The concept of race has historically signified the division ofhumanity into a small number of groups based upon five criteria: (1)Races reflect some type of biological foundation, be it Aristotelianessences or modern genes; (2) This biological foundation generatesdiscrete racial groupings, such that all and only all members of onerace share a set of biological characteristics that are not shared bymembers of other races; (3) This biological foundation is inheritedfrom generation to generation, allowing observers to identify anindividual’s race through her ancestry or genealogy; (4)Genealogical investigation should identify each race’s geographicorigin, typically in Africa, Europe, Asia, or North and South America;and (5) This inherited racial biological foundation manifests itselfprimarily in physical phenotypes, such as skin color, eye shape, hairtexture, and bone structure, and perhaps also behavioral phenotypes,such as intelligence or delinquency.

This historical concept of race has faced substantial scientific andphilosophical challenge, with some important thinkers denying both thelogical coherence of the concept and the very existence of races.Others defend the concept of race, albeit with substantial changes tothe foundations of racial identity, which they depict as eithersocially constructed or, if biologically grounded, neither discretenor essentialist, as the historical concept would have it.

Both in the past and today, determining the boundaries of discreteraces has proven to be most vexing and has led to great variations inthe number of human races believed to be in existence. Thus, somethinkers categorized humans into only four distinct races (typicallywhite or Caucasian, Black or African, yellow or Asian, and red orNative American), and downplayed any biological or phenotypicaldistinctions within racial groups (such as those between Scandinaviansand Spaniards within the white or Caucasian race). Other thinkersclassified humans into many more racial categories, for instancearguing that those humans “indigenous” to Europe could bedistinguished into discrete Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterraneanraces.

The ambiguities and confusion associated with determining theboundaries of racial categories have provoked a widespread scholarlyconsensus that discrete or essentialist races are sociallyconstructed, not biologically real. However, significant scholarlydebate persists regarding whether reproductive isolation, eitherduring human evolution or through modern practices barringmiscegenation, may have generated sufficient genetic isolation as tojustify using the term race to signify the existence of non-discretehuman groups that share not only physical phenotypes but also clustersof genetic material. In addition, scholarly debate exists concerningthe formation and character of socially constructed, discrete racialcategories. For instance, some scholars suggest that race isinconceivable without racialized social hierarchies, while othersargue that egalitarian race relations are possible. Finally,substantial controversy surrounds the moral status of racial identityand solidarity and the justice and legitimacy of policies orinstitutions aimed at undermining racial inequality.

This entry focuses primarily on contemporary scholarship regarding theconceptual, ontological, epistemological, and normative questionspertaining to race, with an introductory section on the history of theconcept of race in the West and in Western philosophy. Aside from somediscussion in Section 5, it does not focus in depth on authors such asFrederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, or Frantz Fanon, or movements, suchas Négritude, Critical Race Theory, Black Identity, Philosophy ofLiberation, or Feminist Perspectives on Race. Interested readersshould consult the relevant entries in the Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy for insight into these and other topics important to thestudy of race in philosophy.

In Section 1, we trace the historical origins and development of theconcept of race. Section 2 covers contemporary philosophical debatesover whether races actually exist. Thereafter, in Section 3 we examinethe differences between race and ethnicity. Section 4 surveys debatesamong moral, political and legal philosophers over the validity ofracial identity, racial solidarity, and race-specific policies such asaffirmative action and race-based representation. Section 5 outlinesengagement with the concept of race within Continental philosophy.

• 1. History of the Concept of Race
• 2. Do Races Exist? Contemporary Philosophical Debates
• 3. Race versus Ethnicity
• 4. Race in Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy
• 5. Race in Continental Philosophy
• Bibliography
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

1. History of the Concept of Race

The dominant scholarly position is that the concept of race is amodern phenomenon, at least in Europe and the Americas. However, thereis less agreement regarding whether racism, even absent adeveloped race concept, may have existed in the ancient Greek andRoman worlds. The influential work of classicist Frank Snowden (1970;1983), who emphasized the lack of antiblack prejudice in the ancientworld, led many scholars of race to conclude that racism did not existin that epoch. However, later classicists have responded thatSnowden’s work unnecessarily reduced all forms of racism to itspeculiarly American version based on skin color and other markers ofnon-white identity. Benjamin Isaac (2004) and Denise McCoskey (2012)contend that the ancient Greeks and Romans did hold proto-racist viewsthat applied to other groups which today might be considered white.Isaac persuasively argues that these views must beconsidered proto-racist: although they were formed withoutthe aid of a modern race concept grounded in ideas of deterministicbiology (2004, 5), they nevertheless resembled modern racism byattributing “to groups of people common characteristicsconsidered to be unalterable because they are determined by externalfactors or heredity” (2004, 38). More importantly, both Isaacand McCoskey contend that ancient proto-racism influenced thedevelopment of modern racism.

Perhaps the first, unconscious stirrings of the concept of race arosewithin the Iberian Peninsula. Following the Moorish conquest ofAndalusia in the eighth century C.E., the Iberian Peninsula became thesite of the greatest intermingling between Jewish, Christian, andMuslim believers. During and aftertheir reconquista (reconquest) of the Muslim principalitiesin the peninsula, the Catholic Monarchs Isabel and Ferdinand sought toestablish a uniformly Christian state by expelling first the Jews (in1492) and then the Muslims (in 1502). But because large numbers ofboth groups converted to Christianity to avoid expulsion (and beforethis to avoid persecution), the monarchs distrusted the authenticityof these Jewish and Muslim conversos (converts). To ensurethat only truly faithful Christians remained within the realm, thegrand inquisitor Torquemada reformulated the Inquisition to inquirenot just into defendants’ religious faith and practices but intotheir lineage. Only those who could demonstrate their ancestry tothose Christians who resisted the Moorish invasion were secure intheir status in the realm. Thus, the idea of purity of blood was born(limpieza de sangre), not fully the biological concept ofrace but perhaps the first occidental use of blood heritage as acategory of religio-political membership (Bernasconi and Lott 2000,vii; Hannaford 1996, 122–126; Frederickson 2002,31–35).

The Iberian Peninsula may also have witnessed the first stirrings ofantiblack and anti-Native-American racism. Since this region was thefirst in Europe to utilize African slavery while gradually rejectingthe enslavement of fellow European Christians, Iberian Christians mayhave come to associate Black people as physically and mentally suitable onlyfor menial labor. In this they were influenced by Arab slavemerchants, who assigned the worst tasks to their dark-skinned slaveswhile assigning more complex labor to light or tawny-skinned slaves(Frederickson 2002, 29). The “discovery” of the New Worldby Iberian explorers also brought European Christians into contactwith indigenous Americans for the first time. This resulted in theheated debate in Valladolid in 1550 between Bartolomé Las Casasand Gines de Sepúlveda over whether the Indians were by natureinferior and thus worthy of enslavement and conquest. Whether due toLas Casas’ victory over Sepúlveda, or due to thehierarchical character of Spanish Catholicism which did not requirethe dehumanization of other races in order to justify slavery, theSpanish empire did avoid the racialization of its conquered peoplesand African slaves. Indeed, arguably it was the conflict between theEnlightenment ideals of universal freedom and equality versus the factof the European enslavement of Africans and indigenous Americans thatfostered the development of the idea of race (Blum 2002,111–112; Hannaford 1996, 149–150).

While events in the Iberian Peninsula may have provided the initialstirrings of modern racial sentiments, the concept of race, with itsclose links to ideas of deterministic biology, emerged with the riseof modern natural philosophy and its concern with taxonomy (Smith2015). The first important articulation of the race concept came withthe 1684 publication of “A New Division of the Earth” byFrancois Bernier (1625–1688) (Bernasconi and Lott 2000, viii;Hannaford 1996, 191, 203). Based on his travels through Egypt, India,and Persia, this essay presented a division of humanity into“four or five species or races of men in particular whosedifference is so remarkable that it may be properly made use of as thefoundation for a new division of the earth” (Bernasconi and Lott2000, 1–2). First were the peoples inhabiting most of Europe andNorth Africa, extending eastward through Persia, northern and centralIndia, and right up to parts of contemporary Indonesia. Despite theirdiffering skin tones, these peoples nevertheless shared commonphysical characteristics, such as hair texture and bone structure. Thesecond race was constituted by the people of Africa south of theSahara Desert, who notably possessed smooth Black skin, thick nosesand lips, thin beards, and wooly hair. The peoples inhabiting landsfrom east Asia, through China, today’s central Asian states suchas Uzbekistan, and westward into Siberia and eastern Russiarepresented the third race, marked by their “truly white”skin, broad shoulders, flat faces, flat noses, thin beards, and long,thin eyes, while the short and squat Lapps of northern Scandinaviaconstituted the fourth race. Bernier considered whether the indigenouspeoples of the Americas were a fifth race, but he ultimately assignedthem to the first (Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 2–3).

