“Both in its genesis (social order is the result of past human activity) and its existence in any instant of time (social order exists only and insofar as human activity continues to produce it) it is a human product … Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product. One may further add that only with the transmission of the social world to a new generation (that is, internalization as effectuated in socialization) does the fundamental social dialectic appear in its totality.”

The simple process presented allows us to examine externalization, objectification, institutionalization, legitimation, and internalization.

All of these elements play a part in considering the concept of race as a social product. Furthermore, racism is also a product of this process, and we can analyze it and defang it at multiple points in the social construction process. I’m not sure at which point in the process racism is most vulnerable: the mechanisms of externalization, many of which are interpersonal; the objectification of these beliefs in the form of representations and institutions; the legitimation mechanisms which defend them; or the processes involved in the internalization and the maintenance of them? These involve both material and symbolic factors in specific contexts over time. I’ve seen dramatic changes that have taken place in the workplace and in the military.