Rethinking Race

The Case for Deflationary Realism

Michael O. Hardimon

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780674975668
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674978386
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory
• Index: Social Sciences

Many scholars and activists seek to eliminate "race"—the word and the concept—from our vocabulary. Their claim is clear: because science has shown that racial essentialism is false and because the idea of race has proved virulent, we should do away with the concept entirely. Michael O. Hardimon criticizes this line of thinking, arguing that we must recognize the real ways in which race exists in order to revise our understanding of its significance.

Rethinking Race provides a novel answer to the question "What is race?" Pernicious, traditional racialism maintains that people can be judged and ranked according to innate racial features. Hardimon points out that those who would eliminate race make the mistake of associating the word only with this view. He agrees that this concept should be jettisoned, but draws a distinction with three alternative ideas: first, a stripped-down version of the ordinary concept of race that recognizes minimal physical differences between races but does not consider them significant; second, a scientific understanding of populations with shared lines of descent; and third, an acknowledgment of "socialrace" as a separate construction.

Hardimon provides a language for understanding the ways in which races do and do not exist. His account is realistic in recognizing the physical features of races, as well as the existence of races in our social world. But it is deflationary in rejecting the concept of hierarchical or defining racial characteristics. Ultimately, Rethinking Race offers a philosophical basis for repudiating racism without blinding ourselves to reality.

CHAPTER 1

The Racialist Concept of Race

The topic of this first chapter is the racialist concept of race. Section 1.1 asks why we should start with this concept. Section 1.2 explains what the concept is. Section 1.3 considers how the concept could have seemed plausible. Section 1.4 explains why the concept is false. The chapter concludes with Section 1.5.

1.1 Why Should We Start with the Racialist Concept of Race?

The racialist concept of race (racialist race concept) is the pernicious traditional, essentialist, hierarchical race concept sometimes mistaken for the concept of race.¹ The question why we should start with it arises because it is known to be false.² It is essential that we be absolutely clear about the concept’s falsity. There are no racialist races. No human group is a racialist race. No human being is a member of a racialist race. No human being “has” a racialist race. These points, on which informed thinkers in philosophy, social science, biology, and medicine agree, must be understood from the outset. Nor is the falsity of the racialist concept of race a new discovery. The racialist concept of race has been known to be false for more than forty years. Criticisms of the concept antedate World War II and indeed the twentieth century.³ Discussions of oxygen are not normally preceded by discussions of phlogiston. Why start with the false?

This question becomes all the more pressing when one recognizes that, as Lawrence Blum observes, “in marked contrast to the classic nineteenth-century period of racial thought, it is characteristic of contemporary racial thinking that many, perhaps most people who engage in it would not reflectively endorse the [racialist] elements implied in its usage. If one asks persons who appear to be making the racial assumption that blacks and whites differ in their fundamental natures whether they in fact believe this, many would deny it. They might say, ‘Of course not. The differences are the products of culture and environment’ or ‘People—including blacks and whites—are much more alike than different.’ ”⁴ Why then start with what appears to be a vestige of the past?

There are at least ten reasons.

(1) The racialist race concept is frequently taken to be the (ordinary) concept of race. This identification (the racialist race concept = the concept of race) is rarely made explicit. We need a firm grip on the racialist race concept, as the distinctive concept it is, in order to understand that it is the concept implicitly being identified as the race concept when it is so identified. The racialist race concept is the race concept that many eliminativists about race—thinkers who deny the existence of biological race and advocate the elimination of the word ‘race’ and the concept RACE—take as their primary target. The race they declare to be nonexistent is racialist race. For them, the racialist concept of race is the only race concept worthy of the name.

(2) The racialist race concept is a significant element of the contemporary ordinary conception of race. A conception is different from a concept. A conception is a particular way of articulating a concept.⁵ To say that the racialist race concept is a significant element of the ordinary conception of race is to say that it that figures importantly in widely shared beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions concerning race in both private thought and public discourse. The racialist race concept plays a significant if hidden role in political campaigns, music, movies, television shows, advertisements, and so forth. It lies at the heart of racial stigma (racial stereotypes, racial attributions, derogatory evaluations, and demeaning or antipathetic attitudes) and racially charged pejorative expressions.

The racialist concept’s role in ordinary racial thought is not always recognized. Its presence may be implicit, unconscious (denied), and unendorsed. Concepts can figure in the thinking of individuals and groups who would, on reflection, repudiate them. The fact that one would disavow the racialist race concept were its role in one’s thought and behavior to be made explicit does not entail that one does not operate with it. If someone’s behavior or thought is best explained by attributing belief in the existence of racialist races, that is a reason for attributing the concept to that person. This is especially clear in the case of unambiguously racist behavior and thought.

(3) The racialist concept of race was the dominant race concept in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historically, it played a major role in supporting and legitimizing modern chattel slavery (especially in the United States), European colonialism, and genocide (the Holocaust). To say that this concept has been historically influential would be an understatement. One would be hard pressed to find a single concept that has played a more insidious role in modern human history. The racialist concept of race is a pernicious world historical concept. Failure to grasp this concept would make understanding the last five hundred years of human history difficult if not impossible.

(4) The racialist race concept continues to play a covert role in supporting, stabilizing, and legitimizing a range of racist social institutions and practices (such as geographic and role segregation and racial discrimination) to this day. Racialism—understood as the doctrine that racialist races exist—can be thought of as the heart of racialist ideology, the ideological core of racist practices. Contrary to appearances, the racialist concept of race is not a vestige of the past. As we will see in Chapter 7, the concept figures centrally in the institution of socialrace. A socialrace is a social group that is taken to be a racialist race. We cannot understand what the institution of socialrace is without a clear understanding of the racialist concept of race.

