Question

Naomi Zack argues that race is a social construct and is dangerous. What does she mean by race being “socially constructed?” How does she argue in favor of it? Does she think this realization means that we should not think or speak of race anymore? a written essay 4 pages, double spaces.

Answer 1

   Naomi Zack who is an eminent professor of philosophy at Lehman College at New Work. She defined Race is the acquired hereditable differences in human groups which evolve in geographical isolation. According to her race is socially contructed because it came into existence through colonialism and global development which had an impact on poor nonwhite population. So from here we can see that race is being created by the people of society.

Zack in order to explain about the concept of "Race as a social construct" she developed a concept of anti-racism as a new paradigm. It generally driven our attention tpwards racial oppression and other forms of current injustice. This racial differentiation are different categories of human recognizable by way of morphological and other genetically transmitted traits such as skin color and this became the question for justice. She distinguishes two ways of philosophizing about justice. One treat justice as an ideal that can be defined and reasoned about even if no real society in human history ever. The other approach begins with injustice and seeks to understand and correct it. So it imples that the philosopher has some conception about justice, but Zack contends that theories of justice also starts from preexisting beliefs. From these viwes it has been proved that priviledge whites are said to have a right belonging to both whites and nonwhites that is violated when some nonwhites are the ones who exercises it.

Zack denies the existence of deep persisting and tenacious racial inequality, expressed and reinforced through rotine practices of violence and humiliation by oppressor which held accountable for their actions. She also said race is by virtue of the one drop rule, mandate rules of racial taxonomies that maintain white supremacy. She contends this is accomplished by authorization of a racial asymmetrical paradigm that maintain "racial purity" that excludes blacks and subsequently a group that remains virtually ignored within etno-racial theory. So it is dangerous.

Race is a social construction that reflects history, politics, and sharedsocial tradition among dominant and subordinate human groups each of which sharesinterlocking, intergenerational lines of familes descent