The Construction of Race

In 1950, South Africa’s apartheid government created the Race Classification Board to assign legal racial categories to people whose status was ambiguous. The examiners used what they called the pencil test: if a pencil inserted into someone’s hair stayed in place without falling, the person might be classified as “Coloured” rather than “White.” They listened to accents, examined fingernails for pigmentation, and interviewed neighbors. Families were split: siblings were classified into different categories because they had inherited different combinations of features, giving them different legal rights and permitted occupations, and requiring them to live in different neighborhoods. The pencil test is an extreme example of something that operates wherever racial classification exists: a social and political determination dressed as a natural fact. Race is not a biological category. This is not a political opinion—it is the settled position of geneticists, who have found more variation…