Edit: this question has been answered now. Thank you to everyone who took the time to help me understand.
the premise that race is not a natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is used to oppress and exploit people of colour.
Okay… But we can take a DNA test and get our ancestry, telling us what percentage of what races make up our overall ethnicity. So how is race a social construct and not a biological feature, when we have a scientific method to determine our race? This part of the philosophy has been bothering me ever since I read it, and I’ve been hesitant to ask because of how offensive people get when you question this system.
The disconnect is that you’re equating Race, in CRT, with the Ethnicity that gets listed from an ancestry test.
From Merriam-Webster, “Today race refers to a group sharing some outward physical characteristics and some commonalities of culture and history. Ethnicity refers to markers acquired from the group with which one shares cultural, traditional, and familial bonds.”
Cultural and Historic similarities are social by nature. Italians, Greeks, and Egyptians all have periods where their histories are intertwined, but no one would claim their the same race. Irish & British fall under “white” people and have cultural similarities but are distinct on ancestry tests.
Different words mean different things.