Social Constructs

Two concepts at once.

Something can be both a social construct and have an objective basis in physical reality at the same time.

See this.

Let us put aside the question as to whether we consider the Himba to be human; we can agree that they are a form of hominid. Thus, different types of hominids “socially construct” their interpretation of color. Very well. That does not invalidate the physical reality of different wavelengths of radiation being associated with colors along the electromagnetic spectrum.

Further, just as different social constructs of human classification can be more or less reflective of the underlying reality, so the same about color. Some colors (e.g., blue and green) that the Himba bin together as “buru” would differ in their associated wavelengths more than some colors (e.g., diferent shades of green) that are binned separately as buru vs. dambu vs. zuzu. On that basis the Himba’s social construction of color has less explanatory power, is less reflective of physical reality, than the Western one.

Thus, we observe two principles here. First, something can be socially constructed as per how hominids interpret some sort of underlying reality but it is still based on that reality. Second, some constructs have more explanatory power, and are more consistent with physical reality, than others.

Ted Sallis socially constructs whiteness based on European ancestry (continental ancestry group) and civilizational identity (historical and cultural facts). Ben Franklin constructed whiteness based on English (or British) and Saxon ancestry and culture. Very well. These are social constructs interpreting underlying sets of facts. Ben was more narrow than is Ted; Ben advocated a subset of Ted’s grouping. That these social constructs differ does not invalidate the underlying physical realities of population groups or the historical realities of civilizational identities.

Some constructs can move in the directions of being more narrow than Ben, such as saying only Englishmen from Liverpool are White, or more broad than Ted, like a certain conservative commentator saying that AOC is a “White lady” or Afghans are “White guys with beards.” When a category becomes ludicrously narrow, or when the classification over-broadens and crosses over into different continental population groups and other civilizations, I would say it loses explanatory power and is less of a fit than other competing constructs.

I have to write this post because people at my workplace literally say that a social construction of race means that race has NO biological basis, that ancestry and race are two completely different, orthogonal, concepts, and that there is ZERO objective basis to, say, bin Germans, Englishmen, Italians, and Poles as Europeans (White) vs. Nigerians, Ghanaians, Angolans, and Kenyans as sub-Saharan Africans (Black). They literally assert that these are all completely arbitrary categories.

Do they really believe that or is it just a rhetorical technic to delegitimate White identity? Since they never apply the same memes about other group identities, likely the latter. Also, as I have previously stated, these “anti-racist” progressives channel Nordicism very well when they need to do so to attack a broad White identity. Indeed, many times they sound indistinguishable from Madison Grant.