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Sociologists hold that race is a social construct. That is, the attributes social actors choose to define particular 'races' are arbitrarily chosen based upon social norms and common perceptions.

For example, in another thread, one poster claimed that the typical classification of races into three categories--caucasoid, mongoloid, and negroid--is a natural and logical seperation of peoples.

However, anthropologists and sociologists dispute such claims with research that show there are no concrete, identifiable traits that hold across cultures. That is, even in our culture, if we placed every person in a line, with the "white-est" people on one side spanning to the "black-est" people on the other, we would not find a consensus among the observers as to where Negroid traits began and Caucasoid traits began.

In Brazil, as another example, we find the population divided into six races and in which eye color takes a prominant role in racial determination.

Thus, race is a social construction. While all societies have racial categories, the various societies have different criteria for how they differentiate between them. Our racial categories of negroid, caucasoid, and mongoloid are based on historical and cultural opposition to various subcultures and have absolutely nothing to do with genetic traits and are not logical conclusions to phenotypical variation.