Race is made up #shorts

I have been intrigued by my daughter’s crayon box set called Colors of the World. It features “24 specially formulated colors” that represent human colors, the colors of our hair, our eyes, and our skin. And this got me thinking about how the idea of “race” is completely made up.

For clarity, I'm going off of this definition of "race" from Merriam-Webster:
race: any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry

It’s a social construct, meaning humans collectively invented it. Specifically, throughout history, socially dominant groups typically created different races to justify them being at the top of the social hierarchy.

While groups of humans have pretty much always classified themselves as DIFFERENT from OTHER groups, it wasn’t until European countries started colonizing the world in the 1500s that the modern concept of “race” became a thing.

But goodness. There isn’t a “race” chromosome in our DNA. There’s no biological basis for it whatsoever. I know this may sound a little...weird...but race was created so that people could be racist, and so when I look at this box of crayons and see “deep almond,” and “light rose” I am reminded of the absurdity of it all.

[iammrbeat]

It already appears that there is some confusion. For clarity, I'm going off of this definition of "race" from Merriam-Webster:
race: any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry

[coltonreed]

I love race. I prefer Mario Kart personally.

[spinlok]

Ironically my crayons never had proper Caucasian skin tones so if I wanted to draw people I had to use yellow and they ended up looking like Simpsons characters.

[seandawson]

Tell race was made up to my third grade PE teacher. They made us line up to see who was the fastest every gym class.

[CynicalHistorian]

An easy way to make people understand the superficiality of race, is to show how other cultures construct it. For instance, Hispanics according to the US census, no matter how mestizo (brown) or mulatto (black) their skin tone is, are classified as white. Here in New Mexico, ricos (rich Hispanics) and peons (poor servants bonded by debt) were considered separate races, despite no skin tone difference whatsoever, merely a class (or casta) distinction labeled as race

[glassplotful]

You may not care about race, but race cares about you.

[abrahamlincoln]

I believe that all races should peacefully coexist.

[dispergosum]

People have almost always been prejudice against those that look or act different. I just feel the narrative that race is social ignores the fact that literally anything involving human society is social. It doesn't make it any less real. It just means if we want we can make changes to our society. But that'd be almost impossible to remove prejudice from everyone. I think removing racism from society isn't impossible, but it'll be extremely difficult.

[scoogsy]

Race is not purely a social construct. It’s not quite so clear cut.

Races weren’t purely constructed to be racist either.

Race is as much a social construct as dog breeds. When we ask someone if they have a Labrador or a golden retriever, are we being breedest?

How do we explain certain medical conditions being prevalent to certain “races”?

This is a complicated topic, but these physical differences characterised by race is just as much a category as any other category we find useful to create.

Of course different races interbreed, and all of this melts together, and race becomes far less relevant.

The point being we need to be more nuanced when speaking about this, not just “races don’t exist, totally made up by dominant groups to suppress other groups”.

[joshuataylor]

The effects of race is here with us to stay though.
Money is also not real and absurd. Actually our existence is absurd, the entirety of civilisation back through the entire history of humans is absurd.
If you don't believe me read Albert Camus, as long as you don't think that's too absurd.

[therealspeedwagon]

The reason race is a social contract is because we see people who look different as not being human. It’s a primal us vs them mentality that has existed within us since the first societies and collective villages. “Our village is better than their village” can be seen as “our football team is better than their football team” or “our country is better than their country”. That’s where it really comes from.

[MrBrockHeinz]

Technically true but this could apply to any category, sex, planets, atoms etc. Species for instance is a social construct, where one ends and a different species begins is a human creation. Clearly though, groups of animals share characteristics that others don't, but not all of the same species share the exact same characteristics, humans define the line of how much difference is a different species. It still makes sense to use the category though.

Likewise with race, most people fit neatly into a few categories that broadly share characteristics with others, i.e European, East Asian, South Asian etc. As long as people breed in certain areas and not randomly (which results in shared characteristics amongst groups of people), the concept of race makes sense and accurately describes reality. Same applies to species.

[discipleofsound]

Through most of the Middle Ages, most Europeans just thought of people of other races as "those weirdos who make silk and shiny things" whilst everyone else thought of Europeans as "those weirdos who make nice wool." Race is just another complication to a pretty simple world.

[JimBell]

I'm definitely going to take the opinion seriously of someone who only gave consideration to the idea of race after stealing his daughters crayons. What a deep thinker

[AFVEH]

Yes there are people that can't be classified as a specific race and yes there are countries that don't know how races works, USA with Hispanics, but it isn't a social construct. A blue eyed, blonde Scandinavian is obviously a different race to a black Congolese. Not just in appearance, the black race has a higher bone density, this is scientific fact, which makes it harder for them to break their bones but also gives them less buoyancy, hence the stereotype that black people can't swim, it's because they sink more than other races.
It's very dumb to suggest that races are a social construct, you don't have to be racist to notice that different races exist.

[fannin]

Untrue. You can find mentions of race far before the Columbian exchange usually brought about through the understanding of what the world looks like in the middle ages

[leftyguitarist]

You're definitely right here. However, cultures differ from area to area due to different climates. A great example of this would be how Somalians are used to very hot weather whereas Inuits are used to very cold weather and therefore both cultures are adjusted accordingly.
With that being said, it's a shame we use cultural differences to treat people differently, especially when those cultural differences no longer apply once you go to a different country (ie non-whites living in the US, the UK, Canada, etc.).

[sarahwbs]

Why do people pronounce "crayon" like "crown"?! 🤔

[crazyboris]

Based Mr. Beat.

The more I learn about different peoples around the world the more I realized that the way most people see humans makes no sense.

A Somali, a Khoisan and a Papuan might all be "black" but they come from unrelated backgrounds, treating them as if they're one people makes no sense. Likewise, an Irishman, a Finn, and a Georgian might all be "white", but one is an Indo-European people, one is an Uralic people, and one is a Kartvelian people.

I just use ethnicity instead of color, it makes a lot more sense and is way more accurate. I'm not white because white/black/brown/whatever people just aren't real.

[Caelfyre]

I'm sure you're having to heavily moderate the comments section for this one lol. Just wanted to say thanks for making this vid :)