Social Constructivism and the Binary Construction of Race

In today's racially charged society, in which systemic and systematic racism are threatening to undo the U.S., it's important to understand the origins of race itself and the reasons racialized policies are cruel, unjust, and oppressive.

What I present here is the type of scholarly work that states like Florida and Texas are "banning," otherwise known as censorship.

Let's begin with a very brief description of social constructivism.

Social constructivism is a social science theory which argues that people create or construct meaning based on their interactions and collaboration with each other. Vygotsky (1978) emphasized culture and social interaction play the most crucial role in learning.?While Piaget (1936) felt that learning was largely fueled from within. However, by the mid-twentieth century, theorists across the social sciences began to apply Vygotsky’s social constructivism to other walks of life, such as gender and race.

How does social constructivism get applied to race?

The “binary construction” of Blackness and whiteness are quintessential American inventions.

In other words, as Toni Morrison famously notes, “American means white, and everybody else has to hyphenate.” What she means by this assertion is that whiteness is the standard in America, even though, according to the 2020 census, BIPOC people outnumber whites in the United States.?

Let's go back to 17th century colonization.

This binary construction of “Black” and “white” became the primary racial language while the U.S. was still transitioning from a colony to a country. During this period, “Blackness” and “whiteness” were constructed identities in a new nation of colonists who were desperately attempting to build a “new world” and a national identity.

The colonists were Europeans migrating from various countries of origin. During the early migration in the 1600s, these migrants referred to themselves as British, Irish, Scottish, Dutch, etc.

However, from the late 1600s to the 1800s, the colonists began to construct a national identity in order to separate themselves, as one homogeneous group, from the enslaved Africans who they were shipping across the Atlantic and into the present-day U.S.

In order to construct a national identity that all Europeans in the “new world” could embrace as their own, the colonists began to construct an identity based on who they were not rather than who they were. The colonists created a binary construction of race: “Black” as one side of the binary and “white” as the other side.?

Over time, Africans in the Americas became “Black” and Europeans became “white.” As a result, Blackness was socially constructed to represent negative and harmful characteristics and falsely crafted through scientific racism to align with super-human strength, low intellectual capacity, laziness and criminal behavior.

On the other hand, whiteness has been socially constructed to represent positive and deific characteristics synonymous in many communities with goodness, righteousness, purity and morality.

Blackness became the antithesis to whiteness.?

As Toni Morrison tells us:

Africanism is the vehicle by which the American self knows itself as not enslaved, but free; not repulsive, but desirable; not helpless, but licensed and powerful; not history-less but historical; not damned, but innocent; not a blind accident of evolution, but a progressive fulfillment of destiny.

When I teach this concept in college classes, students often experience an epiphanic moment, and their next question is, "Who created this concept in the first place?

My answer:

This construction was the process of nation-building, and the American colonists shaped the type of nation they were building with great intentionality.?In order to build a “united” nation — a “united states,” the “founding fathers” had to unite the disparate groups of European colonists under one national identity. That identity was a socially constructed “white” identity. And the enslaved Africans were relegated to the dark side of that binary.?

Sadly, most U.S. policies were predicated on this binary construction of race that clearly privileges "whites." In other words, whites birthed and white supremacism then institutionalized the concept across all systems in the U.S.

The cruelty that we are contending with today is interwoven into American culture and ideology.

This type of knowledge creates an educated citizenry who would dismantle these cruel ideologies. Dismantling the myth of whiteness and blackness is a threat to the white supremacists "way of life."

Knowledge is power!

To learn more:

Georgetown University

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Patricia Hill Collins

University of Missouri-St. Louis

Race: Lumen Learning

University of San Diego

#binaryconstructionofrace #socialconstructivism #mythofwhiteness #racialequity #transformativeeducation #transformativejustice