What Is Race?
Jan 27, 2004Is race a discredited pseudo-scientific category? Or a real dimension of difference among humans?
Is race a social construct?
Is there any scientific basis for race?
Are racial categories themselves racist?
How are the above three questions related to each other? We might be inclined to think that, if there's no scientific basis for race, then it's a social construct. Does the fact that some biological/genetic differences track racial differences change the equation?
Or is it perhaps that, if we wanted a more scientifically accurate set of racial distinctions, they would not look anything like today's racial categories? But if racial categories were drawn arbitrarily by white colonizers and imperialists, can we conclude that racial categories are themselves racist?
These are the sort of questions that were running through my head reading this wonderful National Geographic article on why there's no scientific basis for race:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-genetics-science-africa/
Do take a look! This article complements well another National Geographic article on the magazine's own history with race and racism:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/from-the-editor-race-racism-history/.
The articles both feature in NatGeo's April "Race Issue." Would highly recommend exploring!
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Is race a discredited pseudo-scientific category? Or a real dimension of difference among humans?
Many people identify strongly with the ethnic or racial group to which they belong – as Jews, or African-Americans, or Latinos. But to which groups does a person truly belong?
Astronomy is science; Astrology is pseudo-science. Evolutionary Biology is science; Creationism is pseudo-science.
Started in the wake of George Zimmerman's 2013 acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has become a po...
Despite tremendous strides made towards civil and political rights in the United States, discrimination and exclusion based on race, class, gender, and sexuality are still pervasive.
Why do some people have a strange desire to do weird things for no (good) reason? There's something fascinating about kids who eat laundry soap as part of a “challenge,” or people who deliberately... Read more
Making a better world would be a great thing—but do we need philosophers to help us do that? Famously (or infamously), not all philosophers have been such great people. So are they the folks we... Read more
In her time—the 4th century CE—Hypatia was one of the most famous philosophers in Alexandria, and indeed in the ancient world. She studied and taught mathematics,... Read more
Mexican philosophy is full of fascinating ideas, from Mexica ("Aztec") and Mayan thought to Sor Juana’s feminism and Emilio Uranga’s existentialism... Read more
Your friendly neighborhood Senior Prodcuer here, once again stepping out from behind the mixing board to bring you some bonus content from this week's 17th (!) annual Summer Reading special.... Read more
Gender is a controversial topic these days. To some, gender is an oppressive system designed to keep women down: people go around saying "girls are made of sugar and spice and boys are made of... Read more
Fascism is on the rise, new infectious diseases keep cropping up, and we’re on the verge of environmental collapse: how on earth could art possibly save us? The arts are may be nice distraction,... Read more
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Following up on last year's not-so-new experiment, here's a little behind-the-scenes look into the brief audio montages (produced... Read more
This week we’re asking what it’s... Read more
This essay also appears at the website of Oxford University Press, publisher of Josh's new book,
"The World According to Proust."
... Read more
This week we’re thinking about how to create a world in which our leaders are not just effective legislators, but also good people.
Some might think there are not enough leaders like that... Read more
This week we're thinking about the British Liberal tradition and its relationship to colonialism and self-government. Classical Liberal thinkers, like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, held that... Read more
This week we’re thinking about Collective Action and Climate Change. With floods and fires getting more frequent and intense, and with the summer just ended shattering heat records around the... Read more
This week we’re thinking about cultural appropriation and asking who owns culture—which may be a weird way of thinking about it. It's easy to see how somebody can own the rights to a song they... Read more
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Comments (3)
Harold G. Neuman
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 -- 1:08 PM
Answers to your questionsAnswers to your questions (and those of countless others), in order of presentation: 1. Yes, it is a social construct, the depth of which runs from our penchant for categorization to our defense(s) for doing the things we do. Historically, we have treated others according to how we perceive them: perceived worth; perceived intelligence; relevance to our personal station in life and the world as we have known it at any given point in time and other factors, as we have made them up, for our own convenience. 2. There do not appear to be any sort of such bases. If there were, we would have probably found (by now) that, for example, it is not advisable to transfuse blood from black people to white; white to Asian; native-American to black, and so on. There have been no cross-racial dangers that I know of, as long as the donor is otherwise healthy and has no disease or syndrome that would harm the recipient (think, e.g., sickle cell disease). 3. Again, I answer yes. Why? Because the act of making race an issue conforms with the reasons for doing so, as set forth in #1, above. If we were color-blind (in the social sense, not the physiological), there would be no rationale at all for racial categorizations. But that would have the world, as we DO NOT know it---and probably a better one, too. And that, dear inquirer, is as philosophical as it gets.
MJA
Tuesday, April 3, 2018 -- 8:06 PM
Science is the measure of aScience is the measure of a nature that is truly immeasurable, indivisible, or just one.
The future is absolute and philosophy will lead the way! =
RepoMan05
Tuesday, September 24, 2019 -- 6:20 PM
"Race" has no meaning except"Race" has no meaning except that it is an equivocation fallacy made by the british to turn family into competition in order to justify nepotism and slippery slope for aristocracy.
That people have a tendancy to trust people that look like them and are sexually attracted to people with similar traits is a topic that does have some evolutionary basis. But figuring the perfect moment between nature vs nurture is probably impossibly difficult to pin.
The question i find most difficult to answer, at what point is it not considered "racist" to choose mates that carry similar traits.
I often hear complaints that pink women are hounded as racists for not wanting to date brown men on dating sites. Which is more racist? Pink women not wanting brown men or brown men wanting pink women?
One is an active process of hounding pink women where the other is a negative of just not seeking brown men.
At some point, you can apply a fallacy wherever you want if you're a believer of fallacy.