Edit: this question has been answered now. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help me understand.
the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour.
Okay… But we can take a DNA test and get our ancestry, telling us what percentage of what races make up our overall ethnicity. So how is race a social construct and not a biological feature, when we have a scientific method to determine our race? This part of the philosophy has been bothering me ever since I read it, and I’ve been hesitant to ask because of how offensive people get when you question this system.
Yeah that’s clear. As to the why, I suppose it’s because our brains are wired to categorize things and find patterns everywhere. It is useful to have labels for groups with common traits, although I do recognize the issues with that when it comes to systemic discrimination.
Edit: thanks for the answer!
The thing is, hair is equally as heritable, and immediately visible. As humans, we can see and categorise skin equally with hair.
The fact that we don’t use hair as a major defining trait though is arbitrary. That’s just social norms, nothing more.
We kind of do though. There’s nothing official about hair types, but there’s all kinds of stereotypes about people with certain hair colors, like blondes, or redheads. There’s even some scientific evidence that people with red hair have higher pain thresholds.
Those are not major defining traits. They could be, but they’re not.