To begin with, we must fully understand that race is not a biological concept, but a social and historical construct.

To begin with, we must fully understand that race is not a biological concept, but a social and historical construct. The reason that I grew up considering myself, as we then said, Negro, is that a racist system described me in that way. Most Blacks in the United States are persons of “mixed blood,” if such a thing can be said to exist, and have both white and Black ancestors. If there were such as thing as a biological white, I would be at least half that, and so would many other Blacks. However, the fact that race is an historical and social construct certainly does not mean that it does not exist. Experiences, histories, and communities have all developed around this concept; so if we abandon race, we abandon communities that may have been initially formed as a result of racism but have become something else entirely.

Trina Grillo, “Anti-Essentialism and Intersectionality: Tools to Dismantle the Master’s House,” Berkeley Women’s Law Journal [now Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice], (Volume 10, 1995). 24.

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