What do anthropologists mean when they say that "race" is "imagined but not imaginary"?

So part of my class's anthropology quiz this week asked my students to respond to the above question. My friend was helping me revise the test earlier and he asked me what a 5/5 answer would look like for this question. My response to my friend is as follows.

*

A 5/5 answer could be quite simple, but needs to address at least the following two points:

1) Race is “imagined”: ideas/categories about race are “socially constructed”, not “biologically real”; they are not confirmed by DNA, genetics, any other quantitative analysis, but are based on learned ideas about "difference" that change over time and space.
2) Race is “not imaginary”: just because it’s not “biologically real”, doesn’t mean it’s not still powerful. Ideas about “race” have profoundly shaped the world we live in – racism is very real, with very real social, economic, etc. consequences that affect how people from different “races” may live their lives.

Now, I know how weird it sounds to say that “race is not biology”, particularly to a science major. But if you have the patience, here is my much more thorough answer, to explain:

When anthropologists say that the concept of “race” is “imagined, but not imaginary,” they mean that it is socially constructed (rather than biologically “real”), but that the effects that believing in “race” has on our society are indeed very real and not imaginary.

To open our minds to this idea, let’s consider something else that is “imagined but not imaginary”, with an example of paper money. The idea that paper money has value is “imagined” – it is a social idea, rather than being based on anything inherently “real” or “true” about the paper itself. However, because it is imagined, and because it is imagined by so many people at the same time, it has real consequences, in the world we live in, and so is “not imaginary”. Whether or not someone has that piece of paper can make a real difference to whether they eat that day, where they sleep, and how they are treated by other members of that society.

When most people identify someone’s “race”, they believe they are talking about a biological fact about that person. However, closer examination reveals that ideas about “who is a member of which race”, “how many races there are”, and what the criteria are for each, are decisions that change throughout time and from place to place. What it means to be “black” is not a genetic category or even, counterintuitively, dependent on skin colour. Many people with very dark skin are not identified as “black” but rather as East Indian or Australian. At the same time, people who are identified as “black” have a huge range of actual skin tones, light to dark, which overlap with skin tones from other “races”. Africa is the most genetically diverse continent on the planet, yet often people from any part of it are all labelled “black”, as if this signified that they had something (biological) in common, even when they have less genetically in common with each other than in comparison to a “white” person.

Finally, what it means to be “black” changes over time, and from place to place. The meaning and criteria of being “black” in the U.S. is not the same as “black” in Brazil or “black” in South Africa. In other words, although humans do have biological and genetic diversity, that diversity is a continuum and does not divide itself into neat categories. The creation of neat boundaries and particular racial categories is social, and therefore “imagined”.

However, although race is not “biologically real”, this does not mean that the concept has no social effects, or consequences. Ideas about race have fundamentally shaped societies around the world. For instance, the idea that “blacks” and “whites” are different groups of people was foundational to the 17th century slave trade. The idea that “Jews” were racially or biologically different than “Aryans”, or "Hutus" from "Tutsis," or “Irish” people from “English” fuelled very real persecution and genocides. “Racial” categories continue to inform social realities today. What “race” you are identified as will have a real correlation with or effect on where you grow up, where you are likely to work, how much you will earn, how you will be treated by law enforcement, and what assumptions people will make about you. Therefore, as we can see, although “race” is not “biology”, the effects of “race” are very real and not imaginary.

*

Author’s anecdote: As an eighteen-year-old first-year anthropology student rightly confused as sh*t by this very novel concept, I went to my professor’s office hours with a question.

“What do you mean, race is not biological?” I asked. “If a black father and a black mother have a baby, won’t it be black?”

“Yes,” he said, humoring me, “but what do you mean by black?”

And seven years later here I am.