Race is both biological and social because bodies are shaped by social practices

Evidence

Three lines of thinking have developed in response to the question of whether there are natural race differences and, if so, what they are. The first assumes that the fundamental “truth of race” is part of the natural order, can be discovered by biology, and has valuable social implications and consequences. The second argues that race is entirely a socially constructed category, that it is not a useful scientific concept, and that these facts destroy the foundation for racist prejudice and discrimination. The third challenges both of these views, arguing that the second insufficiently questions the nature/culture dichotomy that provides the foundation for scientific race difference debates. Since bodies are physiological entities that are shaped by social practices, race is always both biological and social. What we need to learn is just how social practices produce socially and biologically raced bodies. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1561

The third challenges both of these views, arguing that the second insufficiently questions the nature/culture dichotomy that provides the foundation for scientific race difference debates. Since bodies are physiological entities that are shaped by social practices, race is always both biological and social. What we need to learn is just how social practices produce socially and biologically raced bodies. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1562

Categorization

• DEFINE: Presents a three-way taxonomy of positions on race’s naturalness, ending in a synthesis view that race is always both biological and social.
• SEED: The third position — that ‘socially constructed’ theories leave the nature/culture dichotomy standing — is a sharp analytical hook for an essay on why both racial-essentialist and pure-constructionist frames fail.
• XREF: Qualifies the vault’s racialization/racial formation definitions (Omi & Winant), which tend to stress the social over the biological; here race is explicitly both. — connects to: Race is a social reduction to sheer force, not a natural trait — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 124; Bodily and cultural notions of race developed together from the start — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 125; The racial state is instrumental in forming subjects and their bodies — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1707 (+3 more)
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1561; David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1562