds of many. With this mindset, some representatives of the American political spectrum believe race-hostilities are less blatant and a kind-of, sort-of socio-economic and political playing field has been provided to the historically disenfranchised and perpetually marginalized.

by Angela Souza

I'm young. I'm black. I'm a woman. And I'm angry. It seems that almost weekly we are forced to create a hashtag to immortalize and reverence another black life lost to violence at the hands of police officers. It's an endless cycle: black person is slain, we rage, they justify, we mourn. Before we can get past the distress of the event at hand, we’re hit with the infuriating and shocking news of the newest headline: another black life stolen.

Our reactions run the gamut of sadness to outrage, but what startles and bothers me most is what I've been seeing recently – fellow black people with attitudes of detached indifference. To my surprise, more and more black folks are expressing their apathy. Statements like "What do you expect?" "Not all cops are bad!" "If only [insert this week's black victim] had listened..." are rampant.

So you're telling me that if a little boy hadn't played with a toy gun in the park… like, you know, 12-year-olds do, or if a young girl hadn't been sleeping in her house that night when cops barged in, and if a woman had used her indicators when changing lanes that day then maybe, just MAYBE, they'd still be alive?

Whet?

After much frustration and time spent reflecting, raging, and pulling my hair out, I realized the root of the problem. Many of my people, black people, uphold white supremacist ideology.



White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society.

Before getting your panties in a bunch, realize that white supremacist ideology doesn't always materialize in overtly inflammatory statements and white hoods. Nah. Most often, it's a lot subtler. White supremacist ideology is embraced through the idolization of long, flowing hair over one's own kinky curls, or through the little girl's preference of the "pretty" (read: white) baby doll over the dark one. It's the feeling of embarrassment one feels due to their black-sounding name, or it's the young woman's decision not to date black men, since she desires curly haired, light-skinned babies. It's the sudden acquisition of a formal English dialect around whites. It's the refusal to listen to your favorite black musical artist for fear of portraying oneself as too black in mixed company.

Bluntly, it's choosing whiteness over blackness.

As damaging as all of this is, it's not even the worst part. The worst part is that black folks have internalized white's stereotypical thoughts and fears about us to boot. Since white society upholds a view of black people as dangerous, criminal, and inferior, we internalize those notions even when we know that they are stereotypes, and thus untrue. In a 1993 interview with Bob Herbert of The New York Times, Reverend Jesse Jackson made the following statement:

"There is nothing more painful to me at this stage of my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery, then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved."

If a man who has dedicated his life to fighting the inequality and unfair treatment of blacks in America can fall susceptible to the white supremacist ideologies that are ubiquitous in American society, then surely we all can. If a pre-school aged child is more willing to choose the white baby doll over the black one that mirrors her, then what other notions will she embrace after being fed white supremacist ideologies, blatantly and subtly, over a lifetime?

Upholding white supremacist ideology is the acceptance of white messages of our presumed inferiority, dangerousness, and wrongness, while maintaining their racist views of us. This is what causes us to question the black victim instead of the white abuser. We embrace the idea that we are inherently wrong.

Now more than ever, is a time for critical vigilance. We need to become critically vigilant about the messages that are forced on us about ourselves, and monitor what we choose to receive. We need to acquire an awareness of what is at stake for those that are feeding us these messages. We must reject those notions that degrade our humanity, and don't represent the true spectrum of what it means to be black. We need to regurgitate and refuse the assumption of inferiority that we've been fed about ourselves, and represent our truth. We must stand with dignity and affirm our humanity. If we don't, who will? Stay woke.

Photo: Shutterstock

Angela Souza is passionate about the healing ability of storytelling through writing. She exercises this passion through her own writings, which include poetry, essays, and a marriage blog that offers advice to newlyweds. You can find more of her work at Love Notes by Jazzymae Photography. Angela is a native of Cleveland, Ohio. She received her B.A. in Sociology and Religious Studies from Case Western Reserve University in 2010. She resides there with her two beautiful sons, Noah and Ezra, and husband Omari.

by Torie Weiston-Serdan

I've been running a college access centered mentoring program since 2007. Since that time I have actively cultivated mentoring relationships with high school youth and acted as an institutional agent with the intention of helping low-income, first generation, and young people of color to gain access to higher education institutions. To this end, myself and the mentors within my organization have sent 98% of over 300 young people to college. Of those we have sent, 100% of those have stayed in school until graduation or are still in college working towards their degree. In our own way, we have been working to slowly plug away at the higher education access gap, especially the gap that exists in the Inland Empire of Southern California.

by Kaila Philo

“I’m not African-American,” Raven said, in the now-infamous interview with Oprah, “I’m an American.”