But while Bernier initiated the use of the term “race” todistinguish different groups of humans based on physical traits, hisfailure to reflect on the relationship between racial division and thehuman race in general mitigated the scientific rigor of his definition(Bernasconi and Lott 2000, viii). Central to a scientific concept ofrace would be a resolution of the question of monogenesis versuspolygenesis. Monogenesis adhered to the Biblical creation story inasserting that all humans descended from a common ancestor, perhapsAdam of the Book of Genesis; polygenesis, on the other hand, assertedthat different human races descended from different ancestral roots.Thus, the former position contended that all races are neverthelessmembers of a common human species, whereas the latter saw races asdistinct species.

David Hume’s position on the debate between polygenesis versusmonogenesis is the subject of some scholarly debate. The bone ofcontention is his essay “Of National Characters,” where hecontends that differences among European nations are attributable notto natural differences but to cultural and political influences.Amidst this argument against crude naturalism, Hume inserts a footnotein the 1754 edition, wherein he writes: “I am apt tosuspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men(for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturallyinferior to whites. There never was a civilized nation ofany other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminenteither in action or speculation” (Zack 2002, 15; emphasisadded). Whereas even the most barbarous white nations such as theGermans “have something eminent about them,” the“uniform and constant difference” in accomplishmentbetween whites and non-whites could not occur “if nature had notmade an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men” (Zack2002, 15). Responding to criticism, he softens this position in the1776 edition, restricting his claims to natural inferiority only to“negroes,” stating that “scarcely ever wasa civilized nation of that complexion, not even of individual eminentin action or speculation” (Zack 2002, 17; Hume 1776 [1987], 208;emphasis added). Richard Popkin (1977) and Naomi Zack (2002,13–18) contend that the 1754 version of the essay assumes,without demonstration, an original, polygenetic difference betweenwhite and non-white races. Andrew Valls (2005, 132) denies that eitherversion of the footnote espouses polygenesis.

A strong and clear defense of monogenesis was provided by ImmanuelKant (1724–1804) in his essay “Of the Different HumanRaces,” first published in 1775 and revised in 1777. Kant arguedthat all humans descend from a common human “lineal rootgenus” in Europe, which contained the biological“seeds” and “dispositions” that can generatethe distinct physical traits of race when triggered by divergentenvironmental factors, especially combinations of heat and humidity.This, combined with patterns of migration, geographic isolation, andin-breeding, led to the differentiation of four distinct, pure races:the “noble blond” of northern Europe; the “copperred” of America (and east Asia); the “black” ofSenegambia in Africa; and the “olive-yellow” ofAsian-India. Once these discrete racial groups were developed overmany generations, further climatic changes will not alter racialphenotypes (Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 8–22).

Yet despite the distinction generated between different races,Kant’s monogenetic account led him to maintain that the differentraces were part of a common human species. As evidence, he adduced thefact that individuals from different races were able to breedtogether, and their offspring tended to exhibit blended physicaltraits inherited from both parents. Not only did blending indicatethat the parents were part of a common species; it also indicated thatthey are of distinct races. For the physical traits of parents of thesame race are not blended but often passed on exclusively: a blondwhite man and a brunette white woman may have four blond children,without any blending of this physical trait; whereas a Black man and awhite woman will bear children who blend white and Black traits(Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 9–10). Such inter-racial mixturesaccounted for the existence of liminal individuals, whose physicaltraits seem to lie between the discrete boundaries of one of the fourraces; peoples who do not fit neatly into one or another race areexplained away as groups whose seeds have not been fully triggered bythe appropriate environmental stimuli (Bernasconi and Lott 2000,11).

The “science” of race was furthered by the man sometimesconsidered to be the father of modern anthropology, Johann FriedrichBlumenbach (1752–1840). In his doctoral dissertation, “Onthe Natural Variety of Mankind,” first published in 1775,Blumenbach identified four “varieties” of mankind: thepeoples of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. His essay was revisedand republished both in 1781, wherein he introduced a fifth variety ofmankind, that inhabiting the South Pacific islands, and in 1795,wherein he first coined the term “Caucasian” to describethe variety of people inhabiting Europe, West Asia, and NorthernIndia. This term reflected his claim that this variety originated inthe Caucuses mountains, in Georgia, justifying this etiology throughreference to the superior beauty of the Georgians. The 1795 versionalso included the terms Mongolian to describe the non-Caucasianpeoples of Asia, Ethiopian to signify Black Africans, American todenote the indigenous peoples of the New World, and Malay to identifythe South Pacific Islanders (Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 27–33;Hannaford 1996, 207).

While noting differences in skin tone, he based his varieties upon thestructures of the cranium, which supposedly gave his distinctions astronger scientific foundation than the more superficialcharacteristic of color (Hannaford 1996, 206). In addition, hestrongly denied polygenetic accounts of racial difference, noting theability of members of different varieties to breed with each other,something that humans were incapable of doing with other species.Indeed, he took great pains to dismiss as spurious accounts ofAfricans mating with apes or of monstrous creatures formed through theunion of humans with other animals (Hannaford 1996, 208–209). Infinal support of his more scientific, monogenist approach, Blumenbachposited the internal, biological force which generated racialdifference, the “nisus formativus,” which when triggeredby specific environmental stimuli generated the variations foundwithin the varieties of humans (Hannaford 1996, 212).

Despite the strong monogenist arguments provided by Kant andBlumenbach, polygenesis remained a viable intellectual strain withinrace theory, particularly in the “American School ofAnthropology,” embodied by Louis Agassiz, Robins Gliddon, andJosiah Clark Nott. Agassiz was born in Switzerland, received an M.D.in Munich and later studied zoology, geology, and paleontology invarious German universities under the influence of Romantic scientifictheories. His orthodox Christian background initially imbued him witha strong monogenist commitment, but upon visiting America and seeingan African American for the first time, Agassiz experienced a type ofconversion experience, which led him to question whether theseremarkably different people could share the same blood as Europeans.Eventually staying on and making his career in America, andcontinually struck by the physical character of African Americans,Agassiz officially announced his turn to polygenesis at the 1850meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) in Charleston, South Carolina. Nott, a South Carolinaphysician, attended the same AAAS meeting and, along with Gliddon,joined Agassiz in the promulgation of the American School’sdefense of polygenesis (Brace 2005, 93–103).

Along with Agassiz, Nott was also influenced by the French romanticrace theorist Arthur de Gobineau (1816–1882), whose “Essayon the Inequality of the Human Races” (1853–1855) Nottpartially translated into English and published for the Americanaudience. Although the Catholic Gobineau initially espousedmonogenesis, he later leaned towards polygenesis and ended upambivalent on this issue (Hannaford 1996, 268–269).Nevertheless, Gobineau lent credence to the white racial supremacythat Nott supported (Brace 2005, 120–121). Gobineau posited twoimpulses among humans, that of attraction and repulsion. Civilizationemerges when humans obey the law of attraction and intermingle withpeoples of different racial stocks. According the Gobineau, the whiterace was created through such intermingling, which allowed it alone togenerate civilization, unlike the other races, which were governedonly by the law of repulsion. Once civilization is established,however, further race mixing leads to the degeneration of the racethrough a decline in the quality of its blood. Consequently, when thewhite race conquers other Black or yellow races, any furtherintermingling will lead it to decline. Thus, Gobineau claimed that thewhite race would never die so long as its blood remains composed ofits initial mixture of peoples. Notably, Nott strategically excisedthose sections discussing the law of attraction when translatingGobineau’s essay for an American audience (Bernasconi and Lott2000, 45–51).

Eventually, polygenesis declined through the intellectual success ofCharles Darwin’s theory of evolution (Brace 2005, 124). Darwinhimself weighed in on this debate in the chapter “On the Racesof Man” in his book The Descent of Man (1871),arguing that as the theory of evolution gains wider acceptance,“the dispute between the monogenists and the polygenists willdie a silent and unobserved death” (Bernasconi and Lott 2000,68), with the former winning out. The rest of the essay entertainedboth sides of the debate regarding whether or not different racesconstitute different species or sub-species of humans. Although Darwindid not explicitly take sides in this debate, the preponderance of hisargument gives little support to the idea of races being differentspecies. For instance, he noted that couples from different racesproduce fertile offspring, and that individuals from different racesseem to share many mental similarities. That said, while Darwinianevolution may have killed off polygenesis and the related idea thatthe races constituted distinct species, it hardly killed off raceitself. Darwin himself did not think natural selection would by itselfgenerate racial distinctions, since the physical traits associatedwith racial differences did not seem sufficiently beneficial to favortheir retention; he did, however, leave open a role for sexualselection in the creation of races, through repeated mating amongindividuals with similar traits (Bernasconi and Lott 2000,77–78). Consequently, later race thinkers would replacepolygenesis with natural selection and sexual selection as scientificmechanisms whereby racial differentiation could slowly,unintentionally, but nevertheless inevitably proceed (Hannaford 1996,273).