(5) The racialist race concept has proven enormously seductive. The well-meaning souls who have fallen prey to its beguilements over the last five hundred years are legion. And the concept remains tempting today, living on in racial stereotypes and stigma (Asians are good at math, blacks are criminals).⁶ It is often only in retrospect, only once it has been explicitly rejected, that one comes to recognize having been in the concept’s thrall. Such is the concept’s grip that it is difficult, if not impossible, to fully distance oneself from it without explicitly and self-consciously repudiating it.

(6) The racialist race concept haunts the polemic against the existence of races. Many arguments presented as arguments for the nonexistence of races or the unreality of race are better understood as arguments for the nonexistence of racialist races or the unreality of racialist race. A clear specification of the concept brings this fact to light.

(7) Ironically, the falsity of the racialist concept of race itself provides a powerful reason for making it our starting place. The fact that there are no racialist races is arguably the single most important fact about the subject matter of race. If there is one thing that people ought to know about race, it is that there are no racialist races. Starting with the racialist concept of race places the nonexistence of racialist races where it belongs.

(8) An understanding of what race is presupposes an understanding of what race is not. To understand race one needs to have a clear appreciation of the fact that it (the real phenomenon of race) is not racialist race. If we lived in a world free of racism, a world in which the racialist concept of race had lost its power to beguile, an examination of the racialist concept of race might be unnecessary. In such a world the racialist concept of race would present no more of a threat to sound thought than the concept of phlogiston does in ours. But in the social world in which we live, a world in which racism exists and the racialist concept of race has a living presence, the racialist concept of race represents a threat to sound thought, making a preliminary critical examination of its contents indispensable.

(9) A firm grasp on the falsity of the racialist race is essential to understanding the project of this book. Everything that follows this chapter will be predicated on the premise, established in this chapter, that the racialist race concept is false.

(10) Articulation of the racialist race concept makes it possible to articulate the truth contained in the commonplace that there are no races. The truth contained in this truism is this: there are no racialist races.

1.2 The Racialist Race Concept Defined

So what is the racialist concept of race? In its classical form, it is the race concept that

1. holds that each member of each race exhibits a fixed set of “heritable” physical, moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics common and peculiar to his or her race;
2. requires a “strict” correlation between a race’s distinctive pattern of visible physical features and its constellation of moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics;
3. demands that a race possess a hidden or underlying biological structure—a biological essence that acts on each member of the race and accounts for the correlation between a race’s distinctive pattern of visible physical features and its constellation of moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics; and
4. insists that a race be rankable on the basis of its constellation of moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics.

This characterization specifies the elements that make the racialist race concept a racialist race concept. Discussion of the features that make it a race concept will be postponed until 2.5.

Some comments: If racialist races existed, race would be normatively important. The racialist race concept ascribes moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics to race and racial membership. It associates race with traits such as intelligence, self-control, athletic ability, criminality, avarice, and sexuality. Were racialist race real, biological race would pervade human life, manifesting itself in manifold areas of human behavior. To be a member of a race (that is, to be a member of a racialist race) would amount to being a particular kind of person, that is, a person endowed with a particular set of racially determined abilities, aptitudes, and talents. To be a member of a particular race would be to be a person who is disposed to behave in certain ways. Because of this, if racialist races existed, race would constitute a very significant kind.

The racialist race concept is essentialist. It posits a biological essence, an underlying explanatory biological structure that accounts for the phenomenon of race. Pre-Mendelian versions of this concept might locate this essence in “blood.” Later versions locate it in genes. The biological racial essence of racialist race RR would consist of a set of biological properties common and peculiar to members of an RR that are necessary and sufficient for membership in an RR and play an explanatory role in accounting for the makeup and behavior of members of an RR. If members of an RR share a common biological racial essence, this would explain why they share intellectual, moral, and cultural characteristics peculiar to their race and why there is a strict correlation between their race’s distinctive visible physical features and its distinctive constellation of humanly important traits. This strict correlation would entail the in-principle possibility of making reliable inferences about an individual’s moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics from his or her visible physical characteristics. The “superficial markers of race” (skin color, hair form, eye shape, and so forth) would mark intrinsically important characteristics. If the racialist concept of race were true, it would be possible to make reliable broad generalizations about members of racialist races on the basis of their racial membership: racial stereotyping and profiling would have a sound biological basis.

If racialist races existed, other things would follow as well. For example, races would be clearly delineated groups. They would be distinguished by a multitude of sharp lines. Different races would be essentially different from one another. Individuals belonging to different races would be essentially different from one another. The idea of racialist race is the idea of a fundamental division between groups and between individuals. The racialist race concept purports to capture a “fundamental reality characterizing the human species.”⁷

The racialist race concept—that is, the specific concept I have dubbed “the racialist race concept”—is hierarchical.⁸ It holds that the moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics associated with race are unevenly distributed across the races such that each race can be ranked on an objective normative scale of superiority and inferiority, some races being seriously deficient in humanly important ways. It makes intelligible the odious notion of an inferior race.

The racialist race concept is closely associated with racism. The terms ‘racialism’ and ‘racism’ are sometimes used interchangeably. British English often uses ‘racialism’ where American English would use ‘racism.’ I distingui...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue
• Introduction
• 1. The Racialist Concept of Race
• 2. The Minimalist Concept of Race
• 3. Do Minimalist Races Exist?
• 4. Is Minimalist Race Biologically Real?
• 5. The Populationist Concept of Race
• 6. Populationist Race: Existence and Reality
• 7. The Concept of Socialrace
• 8. Health, Race, Medicine
• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index