A racial group is a category of people who are set apart from others within a society primarily because of obvious physical differences that are perceived as socially significant and are used to define group membership and often to justify differential treatment and social hierarchies. These perceived physical differences are not inherently meaningful but become socially significant when a society defines them as such and uses them as a basis for categorizing people and assigning them to different social positions, often leading to inequalities in power, privilege, and status. The concept of racial groups is closely tied to the social construction of race and the social processes of racialisation, where certain physical characteristics are imbued with social meaning and used to create racial categories that have real social consequences.