Sexual selection became a central focus for race-thinking with theintroduction of the term “eugenics” in 1883 by FrancisGalton (1822–1911) in his essay “Inquiries into HumanFaculty and Development” (Hannaford 1996, 290). Focusing onphysical as opposed to “moral” qualities, Galton advocatedselective breeding to improve the “health, energy, ability,manliness, and courteous disposition” of the human species inhis later essay “Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope, andAims” (Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 80). Following the samecurrents of “Social Darwinism” that advocated theevolutionary improvement of the human condition through active humanintervention, Galton proposed making eugenics not only an element inpopular culture or “a new religion” (Bernasconi and Lott2000, 82) but even a policy enforced by the American government. Whilepositive eugenics, or the enforced breeding of higher types, neverbecame law, negative eugenics, or the sterilization of thefeebleminded or infirm, did become public policy enforced by a numberof American states and upheld by the United States Supreme Court in aneight-to-one decision in Buck v. Bell (274 U.S. 200, 1927).The widespread acceptance of negative eugenics can be inferred by thefact that the Court Opinion justifying the decision was authored byJustice Oliver Wendell Holmes, a figure usually associated withprogressive and civil libertarian positions, and whose doctrine of“clear and present danger” sought to expand the protectionof free speech.

The apogee of post-Darwinian race-thinking was arguably reached in thebook The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century by HoustonStewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), the son-in-law of German operacomposer Richard Wagner. Chamberlain argued in the evolutionary termsof sexual selection that distinct races emerged through geographicaland historical conditions which create inbreeding among certainindividuals with similar traits (Hannaford 1996, 351). Moving fromthis initial specification, Chamberlain then argued that the keystrands of western civilization—Christianity and ancient Greekphilosophy and art—emerged from the Aryan race. Jesus, forinstance, was held to be of Aryan stock, despite his Jewish religion,since the territory of Galilee was populated by peoples descended fromAryan Phonecians as well as by Semitic Jews. Similarly,Aristotle’s distinction between Greeks and Barbarians wasreinterpreted as a racial distinction between Aryans and non-Aryans.These Greek and Christian strands became united in Europe,particularly during the Reformation, which allowed the highest,Teutonic strain of the Aryan race to be freed from constraining RomanCatholic cultural fetters. But while Roman institutions and practicesmay have constrained the Teutonic Germans, their diametric oppositewas the Jew, the highest manifestation of the Semitic Race. TheEuropean religious tensions between Christian and Jew were thustransformed into racial conflicts, for which conversion or ecumenicaltolerance would have no healing effect. Chamberlain’s writings,not surprisingly, have come to be seen as some of the key intellectualfoundations for twentieth century German anti-Semitism, of which AdolfHitler was simply its most extreme manifestation.

If Chamberlain’s writings served as intellectual fodder forGerman racial prejudice, Madison Grant (1865–1937) providedsimilar foundations for American race prejudice against Black people andNative Americans in his popular book The Passing of the GreatRace (1916). Rejecting political or educational means ofameliorating the destitution of the subordinate racial groups inAmerica, Grant instead advocated strict segregation and theprohibition of miscegenation, or the interbreeding of members ofdifferent races (Hannaford 1996, 358). Like Galton, Grant had similarsuccess in influencing American public policy, both through theimposition of racist restrictions on immigration at the federal leveland through the enforcement of anti-miscegenation laws in thirtystates, until such prohibitions were finally overturned by the UnitedStates Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1[1967]).

If the apogee of biological race was reached in the early twentiethcentury, its decline began at about the same time. While writers suchas Chamberlain and Grant popularized and politicized biologicalconceptions of race hierarchy, academic anthropologists sinceBlumenbach gave the concept of race its scientific validity. Butacademic anthropology also provided the first challenge to biologicalrace in the person of Columbia University professor Franz Boas(1858–1942), a German-born Jewish immigrant to the UnitedStates. Boas challenged the fixed character of racial groups by takingon one of the key fundaments to racial typology, cranium size. Boasshowed that this characteristic was profoundly affected byenvironmental factors, noting that American-born members of various“racial” types, such as Semitic Jews, tended to havelarger crania than their European-born parents, a result ofdifferences in nourishment. From this he concluded that claims aboutracially differential mental capacities could similarly be reduced tosuch environmental factors. In so doing, Boas undermined one measureof racial distinction, and although he did not go so far as to rejectentirely the concept of biological race itself, he strongly influencedanthropologists to shift their focus from putatively fixed biologicalcharacteristics to apparently mutable cultural factors in order tounderstand differences among human groups (Bernasconi and Lott 2000,84–88; Brace 2005, 167–169; Cornell and Hartmann 1998,42–43).

A stronger anthropological rejection of the biological conception ofrace was leveled by Ashley Montagu (1905–1999). Drawing oninsights from modern, experimental genetics, Montagu forcefully arguedthat the anthropological conception of race relied on groupingtogether various perceptible physical characteristics, whereas thereal building blocks of evolution were genes, which dictatedbiological changes among populations at a much finer level. Themorphological traits associated with race, thus, were gross aggregatesof a variety of genetic changes, some of which resulted in physicallyperceptible characteristics, many others of which resulted inimperceptible changes. Moreover, since genetic evolution can occurthrough both the mixture of different genes and the mutation of thesame gene over generations, the traits associated with races cannot beattributed to discrete lines of genetic descent, since the dark skinand curly hair of one individual may result from genetic mixture whilethe same traits in another individual may result from genetic mutation(Bernasconi and Lott 2000, 100–107). Montagu’s effortseventually resulted in the publication of an official statementdenying the biological foundations of race by the United NationsEducational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1950,although it would take until 1996 for the American Association ofPhysical Anthropologists (AAPA) to publish a similar document (Brace2005, 239).

2. Do Races Exist? Contemporary Philosophical Debates

Ron Mallon (2004, 2006, 2007) provides a nice sketch of thecontemporary philosophical terrain regarding the status of the conceptof race, dividing it into three valid competing schools of thoughtregarding the ontological status of race, along with the discardedbiological conception. Racial naturalism signifies the old,biological conception of race, which depicts races as bearing“biobehavioral essences: underlying natural (and perhapsgenetic) properties that (1) are heritable, biological features, (2)are shared by all and only the members of a race, and (3) explainbehavioral, characterological, and cultural predispositions ofindividual persons and racial groups” (2006, 528–529).While philosophers and scientists have reached the consensus againstracial naturalism, philosophers nevertheless disagree on the possibleontological status of a different conception of race. Mallon dividessuch disagreements into threemetaphysical camps (racialskepticism,racial constructivism, andracialpopulation naturalism) and twonormative camps(eliminativism andconservationism). We have used‘constructivism’ throughout for the sake of consistencybut it should be read as interchangeable with‘constructionism.’

Racial skepticism holds that because racial naturalism isfalse, races of any type do not exist. Racial skeptics, such asAnthony Appiah (1995, 1996) and Naomi Zack (1993, 2002) contend thatthe term race cannot refer to anything real in the world, since theone thing in the world to which the term could uniquelyrefer—discrete, essentialist, biological races—have beenproven not to exist. Zack (2002, 87–88) provides an accessiblesummary of the racial skeptic’s argument against the biologicalfoundations for race, sequentially summarizing the scientificrejection of essences, geography, phenotypes, post-Mendeliantransmission genetics, and genealogies as possible foundations forraces. Aristotelian essences, thought to ground the commoncharacteristics of distinct species, were correctly rejected by earlymodern philosophers. If essences cannot even ground differences amongspecies, then they clearly cannot ground the differences among races,which even nineteenth century racial science still understood asmembers of the same species. Whereas folk theories relyon geography to divide humanity into African, European,Asian, and Amerindian races, contemporary population genetics revealthe vacuity of this foundation for two reasons. First, geographicallybased environmental stimuli lead to continuous physical adaptations inskin, hair and bone rather than the discrete differences associatedwith race; and second, although mitochondrial DNA mutations provideevidence of the geographical origins of populations, these mutationsdo not correlate with the physical traits associated with racialgroups. Similarly, phenotypes cannot ground folk theoriesof race: for instance, differences in skin tone are gradual, notdiscrete; and blood-type variations occur independently of the morevisible phenotypes associated with race, such as skin color and hairtexture. Race cannot be founded upon transmission genetics,since the genes transmitted from one generation to the next lead tovery specific physical traits, not general racial characteristicsshared by all members of a putatively racial group. Andfinally, genealogy cannot ground race, since clades(populations descended from a common ancestor) may have common geneticcharacteristics, but these need not correlate with the visible traitsassociated with races. Zack concludes: “Essences, geography,phenotypes, genotypes, and genealogy are the only known candidates forphysical scientific bases of race. Each fails. Therefore, there is nophysical scientific basis for the social racial taxonomy” (Zack2002, 88).

