part of no part

“In Human Society nothing is natural” (Simone de Beauvoir) During the Mid-19 th century, there emerged among African –American intellectuals a concept of race as a social construct. This was a significant departure from the received wisdom of European Science at the time which promoted the notion of race as a biological concept.  The central argument developed during this time argued that observable differences between the races are socially and economically constructed rather than natural or innate. Up to this point and even beyond,  the European notion of race as a biologically determined reality had been used in colonial settings to justify the stratification and division of oppressed people across the globe and which I outline at length in the first part of this essay . By the end of the 19 th century and the beginning of the 20th, the concept of race as a social construct had gained some academic credence through the work of W.E.B.Du Bois. But it was n...