Those who argue that race is a construction, a fiction made up by regressive and prejudiced people are perhaps making a mistake similar to those these criticize. Racial profiling is something we all do often. Within India we recognize people as south-Indian or North-Indian also as racial profiling. When we go to a foreign country and feel lonely we seek to talk to those from our land and we seek them in public spaces through racial features. When we see a sportsperson or an actor we like, we look and try to guess where they must be from. Thus racial profiling exists, not only in negative contexts but in all kinds of positive ones. Of course such profiling stems from stereotyping and patterns we are used to and our guesses are right perhaps only 7 out of 10 times. Those who live in western countries where people from all parts of the world have been coming to settle, and have now lived there for 2-4 generations, have become more sensitive to the fact that it is hard to pinpoint people's 'origins'. There are many with mixed race backgrounds.
In a country like India, such mixing occurred at earlier points in history. In a country like America we see it occurring in these past decades with immigration. So, in India we see diversity but never really think of it as racial difference, because culturally we became enmeshed over the centuries. In America the differences remain sharp and will change over a few more generations.
Liberals are of course right to pin-point that all societies are and have always been mixing. It is true. Waves of migrations and intermixings have been occurring throughout history because of good and bad forces – war, love, travel, exploration, climatic distress, commerce and power-alliances. That reality does not undo the fact that race is encountered experientially. Even though Indians are a heady mix of various races and populations, differences of features and traits are still very visible. Recent studies of genetics show that some communities here, owing to marriage rules of caste or tribe have actually maintained genetic purity for more than 2000 years, even while many other groups, including those who think they are very caste-pure are much more mixed than they imagine. Genes are also not the only factor, as diet and environment are equally relevant in shaping communities.
So both racial patterns and racial mixing are our heritage. If we look far enough at most races their apparently fixed identity itself emerges as a result of some previous mixings. There is a tendency to see social histories as different and opposite from race and genes, which are considered more fixed and scientific. But after all isn’t a gene or race itself simply the congealed form of social history? If a people live together with common memories, customs, diet and climate and they continue to marry within themselves, racial and genetic types will accentuate. If they scatter then these will dilute. And both these things have occurred throughout human history. Some racial factors are deeper and long lasting, many others are more malleable. Some can shift in even one lifetime and other can take 10 generations. These patterns of history and nature are visible on our bodies and faces. They can even help predict disease patterns in population groups. And yet most of the time they are nothing more than the accumulation of repeated historical acts and habits. The gene patterns that affect a population today may not have the same effect 5-10 generations later, if their people migrate and mix with others.
The forces of both preservation and change constantly operate in the world and subconsciously affect the way humans think and feel. The longings of love, travel and exploration have been as strong as the longings to maintain order, community and continuity. Perhaps together they make a world that is both balanced and also exciting and ever new. Liberals want to prove that the differences between humanity are the fiction of conservatives, so they keep trying to prove that race does not exist (to be fair what they are often trying to do is puncture narrow-minded studies on race). Conservatives always feel that liberals consider no traditions holy and and insist on the continuity of group identity. Their anxieties sometimes come from egoistic needs to maintain social dominance and at other times express more understandable fears in the face of loss and change. The subconscious minds of communities fear that too much mixing will obliterate their uniqueness and their group identity. So they can even go as far as to perform honor killings to prevent such change. Perhaps this is why there are Romeo-Juliet and Heer-Ranjha-like tragic stories in all feudal societies, where the intense pull of love and its inevitable failure both exist.
This much is now clear that there are vast mixings throughout our history and yet also there are racial continuities. Meanwhile, we can ask ourselves do we need to prove that race does not exist, in order to be kind and just people? Does this mean that if science proved beyond doubt that race exists, we would somehow get a license to oppress or exterminate some people? Also if we can see that race itself, is not something eternal, but a product of long-term history, then it is something that is always being made and unmade, ever so slowly. Meanwhile, justice and open-mindedness can very well flower alongside.