Racial skeptics like Appiah and Zack adopt normativeracial eliminativism, which recommends discarding theconcept of race entirely, according to the following argument. Becauseof its historical genealogy, the term race can only refer to one ormore discrete groups of people who alone share biologicallysignificant genetic features. Such a monopoly on certain geneticfeatures could only emerge within a group that practices such a highlevel of inbreeding that it is effectively genetically isolated. Suchgenetic isolation might refer to the Amish in America (Appiah 1996,73) or to Irish Protestants (Zack 2002, 69), but they clearly cannotrefer to those groupings of people presently subsumed under Americanracial census categories. Because the concept “race” canonly apply to groups not typically deemed races (Amish, IrishProtestants), and because this concept cannot apply to groupstypically deemed races (African Americans, Whites, Asians, NativeAmericans), a mismatch occurs between the concept and its typicalreferent. Thus, the concept of race must be eliminated due to itslogical incoherence (Mallon 2006, 526, 533).

Appiah has since modified his skepticism in such a way that softensthe eliminitivist element of his position. Appiah has come to argueforracial nominalism by admitting the importance of“human folk races,” namely, that they are forms of socialidentity that do in fact exist (2006, 367). The way in which they aresocial identities, however, is a problem because we treat them as ifthere were some biological underpinning to them (2006, 367). The folktheory of race, then, is false because it is based on mistakenbeliefs, yet it is nonetheless true that we continue to categorizepeople along its lines. Appiah’s nominalist view of race aims toreveal how these social identities work by analyzing the labels we usefor them. According to Appiah there are three ways that we categorizeusing folk racial labels: ascription, identification, and treatment,and it takes all three for a given label to be a functioning socialidentity (2006, 368–370). As a result, we come to live as theseidentities and look to them as a central resource for constructing ourlives. Furthermore, norms of identification and authenticity arisearound them (2006, 372). Since there is no biological story that canbe told to ground these labels then race is not real (2006, 372). Fora critique of Appiah’s modified view that focuses on Appiah(1996) see Ronald R. Sundstrom (2002).

Racial constructivism refers to the argument that, even ifbiological race is false, races have come into existence and continueto exist through “human culture and human decisions”(Mallon 2007, 94). Race constructivists accept the skeptics’dismissal of biological race but argue that the term stillmeaningfully refers to the widespread grouping of individuals intocertain categories by society, indeed often by the very members ofsuch racial ascriptions. Normatively, race constructivists argue thatsince society labels people according to racial categories, and sincesuch labeling often leads to race-based differences in resources,opportunities, and well-being, the concept of race must be conserved,in order to facilitate race-based social movements or policies, suchas affirmative action, that compensate for socially constructed butsocially relevant racial differences. While sharing this normativecommitment to race conservationism, racial constructivistscan be subdivided into three groups with slightly different accountsof the ontology of race. As we will see below, however, SallyHaslanger’s eliminitivist constructivism illustrates how thesecommitments can come apart.

Thin constructivism depicts race as a grouping of humansaccording to ancestry and genetically insignificant,“superficial properties that are prototypically linked withrace,” such as skin tone, hair color and hair texture (Mallon2006, 534). In this way, thin constructivists such as RobertGooding-Williams (1998), Lucius Outlaw (1990, 1996) and Charles Mills(1998) rely on the widespread folk theory of race while rejecting itsscientific foundation upon racial naturalism. Interactive kindconstructivism goes further, in arguing that being ascribed to acertain racial category causes the individuals so labeled to havecertain common experiences (Mallon 2006, 535; Piper 1992). Forinstance, if society ascribes you as black, you are likely toexperience difficulty hailing cabs in New York or are more likely tobe apprehended without cause by the police (James 2004, 17).Finally, institutional constructivism emphasizes race as asocial institution, whose character is specific to the society inwhich it is embedded and thus cannot be applied across cultures orhistorical epochs (Mallon 2006, 536). Michael Root (2000, 632) notesthat a person ascribed as Black in the United States would likely notbe considered Black in Brazil, since each country has very differentsocial institutions regarding the division of humanity into distinctraces. Similarly, Paul Taylor (2000) responds to Appiah’s racialskepticism by holding that races, even if biologically unreal, remainreal social objects (Mallon 2006, 536–537). Indeed, in a laterwork Taylor (2004) argues that the term “race” has aperfectly clear referent, that being those people socially ascribed tocertain racial categories within the United States, regardless of thewidespread social rejection of biological racial naturalism.

Sally Haslanger’s constructivism (2000, 2010, 2019) is not,however, conservationist. She understands races as racialized groups,whose membership requires three criteria. One, members are those whoare “observed or imagined” to have certain bodily featuresthat are evidence of certain ancestry from certain geographicallocations; two, “having (or being imagined to have)” thosefeatures marks members as occupying either a subordinate or privilegedsocial position, thereby justifying that position; and three, thesatisfaction of the first two criteria plays a role in members’systemic subordination or privilege (2019, 25–26). Racialidentity in such contexts need not focus exclusively on subordinationor privilege, as “many forms of racial identity are important,valuable, and in some cases even inevitable responses to racialhierarchy” (2019, 29–30). She worries, however, that eventhough we should embrace “cultural groups marked by ancestry andappearance” in the short term to fight for justice, she worriesabout embracing them for the long term (2019, 30).

Constructivism also cleaves along political and cultural dimensions, adistinction owed to Chike Jeffers (Jeffers, 2013, 2019).Haslanger’s view is paradigmatic of political constructivism byunderstanding the meaning of race as determined by hierarchicalrelations of powerby definition: “race is made realwholly or most importantly by hierarchical relations of power”(Jeffers 2019, 48). Jeffers’ cultural constructivism corrects forpolitical constructivism’s inability to account for raceexisting after racism, including the idea of racial equality (2013,421; 2019, 71). Cultural constructivism rejects “the idea thatcultural difference is less important than differences in powerrelations for understanding racial phenomena in the present”(2019, 65). At the extreme, political constructivism argues for, one,differential power relations bring racial difference into existence;two, differential power relations are fundamental for understandingthe present reality of race; and three, differential power relationsare essential to race, so race will cease to exist in an egalitariansociety where appearance and ancestry do not correlate to certainhierarchical positions (2019, 56–57). Jeffers concedesrace’s political origin while rejecting the two other ways thatpower relations define race (2013, 419; 2019, 57–58). Thecultural significance of race can be seen in three ways. First, eventhe emergence of racial categories counts as a cultural shift, insofaras new social contexts are created in which those viewed as being ofdifferent races are also viewed as having different cultures. Second,there are “novel forms of cultural difference” that emergein the wake of racial difference. And third, racial groups are shapedculturally by happenings prior to racial formation (2019,62–63). Jeffers thus writes of Blackness, “What it meansto be a Black person, for many of us, including myself, can never beexhausted through reference to problems of stigmatization,discrimination, marginalization, and disadvantage, as real and aslarge-looming as these factors are in the racial landscape as we knowit. There is also joy in blackness, a joy shaped by culturallydistinctive situations” (2013, 422).

There are also views that challenge the broad strokes ofconstructivism while avoiding racial skepticism: Lionel K.McPherson’s deflationary pluralism (2015), JoshuaGlasgow’s basic racial realism (2015, with Jonathan M. Woodward,2019), and Michael O. Hardimon’s deflationary realism (2003,2014, 2017). McPherson argues that “race” should bereplaced with his concept of socioancestry, since“‘race’ talk overall is too ambiguous and contestedto be salvaged in the search for a dominant understanding”(2015, 676). He aims to sidestep Appiah’s eliminativism byclaiming that deflationary pluralism “does not maintain that‘race’ talk is necessarily an error and does not take ahard line about whether races exist” (2015, 675). Socioancestryretains the possibility of “color-conscious social identity”without the burdens of assumptions or confusions about race and racialnature (2015, 686). This is because it is “visible continentalancestry,” rather than race, which is the root ofcolor-consciousness (2015, 690). Socioancestry, then, focuses onvisible continental ancestry alone to explain social group formation.Accordingly, socioancestral identities develop “when personsaccept (or are ascribed) a social identity because they share acomponent of continental ancestry that distinctively shapescolor-conscious social reality” (2015, 690).

Glasgow’s basic racial realism aims to capture our operativemeaning of race: “the meaning that governs our use of the term,even when we are unaware of it” (2019, 115). Glasgow defines hisposition in the following way: “Races, by definition, arerelatively large groups of people who are distinguished from othergroups of people by having certain visible biological traits (such asskin color) to a disproportionate extent.” The position istherefore anti-realist, since it claims that races are neitherbiologically nor socially real (2019, 117). Glasgow’s positionis grounded in judgments about our commitments, believing that we aremore willing to give up on the biological basis for race than we areto give up on the idea that there are certain “core features andidentities” connected to the idea of race” (2019, 127). Inother words, disbelieving in the biological reality of race doesn’tlead to eliminativism. Glasgow holds, however, that it also doesn’tlead to social constructivism. Race is not socially made because,“no matter which social facts we attend to, we can alwaysimagine them disappearing while race stays. And if race isconceptually able to persist across all social practices, then bydefinition it is not a social phenomenon” (2019, 133). Thisintuition is based in his focus on our ordinary usage of the term“race,” which is fully captured by visible traits.

