From the NYT:
I’ve been telling my students since the 1970s that “race is a pigment of our imagination.” The play on words is meant to draw attention to the social, legal and political construction of categories meant to put people “in their place” in hierarchies of power and privilege. “Race” is a social status, not a zoological one; a product of history, not of nature; a contextual variable, not a given. [Ruben G. Rumbaut is a sociology professor at the University of California, Irvine.]

For the full story, please visit http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/21/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-the-mea....