zodiac1 Nov 2005

One of my specializations in English Lit grad school was African American Literature. Naturally, this required identifying certain writers as black. Still, I think I'll maintain that race is a social construct invented by groups who stand to benefit from it. My other specialization was feminist lit, though, where I learned that gender is a social construct too, so you're entitled to tell me to blow off and stop talking such craziness.

Or how about this: If I accept that there are races, I still say the specifics of division are totally social. African Americans (ie, Dovina thinks they're a race) are as a whole much less purely genetically black/African than Arabs and Jews (Dovina thinks they're not a race) are purely genetically Arab or Jew. I'll give Dovina her distinction between the religious group Muslim (ie, mostly Pacifican and not Arab) and Arab, but can't give her Jew as a merely religious grouping.

I'll also still say cockneys are a race, if only by the non-meathead standard "most people think they're a race."