Social Constructs
A social construct is a collectively maintained category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Examples include money, a symbolic medium of exchange that holds value only because institutions enforce and individuals accept its worth, and traffic rules, which are arbitrary coordination systems like driving on the right or the left side of the road. Race is not like these. Race is a biological reality that arose from evolutionary pressures long before human societies, languages, or institutional conventions existed. In fact, rather than race being a social construct, it is far more accurate to say that society is a product of race. To say race is a social construct is to invert cause and effect, like saying clay is a sculpture.
Race Realism
Race realism is the position that race is a biological reality, not a social construct. The foundation of race realism is not ideology nor even science, but direct observation. Long before they acquire language, children perceive racial differences without being instructed to do so. As they mature, children begin to associate these physical differences with behavioral patterns. We observe racial differences prior to language, prior to politics, prior to ideology, and prior to science. Science does not generate but confirms what observation already tells us. Disciplines like genetics, cranial morphometry, endocrinology, and psychometrics confirm that our intuitive distinctions track biologically meaningful patterns. Race realism, therefore, is not a hypothesis awaiting proof, but an empirical generalization resisting disproof. The social construct thesis by contrast fails the test of empirical adequacy as it denies that which is directly observed and statistically consistent. Races are different because they evolved by divergent evolutionary paths. These involved lengthy geographic isolation, different environmental selection pressures, and differential social and sexual selection. Many people assume interracial differences are due primarily to differences in culture. But culture is not so much the origin of difference as an outcome. Specifically, culture reflects the underlying biological traits of the population. In this sense, culture is an extended phenotype. So, let's clarify the causal sequence.
First, ecological selection pressures shaped population specific gene pools. Genes influence developmental trajectory, including the structure of the brain. Neural architecture shapes cognition and temperament, and cognition and temperament shapes behavior. Therefore, thought and behavior are largely constrained by biology. Of course, culture does exert a recursive influence, but all traits are influenced by genetics. A key variable here is neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood, which reflects the pace of development and duration of brain plasticity. The longer the brain remains plastic, the more it can learn, plan, and coordinate with others. All races are neotonic relative to earlier hominins, but they differ significantly in degree. A group's level of neoteny reflects its life history strategy, A group's level of neoteny reflects its life history strategy ,which lies along the RK selection spectrum, a concept from evolutionary biology describing reproductive trade-offs between quantity and quality. In our selected environments, typically unpredictable, high- risk, and high mortality ecologies like Sub-Saharan Africa, natural selection favors early maturity, high fertility, short-term planning, and low parental investment. These traits characterize a fast life history strategy and are associated with low neoteny. In contrast, K- selected environments such as cold resource scarce and stable regions like ice age Europe or Northeast Asia favor delayed reproduction, fewer offspring, extended childhoods, high parental investment, and cooperative behavior. These reflect a slow life history strategy and correlate with high neotony.
Objections to Race Realism
A common objection to race realism is that racial categories cannot be biologically real because they vary across cultures and historical periods. This reasoning assumes that for categories to be meaningful, they must be fixed, universal, and perfectly delineated. But This is a category error. Taxonomies are tools for tracking regularities, not platonic ideals. For example, a person with a white mother and a black father is biologically 50% of each ancestry. Whether such a person is socially categorized as black as in the United States or mixed as in Brazil is culturally variable, but it does not alter the underlying biological facts. Another objection claims that because human traits vary along a continuum, racial categories lack biological validity. This reflects a misunderstanding of how biological classification operates. Continuous variation is the norm, not the exception in evolutionary biology. Red and orange gradually blend into one another. Yet both are distinct and meaningful categories. Likewise, the existence of racially mixed individuals does not disprove the existence of races any more than the color green disproves the existence of the colors blue and yellow. Yet another objection to race realism is that racial classification can be utilized to justify oppression of certain groups. However, this objection has nothing to do with the empirical validity of race and racial differences. Many true and useful distinctions like sex, age, health, or income can likewise be abused, but misuse does not invalidate biological or epistemological validity. A final objection holds that contemporary science has refuted the concept of race. Critics often demand either a single essential trait that all members of a race possess and others lack or single causal mechanism responsible for all intergroup differences. But taxonomy does not depend on essences, singular defining traits or unitary causes. This is because evolution does not proceed by perfectly discrete jumps producing sharp edges, but rather by shaping populations within adaptive fitness landscapes, often forming identifiable local optima or islands of evolutionary stability, which are revealed by observable clusters of traits. Population genetics routinely identifies distinct ancestral clusters an forensic scientists can determine race from skeletal remains, oral bacteria, or a strand of hair. Artificial intelligence is now capable of identifying people's race from chest X rays, and even spine radiographs. Race is an important factor in determining if donors of organs, and bone marrow are potential matches for patients. According to leukemia charity Gift of Life, quote, "Ethnicity is the key to a perfect match between donor and recipient." So, there is no problem of scientific evidence for race, but rather a problem with scientists and other intellectuals being too afraid to speak the truth. More importantly, though, race realism does not depend on science for its validity. People observed racial differences long before the emergence of biology or genetics. Any society premised on the denial of race will collapse from accumulated error.
