A 'black' woman said that she didn't knew she was black until she was 16. Does that mean 'blackness' is like 'whiteness' a social construction? Yes, an individual not realising they are Black until later in life directly illustrates that both "Blackness" and "Whiteness" are social constructions rather than biological absolutes. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] While the physical trait of skin pigmentation is biological (determined by melanin), the act of grouping people into rigid racial categories and assigning meaning, status, or identity to those categories is entirely a human invention. [4, 6] ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ HUMAN VARIATION │ └───────────────────────────┬────────────────────────────┘ │ Is organized by society into: ▼ ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ ...
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.” —Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilisation and the Remaking of the World Order, 1996, p. 51