Hardimon’s deflationary realism argues that we need fourinterrelated race concepts to coherently answer the question of whatrace is to human beings: the racialist concept of race, the minimalistconcept of race, the populationist concept of race, and the concept ofsocialrace (2017, 2–3, 7). The racialist concept of race is theview that there are fixed patterns of race-based moral, intellectual,and cultural characteristics that are heritable, based in anunderlying biological essence, correlate to physical characteristics,and form a distinct racial hierarchy (2017, 15–16). Minimalistrace “says that people differ in shape and color in ways thatcorrespond to differences in their geographical ancestry. Essentiallythat is all it says” (2017, 6; see also 2003). It aims tocapture in “a nonmalefic way” what the racialist conceptof race says that it captures. In other words, it admits of thenonsocial and biological reality of race but in a value-neutral way(2017, 7). Populationist race aims to do the same thing in a morerobust and specific way by giving a genetic underpinning to theminimalist conception based on a “geographically separated andreproductively isolated founding population” (2017, 99). Thisconcept is distinguished from cladistic race because it does notrequire monophyly (2017, 110). Finally, socialrace captures race interms of its social relations and practices. It refers to “thesocial groups in racist societies that appear to be racialist races associal groups that falsely appear to be biological groups”(2017, 10; see also 2014). Hardimon argues that it is only throughusing all four concepts, with the rejection of the first being thebasis for the construction of the latter three, that we can actuallyunderstand our concept of race.

The third school of thought regarding the ontology of raceis racial population naturalism. This camp suggests that,although racial naturalism falsely attributed cultural, mental, andphysical characters to discrete racial groups, it is possible thatgenetically significant biological groupings could exist that wouldmerit the term races. Importantly, these biological racial groupingswould not be essentialist or discrete: there is no set of genetic orother biological traits that all and only all members of a racialgroup share that would then provide a natural biological boundarybetween racial groups. Thus, these thinkers confirm the strongscientific consensus that discrete, essentialist races do not exist.However, the criteria of discreteness and essentialism would alsoinvalidate distinctions between non-human species, such as lions andtigers. As Philip Kitcher puts it, “there is no…geneticfeature…that separates one species of mosquito or mushroom fromanother” (Kitcher 2007, 294–296; Cf. Mallon 2007,146–168). Rather, biological species are differentiated byreproductive isolation, which is relative, not absolute (since hybridssometimes appear in nature); which may have non-genetic causes (e.g.,geographic separation and incompatible reproduction periods orrituals); which may generate statistically significant if not uniformgenetic differences; and which may express distinct phenotypes. Ineffect, if the failure to satisfy the condition of discreteness andessentialism requires jettisoning the concept of race, then it alsorequires jettisoning the concept of biological species. But becausethe biological species concept remains epistemologically useful, somebiologists and philosophers use it to defend a racial ontology that is“biologically informed but non-essentialist,” one that isvague, non-discrete, and related to genetics, genealogy, geography,and phenotype (Sesardic 2010, 146).

There are three versions of racial population naturalism: cladisticrace; socially isolated race; and genetically clusteredrace. Cladistic races are “ancestor-descendantsequences of breeding populations that share a common origin”(Andreasen 2004, 425). They emerged during human evolution, asdifferent groups of humans became geographically isolated from eachother, and may be dying out, if they have not already, due to morerecent human reproductive intermingling (Andreasen 1998,214–216; Cf. Andreasen 2000, S653–S666). Sociallyisolated race refers to the fact that legal sanctions againstmiscegenation might have created a genetically isolated AfricanAmerican race in the USA (Kitcher 1999). Finally, defendersof genetically clustered race argue that although only 7%of the differences between any two individuals regarding any onespecific gene can be attributed to their membership in one of thecommonly recognized racial categories, the aggregation of severalgenes is statistically related to a small number of racial categoriesassociated with major geographic regions and phenotypes (Sesardic2010; Kitcher 2007, 304).

The question is whether these new biological ontologies of race avoidthe conceptual mismatches that ground eliminativism. The short answeris that they can, but only through human intervention. Sociallyisolated race faces no mismatch when applied to African Americans,defined as the descendants of African slaves brought to the UnitedStates. However, this racial category would not encompass BlackAfricans. Moreover, because African American race originated inlegally enforced sexual segregation, it is “both biologicallyreal and socially constructed” (Kitcher 2007, 298). Geneticclustering would seem to provide an objective, biological foundationfor a broader racial taxonomy, but differences in clustered genes arecontinuous, not discrete, and thus scientists must decide where todraw the line between one genetically clustered race and another. Ifthey program their computers to distinguish four genetic clusters,then European, Asian, Amerindian, and African groups will emerge; ifonly two clusters are sought, then only the African and Amerindian“races” remain (Kitcher 2007, 304). Thus, geneticclustering avoids racial mismatch only through the decisions of thescientist analyzing the data. The same problem also confrontscladistic race, since the number of races will vary from nine, at themost recent period of evolutionary reproductive isolation, to justone, if we go back to the very beginning, since all humans wereoriginally Africans. But in addition, cladistic race faces a strongermismatch by “cross-classifying” groups that we typicallythink of as part of the same race, for example by linking northeastAsians more closely with Europeans than with more phenotypicallysimilar southeast Asians. Robin Andreasen defends the cladistic raceconcept by correctly arguing that folk theories of race havethemselves generated counter-intuitive cross-classifications,particularly with respect to the Census’ Asian category, whichpreviously excluded Asian Indians and now excludes native Hawaiiansand Pacific Islanders. (Andreasen 2005, 100–101; Andreasen 2004,430–431; Cf. Glasgow 2003, 456–474; Glasgow 2009,91–108). But this hardly saves her argument, since the USCensus’s history of shifting racial categories and past use ofethnic and religious terms (e.g., Filipino, Hindu, and Korean) tosignify races is typically taken as evidence of the social,rather than biological, foundations of race (Espiritu 1992, Chapter5).

Quayshawn Spencer (2012, 2014, 2019) is resistant to arguments thatcladistic subspecies are a viable biological candidate for race (2012,203). Instead, he defends a version of biological racial realism thatunderstands “biologically real” as capturing “all ofthe entities that are used in empirically successfulbiology…and that adequately rules out all of the entities thatare not” (2019, 77; see also 95). Spencer argues that such anentity exists and can be found in the US government’s Office ofManagement and Budget (OMB) and its racial classifications. The basisfor this claim is that population genetics has identified fivedistinctive “human continental populations” that satisfythe criteria for biological reality (2019, 98; 95). The OMBclassifications map onto these continental populations. The importanceof the OMB is that its ubiquity in our lives means that one of theprimary ways that we talk about race is through its categories.Spencer highlights this centrality when he points out the ways thatAmericans self-report their races correspond to the parameters of theOMB classifications (2019, 83–85). Spencer is pluralist aboutrace talk, however, meaning that OMB race is just one dominant meaningof race, while there is no single dominant meaning among users of theterm (2019, 213).

In each case, racial population naturalism encounters problems intrying to demarcate discrete boundaries between different biologicalpopulations. If discreteness is indispensable to a human racialtaxonomy, then mismatches can only be avoided, if at all, throughhuman intervention. But as noted above, biological species are alsonot genetically discrete, and thus boundaries between non-humanspecies must also be imposed through human intervention. And just asthe demarcation of non-human species is justified through itsscientific usefulness, so too are human racial categories justified.For instance, Andreason contends that a cladistic race concept thatdivides northeastern from southeastern Asians is scientifically usefulfor evolutionary research, even if it conflicts with the folk conceptof a unified Asian race. In turn, the concepts of geneticallyclustered and socially isolated race may remain useful for detectingand treating some health problems. Ian Hacking provides a carefulargument in favor of the provisional use of American racial categoriesin medicine. Noting that racial categories do not reflectessentialist, uniform differences, he reiterates the finding thatthere are statistically significant genetic differences amongdifferent racial groups. As a result, an African American is morelikely to find a bone marrow match from a pool of African Americandonors than from a pool of white donors. Thus, he defends the practiceof soliciting African American bone marrow donors, even though thismay provide fodder to racist groups who defend an essentialist andhierarchical conception of biological race (Hacking 2005,102–116; Cf. Kitcher 2007, 312–316). Conversely, DorothyRoberts emphasizes the dangers of using racial categories withinmedicine, suggesting that it not only validates egregious ideas ofbiological racial hierarchy but also contributes to conservativejustifications for limiting race-based affirmative action and evensocial welfare funding, which supposedly would be wasted ongenetically inferior minority populations. In effect, race-basedmedicine raises the specter of a new political synthesis of colorblindconservatism with biological racialism (Roberts 2008, 537–545).However, Roberts’ critique fails to engage the literature on thestatistical significance of racial categories for genetic differences.Moreover, she herself acknowledges that many versions of colorblindconservatism do not rely at all on biological justifications.

