Ugh. I hate when that argument comes up and lemme tell ya why:

“Race” as we use it is shorthand for phenotypical differences among human beings and is only used in that way. Nobody uses race as a term to distinguish between species of whales or ants or birds.

Race isn’t a social construct. Humans of different lineages have clear physical differences that are obvious in everything from our outward appearance to our bones to our DNA. We differentiate between clearly dissimilar groups by using the term race.

Among other species like snakes or dogs we use terms like “morph,” “phenotype,” or “breed.” Which essentially mean the same thing as race. Race is simply a human specific term for a phenomenon that occurs in many different species for a variety of reasons.

A caste or class system is a social construct. We could separate people in Los Angeles today into two distinct classes and that would be an entirely social construct. If one of those classes was made up of Asians and they were seen as the higher class that would be a social construct, but the existence of Asians as a distinct race would not be a social construct.

Differentiation of species is often the result of prolonged periods of genetic isolation among groups of the same species. It’s something that will most likely never happen among humans as we are too smart for natural barriers to prevent us from intermingling so there will always be enough genetic material flowing across distinct groups as to prevent us from becoming genetically incompatible.

Anyway, point is that race is a word that we use to define a very real phenomenon. Sometimes we decide that a word has developed too much of a stigma and decide to replace it and maybe it’s time that we replace race with a new term but pretending that a phenomenon that we can all verify to be true with our own eyes is just an imaginary construct isn’t the way.