Imagine a burning hotel. Of the one hundred people inside, the stranded delegates from a conference on the representation of indigenous peoples, it is only possible to save fifty. There happens to be just that number of South African San or Bushman guests trapped in the flames. Despite the commitment to a universal principle rejecting any appeal to race as arbitrary, is it not reasonable to save them before the other guests because of the obligation to preserve threatened cultures? Doesn't a sense of the injustices of history, and the spirit of the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity, demand the preservation of the most threatened?

In his Racist Culture, David Theo Goldberg employs a version of this grisly parable to demonstrate the relevance of nonbiological or culturalist racial distinctions. In this nonbiological interpretation, race stands for historically specic forms of cultural connectedness and solidarity. Hereditary here involves cultural practices and self-identification. The assumption is that if the culture, defined in terms of language and practices, vanishes then the people or race are extinct too, and vice versa. This is one of the more recent forms given to the scandalous thought-experiment proposed by William Godwin in Political Justice (1793) designed to underline the importance of social utility; confronted with a burning building containing a progressive thinker (Fénelon) and his valet, justice demands that he who is more conducive to the general good shall be saved. Our modern version injects race and culture into this scenario, whereas those objecting to Godwin’s coldness sought to introduce the importance of family ties (blood?) and affection (culture?).