3. Race versus Ethnicity

Stephen Cornell and Douglas Hartmann (1998) provide a helpfuldiscussion of the differences between the concepts of race andethnicity. Relying on social constructivism, they define race as“a human group defined by itself or others as distinct by virtueof perceived common physical characteristics that are held to beinherent…Determining which characteristics constitute therace…is a choice human beings make. Neither markers norcategories are predetermined by any biological factors” (Cornelland Hartmann 1998, 24). Ethnicity, conversely, is defined as a senseof common ancestry based on cultural attachments, past linguisticheritage, religious affiliations, claimed kinship, or some physicaltraits (1998, 19). Racial identities are typically thought of asencompassing multiple ethnic identities (Cornell and Hartmann 1998,26). Thus, people who are racially categorized as black may possess avariety of ethnic identities based either on African national orcultural markers (e.g., Kenyan, Igbo, Zulu) or the newer national,sub-national, or trans-national identities created through the mixingof enslaved populations in the Americas (e.g., African American,Haitian, West Indian).

Cornell and Hartmann outline five additional characteristics thatdistinguish race from ethnicity: racial identity is typicallyexternally imposed by outsiders, as when whites created the Negro raceto homogenize the multiple ethnic groups they conquered in Africa orbrought as slaves to America; race is a result of early globalization,when European explorers “discovered” and then conqueredpeoples with radically different phenotypical traits; race typicallyinvolves power relations, from the basic power to define the race ofothers to the more expansive power to deprive certain racial groups ofsocial, economic, or political benefits; racial identities aretypically hierarchical, with certain races being perceived as superiorto others; and racial identity is perceived as inherent, somethingindividuals are born with (1998, 27–29).

Race and ethnicity differ strongly in the level of agency thatindividuals exercise in choosing their identity. Individuals rarelyhave any choice over their racial identity, due to the immediatevisual impact of the physical traits associated with race. Individualsare thought to exercise more choice over ethnic identification, sincethe physical differences between ethnic groups are typically lessstriking, and since individuals can choose whether or not to expressthe cultural practices associated with ethnicity. So an individual whophenotypically appears white with ancestors from Ireland can morereadily choose whether to assert their Irish identity (by celebratingSt. Patrick’s Day) than whether to choose their white identity(Cornell and Hartmann 1998, 29–30). Moreover, Mary Waters (1990)argues that the high level of intermarriage among white Americans fromvarious national ancestries grants their children significant“ethnic options” in choosing with which of their multipleheritages to identify. Waters (1999) and Philip Kasinitz (1992)document how phenotypically black West Indian immigrants exerciseagency in asserting their ethnic identity in order to differentiatethemselves from native-born African Americans, but discrimination andviolence aimed at all Black people, regardless of ethnicity, stronglyconstrains such agency.The greater constraints on racial identity stemfrom the role of informal perceptions, discriminatory social action,and formal laws imposing racial identity, such as Censuscategorization (Nobles 2000), the infamous “hypodescent”laws, which defined people as black if they had one drop of Africanblood (Davis 1991), and judicial decisions such as the“prerequisite cases,” which determined whether specificimmigrants could be classified as white and thus eligible fornaturalized citizenship (Lopez 1996).

The line between race and ethnicity gets blurred in the case of Asiansand Latinos in the United States. Yen Le Espiritu (1992) notes thatAsian American racial identity, which of course encompasses aremarkable level of ethnic diversity, results from a combination ofexternal assignment and agency, as when Asians actively respond toanti-Asian discrimination or violence through political action and asense of shared fate. Consequently, Espiritu uses the term“panethnicity” to describe Asian American identity, aconcept which has racial connotations, given the role of “raciallumping” together of members of diverse Asian ethnicities into asingle racial group defined by phenotypical traits. Thus, she declaresthat “African Americans [are] the earliest and most developedpan-ethnic group in the United States” (1992, 174). Hispanic orLatino identity exhibits traits similar to pan-ethnicity. Indeed,unlike Asian identity, Hispanic identity is not even a formal racialidentity under the Census. However, informal perceptions, formal laws,and discrimination based on physical appearance nevertheless tend tolump together various nationalities and ethnicities that share someconnection to Latin America (Rodriquez 2000). Moreover, scholars havenoted that Jews (Brodkin 1998) and the Irish (Ignatiev 1995) were oncewere considered distinct, non-white races but are now considered to beracially white ethnic groups, partly by exercising agency indistancing themselves from African Americans exercising politicalpower. Thus, it is conceivable that groups today considered to besociological racial groups could transform into something more like anethnic group. For this reason, Blum describes Hispanics and Asians asincompletely racialized groups (Blum 2002, 149–155).

A robust philosophical debate has emerged regarding the status ofHispanic or Latino identity. Jorge Gracia (2000) defends the utilityof Hispanic ethnic identity as grounded primarily in the shared,linguistic culture that can be traced to the Iberian Peninsula. JorgeGarcia (2001, 2006) challenges this approach, arguing that thediversity of individual experiences undermines the use of Hispanicethnicity as a meaningful form of collective identity. Linda MartinAlcoff (2006) develops a “realist” defense of Latinoidentity against charges of essentialism and views it as a category ofsolidarity that develops in reaction to white privilege. ChristinaBeltran (2010), on the other hand, does not try to paper over thediversity withinLatinidad, which she instead portrays as apluralistic, fragmented, and agonistic form of political action.

4. Race in Moral, Political and Legal Philosophy

Two strands in moral, political, and legal philosophy are pertinent tothe concept of race. One strand examines the broader conceptual andmethodological questions regarding the moral status of race and how totheorize racial justice; the other strand normatively assessesspecific policies or institutional forms that seek to redress racialinequality, such as affirmative action, racially descriptiverepresentation, the general question of colorblindness in law andpolicy, residential racial segregation, and racism in the criminaljustice system and policing.

Lawrence Blum, Anthony Appiah, and Tommie Shelby articulateindispensable positions in addressing the moral status of the conceptof race. Blum (2002) examines both the concept of race and the problemof racism. He argues that “racism” be restricted to tworeferents:inferiorization, or the denigration of a group dueto its putative biological inferiority; andantipathy, or the“bigotry, hostility, and hatred” towards another groupdefined by its putatively inherited physical traits (2002, 8). Thesetwo moral sins deserve this heightened level of condemnationassociated with the term racism, because they violate moral norms of“respect, equality, and dignity” and because they arehistorically connected to extreme and overt forms of racial oppression(2002, 27). But because these connections make “racism” somorally loaded a term, it should not be applied to “lesserracial ills and infractions” that suggest mere ignorance,insensitivity or discomfort regarding members of different groups(28), since doing so will apply a disproportionate judgment againstthe person so named, closing off possible avenues for fruitful moraldialogue.

Due to the historical connection between racism and extremeoppression, Blum argues against using the term race, since he rejectsits biological foundation. Instead, he advocates using the term“racialized group” to denote those socially constructedidentities whose supposedly inherited common physical traits are usedto impose social, political, and economic costs. To Blum,“racialized group” creates distance from the biologicalconception of race and it admits of degrees, as in the case ofLatinos, whom Blum describes as an “incompletely racializedgroup” (2002, 151). This terminological shift, and its supposedrevelation of the socially constructed character of physiognomicallydefined identities, need not require the rejection of group-specificpolicies such as affirmative action. Members of sociologicallyconstructed racialized identities suffer real harms, and laws mighthave to distinguish individuals according to their racializedidentities in order to compensate for such harms. Nevertheless, Blumremains ambivalent about such measures, arguing that even whennecessary they remain morally suspect (2002, 97).

Similar ambivalence is also expressed by Anthony Appiah, earlierdiscussed regarding the metaphysics of race. While his metaphysicalracial skepticism was cited as grounding his normativeposition ofeliminativism, Appiah is “againstraces” but “for racial identities” (1996). Becauseof a wide social consensus that races exist, individuals are ascribedto races regardless of their individual choices or desires. Moreover,racial identity remains far more salient and costly than ethnicidentity (1996, 80–81). As a result, mobilization along raciallines is justifiable, in order to combat racism. But even at thispoint, Appiah still fears that racial identification may constrainindividual autonomy by requiring members of racial groups to behaveaccording to certain cultural norms or “scripts” that havebecome dominant within a specific racial group. Appiah thus concludes,“Racial identity can be the basis of resistance to racism; buteven as we struggle against racism…let us not let our racialidentities subject us to new tyrannies” (1996, 104). Thisresidual ambivalence, to recall the metaphysical discussions of thelast section, perhaps ground Mallon’s contention that Appiahremains aneliminativist rather than aracialconstructivist, since ideally Appiah would prefer to be free ofall residual constraints entailed by even socially constructedraces.

Tommie Shelby responds to the ambivalence of Appiah and Blum bydistinguishingclassical black nationalism, which rested uponan organic black identity, withpragmatic black nationalism,based on an instrumental concern with combating antiblack racism(2005, 38–52; 2003, 666–668). Pragmatic nationalism allowsBlack people to generate solidarity across class or cultural lines, not justthrough themodus vivendi of shared interests but upon aprincipled commitment to racial equality and justice (2005,150–154). As a result, black solidarity is grounded upon aprincipled response to common oppression, rather than some putativeshared identity (2002), thus mitigating the dangers of biologicalessentialism and tyrannical cultural conformity that Appiah associateswith race and racial identities. Anna Stubblefield (2005) provides analternative defense of Black solidarity by comparing it to familialcommitments.

