Whiteness is a social construct, but that doesn’t mean we can just wish it away. Police officers and Lutheranism and Thursdays are also social constructs, but we can’t snap our fingers and make any of them disappear, either. Your non-belief in police officers won’t help you when you get pulled over; if you choose to ignore Thursdays you’ll always have the wrong day of the week. To say something is a social construct implies it has not always existed and could exist otherwise or not at all. Nonetheless, there are practices, policies, and institutions that make social constructs real, powerful, and potentially deadly while they exist.