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Sociology · Chapter 10

Constructing Race: Six Societies, Six Answers

Ask six societies the same question about the same unchanged human being — what race is this person? — and you will get six incompatible answers. Not six opinions about one underlying fact: six different facts, each written into law, printed on a form, and enforced. Tap each system to see its boxes and its sorting rule, then sort twelve real rules back to the societies that made them.

One person, six societies

What race is this person?tap a society to begin

Three ways to read a racial category