Shelby (2005, 7) briefly mentions that his pragmatic, politicalversion of black solidarity is compatible with John Rawls’sPolitical Liberalism, but his more detailed defense of theideal social contract method of Rawls’sA Theory of Justicefor theorizing racial justice has drawn substantial controversy(Shelby 2004). Elizabeth Anderson eschews ideal theory for analyzingracial justice because it assumes motivational and cognitivecapacities beyond those of ordinary humans; it risks promoting idealnorms (like colorblindness) under unjust conditions that requirerace-specific policies; and its idealizing assumptions, like anoriginal position in which parties do not know relevant personal andsocial racial facts, precludes recognition of historical and presentracial injustice. She instead uses a normative framework of democraticequality to ground her moral imperative of integration.

Charles Mills, extending his critique of how early modern socialcontract thinking obfuscates racial injustice (1997), fears thatRawls’s ideal theory can similarly serve as an ideology thatwhitewashes non-white oppression (Mills 2013). But rather thanjettisoning a contractarian approach entirely, Mills instead developsa model of a non-ideal contract, in which the parties do not knowtheir own racial identities but are aware of their society’s historyof racial exploitation and its effects. Because the parties know ofracial hierarchy but do not know if they will be its beneficiaries orvictims, Mills hypothesizes that they will rationally agree to racialreparations as a form of corrective or rectificatory justice (Patemanand Mills 2007, Chapters 3, 4, 8).

Shelby responds that, while Rawls’s ideal theory of justice excludes atheory of rectification because it is not comprehensive, rectificatoryjustice is not only complementary but in fact presupposes an idealtheory that can clarify when injustices have occurred and need to berectified. More importantly, Shelby suggests that complying withrectificatory justice through racial reparations could well leaveBlack people living in a society that nevertheless remains racially unjustin other ways. For this reason, Shelby concludes that ideal theoryremains indispensable (2013).

Christopher Lebron (2013, 28–42) also suggests that theapproaches of Rawls and Mills are complementary, but in a verydifferent way. He argues that Rawls’s focus on the basic structure ofsociety provides explanatory mechanisms through which white supremacypersists, something unspecified in earlier work by Mills (2003). Andin sharp contrast to Shelby (2013), Lebron criticizes Mills forrehabilitating Rawlsian contract thinking, since even a non-ideal formeliminates the epistemological advantage of a non-white perspective onwhite supremacy. Instead of reformulating contractarian thinking tofit the needs of racial justice, Lebron instead focuses on analyzinghow “historically evolved power” and “sociallyembedded power” perpetuate racial injustice.

Turning to the second strand of practical philosophy devoted to race,various scholars have addressed policies such as affirmative action,race-conscious electoral districting, and colorblindness in policy andlaw. The literature on affirmative action is immense, and may bedivided into approaches that focus on compensatory justice,distributive justice, critiques of the concept of merit, and diversityof perspective. Alan Goldman (1979) generally argues againstaffirmative action, since jobs or educational opportunities as a ruleshould go to those most qualified. Only when a specific individual hasbeen victimized by racial or other discrimination can the otherwiseirrelevant factor of race be used as a compensatory measure to award aposition or a seat at a university. Ronald Fiscus (1992) rejects thecompensatory scheme in favor of a distributive justice argument. Heclaims that absent the insidious and invidious effects of a racistsociety, success in achieving admissions to selective universities orattractive jobs would be randomly distributed across racial lines.Thus, he concludes that distributive justice requires the raciallyproportional distribution of jobs and university seats. Of course,Fiscus’s argument displaces the role of merit in the awarding ofjobs or university admissions, but this point is addressed by IrisYoung (1990, Chapter 7), who argues that contemporary criteria ofmerit, such as standardized testing and educational achievement, arebiased against disadvantaged racial and other groups, and rarely arefunctionally related to job performance or academic potential.Finally, Michel Rosenfeld (1991) turns away from substantive theoriesof justice in favor of a conception of justice as reversibility, aposition influenced by the “Discourse Ethics” ofJürgen Habermas (1990), which defines justice not by the propersubstantive awarding of goods but as the result of a fair discursiveprocedure that includes all relevant viewpoints and is free ofcoercive power relations. Thus, affirmative action is justified as anattempt to include racially diverse viewpoints. All of these positionsare summarily discussed in a useful debate format in Cohen and Sterba(2003).

The issues of race-conscious electoral districting and descriptiveracial representation have also garnered substantial attention.Race-conscious districting is the practice of drawing geographicallybased electoral districts in which the majority of voters are Black.Descriptive racial representation holds that Black populations are bestrepresented by Black politicians. Iris Marion Young (1990,183–191) provides a spirited defense of descriptiverepresentation for racial minorities, grounded in their experiences of“oppression, the institutional constraint onself-determination”, and domination “the institutionalconstraint on self-determination” (1990, 37). Anne Phillips(1995) furthers this position, arguing that representatives who aremembers of minority racial groups can enhance legislativedeliberation. Melissa Williams (1998) also defends the deliberativecontribution of descriptive racial representation, but adds thatminority constituents are more likely to trust minorityrepresentatives, since both will be affected by laws that overtly orcovertly discriminate against minority racial groups. Finally, JaneMansbridge (1999) carefully demonstrates why a critical mass ofminority representatives is needed, in order to adequately advocatefor common minority interests as well as to convey the internaldiversity within the group. In a later work, Young (2000) addressescritics who argue that descriptive representation relies upon groupessentialism, since members of a racial group need not all share thesame interests or opinions. In response, Young suggests that membersof the same racial group do share the same “socialperspective” grounded in common experiences, similar to theinteractive kind variant ofracial constructivismdiscussed earlier. But because it is unclear that Black individualsare more likely to share common experiences than common interests oropinions, Michael James prioritizes using race-conscious districtingto create Black racial constituencies which can hold Black ornon-Black representatives accountable to Black interests (James 2011).Abigail Thernstrom (1987) condemns race-conscious districting forviolating the original principles behind the 1965 Voting Rights Actand the 15^th Amendment, by promoting the election of blackrepresentatives rather than simply guaranteeing black voters the rightto cast ballots. J. Morgan Kousser (1999) responds that race-consciousdistricting simply reflects the right to cast a“meaningful” vote, as implied by the 15^thAmendment protection against not only the denial but also the“abridgment” of the right to vote. Lani Guinier (1994)compellingly suggests that instead of drawing majority blackdistricts, we should adopt more proportional electoral system thatfacilitate the electoral strength of racial and other minorities.Michael James (2004) suggests that alternative electoral systemsfacilitate not only descriptive racial representation but alsodemocratic deliberation across racial lines.

A general advantage of using alternative electoral systems to enhanceminority racial representation is that they are technicallycolorblind, not requiring lawmakers or judges to group citizensaccording to their racial identities. The general value ofcolorblindness is an ongoing topic of debate within legal philosophy.Drawing on Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous dissent inPlessyv. Ferguson, and a not-uncontroversial interpretation of theorigins of the equal protection clause, Andrew Kull (1992) argues thatcontemporary American statutory and constitutional law should striveto be colorblind and combat racial inequality without dividingcitizens into different racial groups. Ian Haney Lopez (2006,143–162), on the other hand, fears “colorblind whitedominance,” whereby facially race-neutral laws leave untouchedthe race-based inequality that operates within American political,legal, and economic structures. Elizabeth Anderson (2010) provides atrenchant critique of colorblindness as a normative standard for law,policy, or ethics. Racial segregation and the potential forintegration have garnered much less philosophical attention thanaffirmative action and racially descriptive representation. BernardBoxill (1992) offers a treatment of busing and self-segregation, whileHoward McGary (1999) offers a clarification of integration andseparation. Iris Young (2002, chapter 6) treats residentialsegregation in the context of regional democracy, while Owen Fiss(2003) analyzes it in the context of the legacy of racism. Andersonherself (2010) argues for the moral imperative of integration, withTommie Shelby (2014) and Ronald Sundstrom (2013) offering criticalresponses to Anderson’s argument. More recently, Andrew Valls (2018,chapter 6) has written on the subject.

In recent years, the problem of racism within policing and criminaljustice in the United States has attracted intense popular andscholarly attention. Mathias Risse and Richard Zeckhauser (2004) offera qualified defense of racial profiling that engages both utilitarianand non-consequentialist reasoning. Annabelle Lever’s (2005)objection and response prompted a subsequent round of debate (Risse2007, Lever 2007). Michelle Alexander (2010) famously depicted thecontemporary American criminal justice system as the “New JimCrow,” for its intense racial disparities. Naomi Zack (2015)provides a trenchant critique of racial profiling and police homicide.David Boonin (2011), on the other hand, reluctantly defends racialprofiling on pragmatic grounds. Finally, Adam Hosein (2018) arguesagainst it for reasons of political equality. Shelby (2016) offers ajustification of Black resistance based in the unjust legacy of racialsegregation while deepening his earlier critique of Anderson’sview.

