Society defines racial categories according to made-up rules. The basis of these rules is not biological. All good so far. But, then we have to live with these categories, and they get applied to how we organize society, sometimes explicitly, sometimes less explicitly. And we may wish for these rules to change, or for the ways that they shape the experiences of individuals to change. But then the people who benefit from the status quo have a material interest in having them stay the same. And in fact the people who benefit from the status quo often are in a position to shape society in a way that keeps them the same. You get the idea.
These rules and categories are ill-defined and even don't exist in some cases. You are not wrong stating ruling class has promoted racial ideas to weaken and control the populace at large. That doesn't mean they exist. The real power structure is held by particular networks and families, not races, as there is no such thing as race. The idea that you can draw lines around a group based on physical characteristic is what they promulgate to fool us, so to use the same groupings to supposedly fix society is a stupid mistake. Both Norwegians and Yemenis are considered "white", which makes no sense. Are you telling me that Kanye West should get more privileges than a poor Yemeni because they are white? This is absurd. Did you know that Swedes and North Africans are less diverse genetically than northern vs southern chinese? What about mixed race people? What about countries that are in between regions that follow traditional "racial" groupings, such as central asia? Are we really that dumb to categorize people based on superficial vague judgements about appearance? And to leave it up to the completely non-scientific and biased judgements of HR?
They do exist... the fact that they are not biological does not mean they do not exist. They have a social-historical reality. They exist in the minds of people making decisions, overtly or not. Trying to become conscious of that and counter it, and (of course imperfectly) correct for some past wrongs due to it, is what this is about.
The discussion is on the socially constructed nature of race. My comments directly address this with specific examples. Your final response is nothing more than "no, you are wrong". Not sure what I was expecting on a public forum, as this topic is sensitive and brings out a lot of deep seated irrationality, gaslighting, and binary thinking in people.
I have no objections to your claim that race is socially constructed. I agree. Where I disagree is in the logical leap that that means it doesn't exist. Your specific examples are irrelevant to this point.
(Added: and for what it's worth, I don't necessarily disagree on the specific examples you give. They are just irrelevant.)
I think we are getting caught in what it means to "exist". Perhaps my language was not precise enough. My meaning wasn't that the idea and abstraction of race does not exist in my earlier comments - my point was that the abstraction (social construct in this case) is very leaky, and doesn't match reality, hence the several examples I provide where the idea of race doesn't make sense at all. My argument is that the abstraction is so far removed from the reality that it's more harmful than helpful. In our computerized data driven modern reality, there's no reason we couldn't deeply assess every individual's full history and situation to determine how underprivileged they are, rather than using superficial and inaccurate measures such as skin color.
