Reddit reviews How Race Is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses

Some of your salt I understand, but mainly you are arguing from unstable ground. You say "logically inconsistent," so I am going to assume you are interested in logic and facts. That's great. Let's start with the logic of a "social construct."

>The brothers and the guy with "4 degrees" seem to think that race is a social construct. If so, then how did they categorize "White Lady" as white?

You seem to think that acknowledging something as a construct means that it has no affect over how people live or identify themselves. That is flawed logic. Before we think about race, it might be easier to consider another construct: national identity. National identifiers like American or Roman are, of course, made up, i.e. socially constructed, and they change over time. The boundaries of Romanness/Americanness are constantly in flux, the definitions fluid and ever-changing. Does national identity correspond with geographical boundaries, or citizenship rights, or language, or shared religion, or skin color, or governmental system, or what? Again, over time, the answer has been yes to all of those things and no to all of them. Yet, even as we constantly redefine what it means "to be American," even as we recognize that we can redefine what it means, that identity matters a great deal to many people and it measurably affects peoples' lives. I call myself and others Americans, knowing full well that our national identity is made up, but it still can be a useful shortcut for understanding something about one another. So, to consider race, when people call it a social construct, they are pointing out that it only exists insofar as we, as social beings, define it. But the things that people make up still very seriously affect their lives. The brothers in the video recognize that the notion of "blackness," which was something that human beings constructed alongside the idea of "whiteness," has shaped the way their world arranges itself and their relationships in it (hence calling the black man "brother" and the white women "white lady"). Blackness is made up, just as made up as Americanness, but both seriously affect how we live our lives and the types of relationships open to people.

>Yes, the term "white" has undergone changes in its definition by racists, but has the term "black" undergone any changes?

Short answer, yes. There's a reason we used to have terms like "mulatto," "mestizo" and "Creole" in America. In South Africa, "mixed" is still a racial category distinct from black or white.

>If race is a social construct then why would it matter if the ancient world was entirely white?

So, the video is trying to point out how the alt-right tries to co-opt the ancient world's "whiteness" as an identity building tactic when they argue for white ethno-states. Here's one good article about fashwave propaganda; here are three more pieces about alt-right using the whiteness of statues for their anti-illectual ideological aims from New Yorker, then Forbes, and another from HyperAllergic. They are trying to point out that our idea of whiteness did not exist in antiquity, but modern fascists still like to appeal to an idea of a transhistorical white/European culture. The stakes here are paramount, as evidenced by growing fascist and white nationalist trends from around the globe. Anyone interested in classics has a responsibility to call out bad scholarship anywhere they see it. Our discipline is currently being ransacked by those uninterested in the beauty and complexity of ancient life and literature, and we should be the first to point out their ideological manipulations.

>One of those degrees must have missed anything to do with the basic physiological differences between the races. Skeletal structure for one, is a good indicator of race. Hell, the production of more melanin in the brothers' skin is proof that race is not a social construct

So, here you've just got the facts wrong. I'm going to assume you aren't arguing from bad faith, but rather are actually interested in "the truth," or some form of it. So, let's hope that we can use logic and facts together to sort this one out! One easy place to start is National Geographic's "There’s No Scientific Basis for Race—It's a Made-Up Label". It's a good, quick read. Give it a try. If you don't like those facts, bounce on over to "Human Genetic Diversity and the Nonexistence of Biological Races", from Human Biology, or American Psychologist's "Race as biology is fiction, racism as a social problem is real: Anthropological and historical perspectives on the social construction of race", (both of which are behind a paywall, but as long as you are on a college campus, you have access to them). Then, you could follow up with Scientific American's "Race Is a Social Construct, Scientists Argue", which is not the best article on its own, but links you to the study it discusses. If you'd prefer a book, you could get How Race Is Made, or, you know, one of any modern book written about race besides pseudo-science like Bell Curve. Good ol' facts and logic!

So, as you know by now from doing some reading, bone structure and melanin production actually don't correspond with different racial subcategories, because those categories are constantly in flux. They are, again, socially constructed labels. I hope this helps make your salty dish taste a little sweeter!