Mosley, Albert - Race in Contemporary Philosophy

01/25/2008

Unpublished manuscript

Mostly a summary and review of the two strands of thought in philosophy regarding race, this paper takes a reasonable and moderate view of treating race as both biologically based and also socially/culturally maintained or constructed.

Author notes that much of the discussion about race is tainted, or overshadowed, by the essentialist racism that was pervasive for much of our history. Such racism sought to distinguish races by traits that aren't just superficial but deeper and more uniform. The liberal reaction to such biological claims was to point out that there is more difference between intra-racial people than between races, making racial categories 'social constructs'. The prevalence of this argument, coupled with uncovering the genealogy of the use of the concept 'race', has led to the stance that the use of 'race' is not grounded in biology at all but entirely socially constructed.

Author points out that while differences between individuals might be no greater between races than within them, there are differences in occurrence of gene frequencies, much of which is explained by examining geographical (and in some cases, cultural) origin of a 'sub-species'. An example are cases of Sickle Cell Anemia, 97% of occur among African-Americans. The relative gene frequency within certain sub-populations is a biological fact that could serve as a basis for the introduction of the concept of 'race' in a biological context. It is important to remember that we are talking about origins and population patterns, not about essential characteristics due to physical features. Also important is that even those philosophers (Andreasen, Cavalli-Sforza) who talk about such an approach, disagree about whether the usage of 'race' is still valid, some saying there has been enough interbreeding of previously separated populations, others saying that there is still enough difference to sketch out origins.

The disagreement with these thinkers have come from a weird direction. Zack and Glasgow claim that this type of 'cladistic' historical-geographical analysis of human populations in terms of intra-breeding and using gene frequencies might yield genetically recognizable patterns, but those patterns don't correspond to what a 'race' is. The common man's definition is more simplistic, thus science misses at reduction. Author points out that this is equivalent to showing that salt isn't NaCl, since the common man thinks anything that tastes a certain way is 'salt'.

Author finishes by concluding that the new concept of race doesn't justify racism, and that perhaps now 'race' is maintained more so by culture and social practices (segregation, class divides, language barriers) than by geography. Nevertheless, it is important to keep this concept in use, not only for possibly medical expediencies but also for self-identity.