A social construct is a collectively maintained category or thing that is made real by convention or collective agreement. Examples include money, a symbolic medium of exchange that holds value only because institutions enforce and individuals accept its worth, and traffic rules, which are arbitrary coordination systems like driving on the right or the left side of the road. Race is not like these. Race is a biological reality that arose from evolutionary pressures long before human societies, languages, or institutional conventions existed. In fact, rather than race being a social construct, it is far more accurate to say that society is a product of race. To say race is a social construct is to invert cause and effect, like saying clay is a sculpture.
Race Realism
Race realism is the position that race is a biological reality, not a social construct. The foundation of race realism is not ideology nor even science, but direct observation. Long before they acquire language, children perceive racial differences without being instructed to do so. As they mature, children begin to associate these physical differences with behavioral patterns. We observe racial differences prior to language, prior to politics, prior to ideology, and prior to science. Science does not generate but confirms what observation already tells us. Disciplines like genetics, cranial morphometry, endocrinology, and psychometrics confirm that our intuitive distinctions track biologically meaningful patterns. Race realism, therefore, is not a hypothesis awaiting proof, but an empirical generalization resisting disproof. The social construct thesis by contrast fails the test of empirical adequacy as it denies that which is directly observed and statistically consistent. Races are different because they evolved by divergent evolutionary paths. These involved lengthy geographic isolation, different environmental selection pressures, and differential social and sexual selection. Many people assume interracial differences are due primarily to differences in culture. But culture is not so much the origin of difference as an outcome. Specifically, culture reflects the underlying biological traits of the population. In this sense, culture is an extended phenotype. So, let's clarify the causal sequence.
First, ecological selection pressures shaped population specific gene pools. Genes influence developmental trajectory, including the structure of the brain. Neural architecture shapes cognition and temperament, and cognition and temperament shapes behavior. Therefore, thought and behavior are largely constrained by biology. Of course, culture does exert a recursive influence, but all traits are influenced by genetics. A key variable here is neoteny, the retention of juvenile traits into adulthood, which reflects the pace of development and duration of brain plasticity. The longer the brain remains plastic, the more it can learn, plan, and coordinate with others. All races are neotonic relative to earlier hominins, but they differ significantly in degree. A group's level of neoteny reflects its life history strategy, A group's level of neoteny reflects its life history strategy ,which lies along the RK selection spectrum, a concept from evolutionary biology describing reproductive trade-offs between quantity and quality. In our selected environments, typically unpredictable, high- risk, and high mortality ecologies like Sub-Saharan Africa, natural selection favors early maturity, high fertility, short-term planning, and low parental investment. These traits characterize a fast life history strategy and are associated with low neoteny. In contrast, K- selected environments such as cold resource scarce and stable regions like ice age Europe or Northeast Asia favor delayed reproduction, fewer offspring, extended childhoods, high parental investment, and cooperative behavior. These reflect a slow life history strategy and correlate with high neotony.
Objections to Race Realism
A common objection to race realism is that racial categories cannot be biologically real because they vary across cultures and historical periods. This reasoning assumes that for categories to be meaningful, they must be fixed, universal, and perfectly delineated. But This is a category error. Taxonomies are tools for tracking regularities, not platonic ideals. For example, a person with a white mother and a black father is biologically 50% of each ancestry. Whether such a person is socially categorized as black as in the United States or mixed as in Brazil is culturally variable, but it does not alter the underlying biological facts. Another objection claims that because human traits vary along a continuum, racial categories lack biological validity. This reflects a misunderstanding of how biological classification operates. Continuous variation is the norm, not the exception in evolutionary biology. Red and orange gradually blend into one another. Yet both are distinct and meaningful categories. Likewise, the existence of racially mixed individuals does not disprove the existence of races any more than the color green disproves the existence of the colors blue and yellow. Yet another objection to race realism is that racial classification can be utilized to justify oppression of certain groups. However, this objection has nothing to do with the empirical validity of race and racial differences. Many true and useful distinctions like sex, age, health, or income can likewise be abused, but misuse does not invalidate biological or epistemological validity. A final objection holds that contemporary science has refuted the concept of race. Critics often demand either a single essential trait that all members of a race possess and others lack or single causal mechanism responsible for all intergroup differences. But taxonomy does not depend on essences, singular defining traits or unitary causes. This is because evolution does not proceed by perfectly discrete jumps producing sharp edges, but rather by shaping populations within adaptive fitness landscapes, often forming identifiable local optima or islands of evolutionary stability, which are revealed by observable clusters of traits. Population genetics routinely identifies distinct ancestral clusters an forensic scientists can determine race from skeletal remains, oral bacteria, or a strand of hair. Artificial intelligence is now capable of identifying people's race from chest X rays, and even spine radiographs. Race is an important factor in determining if donors of organs, and bone marrow are potential matches for patients. According to leukemia charity Gift of Life, quote, "Ethnicity is the key to a perfect match between donor and recipient." So, there is no problem of scientific evidence for race, but rather a problem with scientists and other intellectuals being too afraid to speak the truth. More importantly, though, race realism does not depend on science for its validity. People observed racial differences long before the emergence of biology or genetics. Any society premised on the denial of race will collapse from accumulated error.
