Rethinking Race: The Case for Deflationary Realism 9780674978447

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R E T H I N K I NG R ACE

Rethink ing R ace The Case for Deflationary Realism M ICH A EL O. H A R DI MON

Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2017

Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer ica First printing Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Hardimon, Michael O., author. Title: Rethinking race : the case for defl ationary realism / Michael O. Hardimon. Description: Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016043670 | ISBN 9780674975668 (hard cover : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Race—Philosophy. | Race—Social aspects. | Post-racialism. Classification: LCC GN269 .H36 2017 | DDC 305.8– dc23 LC record available at https:// lccn.loc.gov/2016043670

To my parents, who taught me the basics about race

Contents

Prologue

·

Introduction

1 · 2

1. The Racialist Concept of Race

·

12

2. The Minimalist Concept of Race 3. Do Minimalist Races Exist?

·

·

27

65

4. Is Minimalist Race Biologically Real? 5. The Populationist Concept of Race

· ·

74 98

6. Populationist Race: Existence and Real ity 7. The Concept of Socialrace

· 130

8. Health, Race, Medicine · 150 Conclusion

· 169

Appendix ·

177

Notes

·

179

Acknowledgments Index

·

219

·

215

·

118

R E T H I N K I NG R ACE

Prologue

O

nce upon a time, a long, long time ago—way back in the late 1950s— two families were walking home from a restaurant one evening in Chicago’s Hyde Park. The four adults were walking together. The two children, a boy and a girl, both around four, were walking together, too. The little girl’s name was Lisa. Her mother was white and her father was white. The little boy’s name was Michael. His mother was white and his father was black. As it happened, the two children walked off onto a school playground they were passing. They were approached by three boys around their age who were black. One of the three asked Michael, “What color are you?” Michael was flummoxed. Surely the little boy could see perfectly well what color he was! It was still daylight. So why was he asking that? What was he asking? Michael had a sense that more was being asked about than the color of his skin. But he didn’t know exactly what. He muttered something about the color he was inside, an answer that struck him as lame even at the time. The boy responded quite reasonably, “Fine, what color are you inside?” Whatever Michael said in reply is lost to history. All I can remember—for the Michael in the story was me—was not knowing how to answer the question. In retrospect it is obvious that I was being asked about my understanding of my racial identity, about who and what I took myself to be. I date this episode as the beginning of my puzzlement about what race is.

1

Introduction

T

his book is an essay in the metaphysics of race. It seeks to provide a philosophical answer to a single basic question: namely, what, if anything, is race in human beings?1 In asking this question, we do not suppose that we know at the outset whether race is biological or social. Nor do we suppose that we know whether races exist or do not exist or whether race is real or unreal. Nor again do we suppose that race is one thing. The question is intended to be maximally open ended. Answering it requires that we pay close attention to the very different ways in which we speak of “race” and that we be alive to the possibility that we are often muddled and confused. Answering it requires that we be prepared to do the detailed analytical work required to arrive at a clear and perspicuous view. Doing this work is vital because of the practical importance of race. The book’s larger political context is set by the manifold social and political confl icts associated with “race” that affl ict the United States. These confl icts—and the fact of racism—give practical urgency to the metaphysical question, What is race? We will find that race is a complex but tractable phenomenon best understood through the articulation of a series of four distinct but interrelated concepts: 1. The racialist concept of race: The familiar pernicious traditional, essentialist, and hierarchical race concept often mistakenly identified as the race concept. It maintains that races have intrinsic biological essences, are distinguished by normatively impor tant features such as intelligence and moral character, and can, on the basis of these features, be objectively ranked as superior and inferior.2 2

Introduction

3

2. The minimalist concept of race: The ordinary concept of race, stripped down to its barest bones. It captures what is “rational” in the ordinary concept: the ordinary concept’s “logical core.” A nonracialist concept—it does not invoke the idea of intrinsic biological essences or normatively impor tant features, nor does it posit a correlation between such features and visible physical characters—the minimalist concept of race maintains that races are distinguished by differences in patterns of visible physical features (skin color, hair texture, nose shape, and so on) corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry. 3. The populationist concept of race: A nonracialist (nonessentialist, nonhierarchical) candidate scientific concept that characterizes races as groups of populations belonging to biological lines of descent, distinguished by patterns of phenotypic differences, that trace back to geographically separated and extrinsically reproductively isolated founding populations.3 4. The concept of socialrace: The nonracialist, critical, emancipatory concept of social groups that are taken to be racialist races. Taken together, these terms provide a language that makes it possible to think and speak coherently about race. The book’s immediate polemical context is set by eliminativism about race, the view that dominates the discussion of race at the present time. It holds that the following are true: (i) The word ‘race’ and the concept race as applied to human beings should be eliminated from our vocabulary.4 (ii) The biological category or kind race as applied to human beings should be eliminated from our ontology.5 To eliminate ‘race’ and race from our vocabulary is to remove them from the list of words and concepts we are willing to use. To eliminate race from our ontology is to remove it from our official list of what there is. The eliminativists’ basic reason for removing race from our ontology is empirical. Science, they claim, has shown that human races do not exist. There are no races. Just as we have jettisoned the kind phlogiston from our ontology, so too—and for the same reason—we should jettison the kind race. As for the elimination of the word and concept, the first reason eliminativists give is semantic (in the philosophers’ sense of the word): the word

4

Rethinking Race

and concept do not refer. ‘Race’ and race are “vacuous” or “empty.” There are no races. The second reason they give is moral. The word ‘race’ is “virulent.”6 So, too, the concept race. