Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-r7xzm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:56:48.077Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Deflating ‘Race’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 December 2015

LIONEL K. MCPHERSON*
Affiliation:
TUFTS UNIVERSITYlionel.mcpherson@tufts.edu

Abstract:

‘Race’ has long searched for a stable, suitable idea, with no consensus on a master meaning in sight. What I call deflationary pluralism about the existence of race recognizes that various meanings may be true as far as they go but avoids murky disputes over whether there are races in some sense. Once we have rejected the notion that racial essences yield innate cognitive differences, there is little point to arguing over the race idea. In its place, I propose the idea of socioancestry, which jettisons racial thinking yet recognizes the social dynamics of color. For example, Black Americans, many of whom have traceable non-African ancestry, constitute an Africa-identified, socioancestrally black subgroup. ‘Race’ talk is not needed to sustain legitimate color-conscious approaches to social identity and social justice. Long-standing fixation on the race idea has obscured the simple truth that visible continental ancestry is the root of the social reality of color consciousness.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alcoff, Linda. (1995) ‘Mestizo Identity’. In Zack, Naomi (ed.), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 257–78.Google Scholar
Alcoff, Linda Martín. (2006) Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Andreasen, Robin O. (2007) ‘Biological Conceptions of Race’. In Matthen, Mohan and Stephens, Christopher (eds.), Philosophy of Biology (Amsterdam: Elsevier), 455–81.Google Scholar
Appiah, Anthony. (1986) ‘The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race’. In Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (ed.), “Race,” Writing, and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), 2137.Google Scholar
Appiah, Anthony K. (1996) ‘Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections’. In Appiah, K. Anthony and Gutmann, Amy, Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 30105.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame Anthony. (2002) ‘The State and the Shaping of Identity’. In Peterson, Grethe B. (ed.), The Tanner Lectures on Human Values (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press), 235–99.Google Scholar
Bernasconi, Robert, and Lott, Tommy L.. (2000) ‘Introduction to Bernier, “A New Division of the Earth”’. In Bernasconi, Robert and Lott, Tommy L. (eds.), The Idea of Race (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett), 1.Google Scholar
Bernier, François. (1684) ‘A New Division of the Earth’. In Bernasconi, Robert and Lott, Tommy L. (eds.), The Idea of Race (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 14.Google Scholar
Block, Ned. (1995) ‘How Heritability Misleads about Race’. Cognition, 56, 99128.Google Scholar
Blum, Lawrence. (2002) ‘I’m Not a Racist, But . . .’: The Moral Quandary of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich. (1795) ‘On the Natural Variety of Mankind’. In Bernasconi, Robert and Lott, Tommy L. (eds.), The Idea of Race (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 2737.Google Scholar
Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca, Menozzi, Paolo, and Piazza, Alberto. (1994) The History and Geography of Human Genes. paperback, Abridged ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1897) ‘The Conservation of Races’. In Bernasconi, Robert and Lott, Tommy L. (eds.), The Idea of Race (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), 108–17.Google Scholar
Gates, Henry Louis Jr. (2011) Black in Latin America. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Glasgow, Joshua. (2009) A Theory of Race. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gooding-Williams, Robert. (2001) ‘Race, Multiculturalism and Democracy’. In Boxill, Bernard (ed.), Race and Racism (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 422–47.Google Scholar
Gooding-Williams, Robert. (2011) In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen Jay. (1996) The Mismeasure of Man. Rev. ed. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Hanchard, Michael. (1994) ‘Black Cinderella?: Race and the Public Sphere in Brazil’. Public Culture, 7, 165–85.Google Scholar
Hardimon, Michael O. (2003) ‘The Ordinary Concept of Race’. Journal of Philosophy, 100, 437–55.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. (2000) ‘Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?Noûs, 34, 3155.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. (2009) ‘Exploring Race in Life, in Speech, and in Philosophy: Comments on Josh Glasgow's A Theory of Race’. Symposia on Gender, Race and Philosophy, 5, 19.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally. (2010) ‘Language, Politics and “The Folk”: Looking for “The Meaning” of “Race”’. Monist, 93, 169–87.Google Scholar
Hunt-Grubbe, Charlotte. (2007) ‘The Elementary DNA of Dr Watson’. Sunday Times, October 14.Google Scholar
Jeffers, Chike. (2013) ‘The Cultural Theory of Race: Yet Another Look at Du Bois's “The Conservation of Races”’. Ethics, 123, 403–26.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. (1777) ‘Of the Different Human Races’. In Bernasconi, Robert and Lott, Tommy L. (eds.), The Idea of Race (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000), 822.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. (1999) ‘Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture’. In Harris, Leonard (ed.), Racism (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books), 87117.Google Scholar
Kitcher, Philip. (2007). ‘Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?Philosophy and Public Affairs, 35, 293317.Google Scholar
Kleingeld, Pauline. (2007) ‘Kant's Second Thoughts on Race’. Philosophical Quarterly, 57, 573–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Michael. (2002) ‘The Race Concept: A Defense’. Behavior and Philosophy, 30, 2142.Google Scholar
Mayr, Ernst. (2002) ‘The Biology of Race and the Concept of Equality’. Daedalus, 131, 8994.Google Scholar
McPherson, Lionel K., and Shelby, Tommie. (2004) ‘Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African American Identity’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 32, 171–92.Google Scholar
Neisser, Ulric, et al. (1996) ‘Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns’. American Psychologist, 51, 77101.Google Scholar
Outlaw, Lucius. (1996) ‘“Conserve” Races: In Defense of W. E. B. Du Bois’. In Bell, Bernard W., Grosholz, Emily R., and Stewart, James B. (eds.), W. E. B. Du Bois on Race and Culture (New York: Routledge), 1637.Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. (2007) ‘Groups of People May Differ Genetically in Their Average Talents and Temperaments’. In Brockman, John (ed.), What Is Your Dangerous Idea?: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Unthinkable (New York: Harper Perennial), 1315.Google Scholar
Risch, Neil, Burchard, Esteban, Ziv, Elad, and Tang, Hua. (2002) ‘Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease’. Genome Biology, 3, comment2007.1-2007.12.Google Scholar
Sesardic, Neven. (2010) ‘Race: A Social Destruction of a Biological Concept’. Biology and Philosophy, 25, 143–62.Google Scholar
Spencer, Quayshawn. (2012) ‘What “Biological Racial Realism” Should Mean’. Philosophical Studies, 159, 181204.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul C. (2000) ‘Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race’. Social Theory and Practice, 26, 103–28.Google Scholar
Taylor, Paul C. (2004) Race: A Philosophical Introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Watson, James. (2007) ‘To Question Genetic Intelligence Is Not Racism’. Independent, October 19.Google Scholar
West, Cornel. (1989) The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of American Pragmatism. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, E. O., and Brown, W. L. Jr. (1953) ‘The Subspecies Concept and its Taxonomic Application’. Systematic Zoology. 2, 97111.Google Scholar
Zack, Naomi. (1993) Race and Mixed Race. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Zack, Naomi. (1995) ‘Life after Race’. In Zack, Naomi (ed.), American Mixed Race: The Culture of Microdiversity (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield), 297307.Google Scholar