Physiological features categorize people into races

The argument

Societies have racially categorized people by physiological features since antiquity. Today, in countries like Brazil, the US, the UK, people often identify one another's race based on skin color. Identification based on skin color is easy for US Americans to do because of the migration and colonization history of North America. The idea that outward physical appearance determines one's race is also prevalent in South Africa and the UK. The idea that physiological features, such as skin color, determine race is woven into societies and taught to children at an early age. One study has shown that children as young as 3 months old in the US begin to racially categorize people.

Premises

Counter-arguments

That societies sort people by visible features shows race is a social practice, not a biological fact. Skin colour and other traits vary continuously across populations and do not carve humanity into discrete genetic groups; geneticists find more variation within any so-called race than between them. Infants noticing differences demonstrates perceptual salience, not biological reality — children also categorise by clothing, accent and gender. The evidence the argument offers, that categorisation is learned and culturally embedded, supports the rival view that race is socially constructed rather than the claim that it is grounded in biology.

Rejecting the premises

People may categorize someone as a certain race by outward appearance, but that person may not identify with that race (e.g. golfer Tiger Woods)