If it is more than a social construct, then what? Would society change for better or worse? The problem with exploring this is that it seems to be the first step to segregation, apartheid and eugenics. It would contradict the rationale behind universal equality, and invite more specific categorizations deeper into genetics and beyond.
How would you feel, growing up knowing that people of your race are generally significantly better or worse to others in certain ways? Are you really going to act towards people of other races in the same way as you would your own, or view them as oppressors or liars or inferior beings?
If it is more than a social construct, and some ‘races’ are statistically more or less able to do certain things than others, wouldn’t that would facilitate self-imposed segregation? Wouldn’t that, in turn, inflame tensions between races?
So we shut down this science?
You make good points.
However, facts are what they are, and pretending they are something that they are not, or refusing to examine them to determine their truth or falsity, will not help anybody.
Let’s look at it another way. If you are constantly told there is no actual difference between your race and another, yet your race consistently does less well, what is the only remaining explanation?
Well, it must be that the other race is keeping your’s down, intentionally or not. A recipe, if there ever was one, for brewing resentment, hatred and a desire for revenge. And, of course, if there actually are differences, it is a situation that simply cannot be ameliorated.
I would love it if the Declaration of Independence were literally, rather than metaphorically, true. That all men, and all groups of men, are literally equal in every way.
But my desire for that does not change the facts as they exist. And a considered refusal to find out what those facts are also will not change them.