5. Race in Continental Philosophy

While the debates in contemporary philosophy of race within theanalytic tradition have largely revolved around whether or not racesexist along with criteria for determining realness or existence,philosophers working in the Continental traditions have taken up theconcept of race along other dimensions (see Bernasconi and Cook 2003for an overview). First, those working within the traditions ofExistentialism and Phenomenology have called on Fanon, Merleau-Ponty,and Sartre, among others, to understand how race and functions withinour lived, bodily experiences of everyday life. This strand ofscholarship focuses on the materiality of race. As Emily S. Lee putsit, “both the social structural and the individual subconsciouslevels of analysis rely on perceiving the embodiment of race”(2014, 1). Second, philosophers building on the work of MichelFoucault have articulated genealogical understandings of race thatfocus on its historical emergence as a concept and the ways that ithas functioned within discourses of knowledge and power.

Frantz Fanon has been the primary influence for those understandingrace and racism within Existentialism and Phenomenology. InBlackSkin, White Masks Fanon writes, “I came into this worldanxious to uncover the meaning of things, my soul desirous to be atthe origin of the world, and here I am an object among otherobjects” (2008/1952, 89). Furthermore, this “inferiorityis determined by the Other,” by the “white gaze”(2008/1952, 90). Such a position is understood through the schema ofthe body: “In a white world, the man of color encountersdifficulties in elaborating his body schema. The image of one’s bodyis solely negating. It’s an image in the third person”(2008/1952, 90). Rather than being at home in his own body, and moving“out of habit,” Fanon understands his body as existingprimarily as an object for others, requiring him to move “byimplicit knowledge” of the rules and norms of that white world(2008/1952, 91).

Fanon critiques Sartre’s understanding of race and racism bypointing out that Sartre understands antiracism as a negative movementthat will be overcome (2008/1952, 111–112). Sartre treatsantiracism as the transition toward something else and not as an endin itself. Against this view Fanon writes, “ Sartre forgets thatthe Black man suffers in his body quite differently from the whiteman” (2008/1952, 117). He is trapped by his body schema,“a toy in the hands of the white man” (2008/1952,119).

Lewis Gordon draws on both Fanon and Sartre in articulating hisAfricana existentialism. He distinguishes between Existentialism as aspecific historical European movement and philosophies of existence,or existential philosophies, which are preoccupied with“freedom, anguish, responsibility, embodied agency, sociality,and liberation.” These concerns yield a focus on the“lived context of concern” (2000, 10). For Gordon, due tothe history of racial oppression of Black peoples, an Africanaexistential philosophy revolves around the questions, “what doesit mean to be a problem, and what is to be understood by Blacksuffering?” (2000, 8).

According to Gordon, what is sometimes referred to as the “racequestion” is really a question about the status of Blackness,for “race has emerged, throughout its history, as the questionfundamentally of ‘the blacks’ as it has for no othergroup” (2000, 12). Rather than a denial that other groups havebeen racialized, the claim instead is that such other racializationshave been conditioned on a scale of European personhood to Blacksubpersonhood (see also Mills 1998, 6–10). Blackness itself has beencharacterized as “the breakdown of reason” and “anexistential enigma” in such a way that to ask after race andracialization is to ask after Blackness in the first instance.

Both Gordon and Zack use Sartre’s notion of bad faith tounderstand race. We can understand bad faith as the evasion ofresponsibility and fidelity to human freedom, and an understanding ofthe human being as a for-itself. Bad faith falsely turns the humanbeing into an object without agency, into an in-itself. For Gordon,antiblack racism conceives of Blackness itself as a problem so as toavoid having to understand Black problems. As a result, actual Blackpeople disappear along with any responsibility to them (1997, 74).Gordon gives the example ofThe Philadelphia Negro, DuBois’ sociological study of the residents of Philadelphia’sSeventh Ward. Gordon recounts how those commissioning the study set DuBois up to fail so that he would only perpetuate the pathologizing ofthe Black population, presenting Blackness itself as a problem ratherthan attempt to understand the problems of Black people andcommunities (2000, 69).

Whereas Gordon uses bad faith to understand antiblack racism, Zackdoes so to deepen her eliminativism. For Sartre, authenticity is theantidote to bad faith – to live authentically is to understandand embrace human freedom rather than evade it. Zack’seliminativism attributes bad faith to those who affirm that racialdesignations describe human beings when in fact they do not (1993,3–4). If racial identifications lack adequate support becauseraces do not exist, then identification as mixed race is also done inbad faith. Instead, Zack understands her position of“anti-race” as true authenticity that looks to the futurein the name of freedom and resistance to oppression in the name ofracelessness (1993, 164).

Embodiment and visibility are central to these views. Gordonunderstands the body as “our perspective in the world,”which occurs along (at least) three matrices: seeing, being seen, andbeing conscious of being seen (1997, 71). In an antiblack world thismeans that the Black body is a form of absence, going unseen in thesame manner as Ralph Ellison’s protagonist inInvisible Man(1997, 72–3). George Yancy tells us that he writes from his“lived embodied experience,” which is a “site ofexposure” (2008, 65). Black embodiment here is the lens used tocritique whiteness and its normative gaze. For Yancy, Black resistanceitself decodes and recodes Black embodied existence, affirming thevalue of the Black body in the face of centuries of white denial(2008, 112–3).

Linda Martín Alcoff offers a phenomenological account of race thathighlights a “visual registry,” which is socially andhistorically constructed and that is “determinant overindividual experience” (2006, 194). Like Yancy, Alcoff locatesrace in embodied lived experience. Drawing on MauriceMerleau-Ponty’s work, Alcoff notes how the way that our perceptualpractices are organized affects the way we come to know the world(2006, 188). When race operates through visibility, these ways ofnormalized perceptual knowing become racialized. As she notes,“racial consciousness works through learned practices and habitsof visual discrimination and visual marks on the body…raceexists there on the body itself” (2006, 196).

Lee argues that racial meaning fits squarely within the space that aphenomenological framework seeks to explore, namely, the space betweenthe natural and the cultural, the objective and the subjective, andthinking and nonthinking (Lee 2014, 8). Furthermore, aphenomenological approach can illuminate how, even when race isunderstood as a social construction, it can nonetheless becomenaturalized through “the sedimentation of racial meaning intothe very structures and practices of society” (Lee 2019,xi).

A second line of thought runs through the work of Michel Foucault. Inhis 1975–1976 lectures at theCollège de France, publishedasSociety Must Be Defended, Foucault details the emergenceof a discourse on race beginning in early 17th Century England.According to Foucault, race war discourse emerges through claims ofillegitimacy against the Stuart monarchy. These claims were couched inthe language of injustice as well as foreign invasion, in which anindigenous race is pitted against in invading outsider (2003, 60).Race, at this point, is not a biological concept, instead referring tolineage, custom, and tradition (2003, 77). Only later does thiscultural notion of race transform into the scientific notion ofrace.

Cornel West employs a Foucaultian methodology to produce a genealogyof modern racism (1982). West analyzes how the discourse of modernitycame into being to show how central white supremacy is to itspractices of knowledge and meaning making (47). By modern discourse hemeans, “The controlling metaphors, notions, categories, andnorms that shape the predominant conception of truth and knowledge inthe modern West,” which are driven by the scientific revolution,the Cartesian transformation of philosophy, and the classical revival(50). It is a discourse comprising certain forms of rationality,scientificity, objectivity, and aesthetic and cultural ideals, theparameters of which exclude Black equality from the outset, marking itas unintelligible and illegitimate within the prevailing norms ofdiscourse and knowledge (47–48). Notions of truth and knowledgeproduced by these three forces are governed by a value-free subjectthat observes, compares, orders, and measures in order to obtainevidence and make inferences that verify the true representations ofreality.

Ladelle McWhorter uses Foucault’s lectures to conduct agenealogy of racism and sexual oppression of a more proximate time andplace. According to McWhorter, “racism in twentieth-centuryAnglo-America [has] to be understood in light of Foucault’s work onnormalization,” where racism exists as a crusade againstdeviance, abnormality, and pathology (2009, 12). Building onFoucault’s analysis of race war discourse McWhorter carries out agenealogy of race, ultimately arguing that race and sexuality“are historically codependent and mutually determinative”(2009, 14). Anglo-American discourse on race is therefore linked todiscourses on eugenics, the family, sexual predation, normality, andpopulation management, all of which function within the networks ofpower that Foucault referred to biopower (2009, 15). Ann Laura Stoler(1995) offers an extended reconstruction and critique ofFoucault’s treatment of race in light of colonialism andempire. Joy James goes even further, arguing that Foucault is not useful for thinking about race at all (1996, chapter 1).

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• Race: Are we so different?, educational website project of the American AnthropologicalAssociation
• Race: The Power of an Illusion, PBS website associated with the California Newsreel documentary
• Facts about Race/Color Discrimination, from the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
• Race, Racism, and the Law, edited by Vernellia Randall at the University of Dayton LawSchool

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