Demonstrating the Social Construction of Race

THE IDEA THAT race is socially constructed is widely accepted within social science disciplines (Haney Lopez 1996; Omi and Winant 1986; Waters 1990). Relating this concept to students, however, can present a serious challenge. Students, like most people, tend to view their world as an objective reality divorced, in many ways, from interpretation or constructed meaning. This is also true of the racial categories that are presented and reified throughout society, but which are nonetheless, socially defined. Through the use of an abstract exercise, removed from ingrained notions of race, the absence of natural groupings and the social construction of such categories can be more clearly presented. In this paper, I describe such an exercise and demonstrate how the insights achieved can then be easily applied to concepts of race, offering students a better understanding of race as a social construct. Most social scientists recognize that existing racial categories developed due toparticular historical circumstances (Haney Lopez 1996; Omi and Winant 1986; Waters 1990). Yet, students often think of race as a given biological fact based on established scientific distinctions, ideas that are strongly reified throughout society by the media, through government policy and by individuals who often embrace a racial identity. According to Omi and Winant (1986), Everyone learns some combination, some version, of the rules of racial classification...often without