Initially I, as many others on #BlackTwitter, jumped to calling Raven foolish, simple, or naive for shrugging off her blackness as if it played no part in who she is. While she’s lived in the Hollywood Bubble for virtually her entire life, she was still a major player in arguably one of the most important programs in black history, The Cosby Show. However, as I writer I began to understand why she’s so afraid (or possibly just tired) of being identified as a Black actress on Black TV shows.

In our white society, blackness can be limiting; it can swathe one in this indelible musk until it leaves nothing. In a sense, as Clover Hope noted in her Kendrick Lamar article for The Muse, blackness can be “overwhelming.”

by Jaimee A. Swift

During a recent diversity training, the discussion about race and racism emerged and the question was posed to the group about allyship in the Black Lives Matter movement.

by Torie Weiston-Serdan

Baltimore has welcomed several new mentors into their city since the killing of an unarmed Black man named Freddie Gray prompted city wide riots. Likewise, other predominantly Black communities—particularly urban ones—have attracted the attention of mentors since President Obama launched his My Brother’s Keeper initiative. Outside of mentoring programs providing basic training to each of their volunteers, how can we be sure that mentors outside of our communities understand the nuance and complexity of mentoring Black youth?

by Kinsey Clarke 

by Briana Dixon for Amplify

Dear Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry:

As news broke of the Charleston shooting, I found myself in the midst of another nationwide mourning session as black people everywhere took to their computers and asked a question that plagues us all: Where are we safe?

by Anna Gibson

Black Twitter practically exploded last week, when news broke that Rachel Dolezal, a prominent civil rights activist and President of the Spokane chapter of the NAACP, had been lying about her race. After posing as a Black woman for nearly ten years, Dolezal’s parents revealed that she’s actually white.

by Bee Quammie


If you Google the phrase, “Not just a Black movie,” the results are intriguing. In media coverage for films like Repentance to the patriotic Red Tails, or films like Think Like A Man and Dear White People, someone (whether it be an actor, filmmaker, or review writer) ensures that we, the audience, know this isn’t “just a Black film.”

by Lee-Ann Stephens

In our current education system, we often struggle with something called the belief gap, or the persistent and deep divide between what parents believe their children are capable of and what some elected leadership, through word and deed, believe the very same kids can do. I recognized the belief gap playing out in my school before I knew the formal term.

by Ashley Elizabeth

On Easter Sunday’s airing of BET’s Black Girls Rock event, the incomparable Cicely Tyson graced the stage to receive her Legend award and, with the potent combination of simplicity and wisdom that only comes from walking this earth as long as she has, she dropped this gem: "The moment anyone tries to demean or degrade you in any way, you have to know how great you are. No one is going to bother to put you down if you were not a threat to them."

by Anna Gibson

“Black parents almost universally say they talk to their kids about discrimination, and black boys are given “the talk” by the time they’re in middle school: Keep your hands out of your pockets, don’t wear a hooded sweatshirt, your curfew is 9. I don’t care what time your friends have to be home.”

As the recent article “Can Racism be Stopped in the Third Grade?” in New York Magazine quotes, racism is an all too stark reality for black parents and their children. As the widespread spats of police violence against Michael Brown and Tamir Rice would indicate, black children are more likely to be demonized in tragic instances of police violence. They are also often seen as older and more dangerous than their white counterparts. With these realities in mind, how can society address the problem? Closing our eyes to the issue would be detrimental. The Fieldston Lower School is trying to create a dialogue around race that will help children honestly affirm both their differences and similarities to each other.

by Nneka M. Okona


Last week was one where I made a concerted effort to limit my social media usage. I go through these periods every now and then when consuming the never-ending amount of information becomes too much, and I need a reprieve.