“Race” is called an ideological construction, and not just a social construction, because the idea of “race” has never existed outside of a framework of group interest. As a nineteenth-century pseudoscientific theory, as well as in ceontemporary “popular” thinking, the notion of “race” is inherently part of a “model” of asymmetrically organised “races” in which whites rank higher than “non-whites.”

Philomena Essed, Understanding Everyday Racism.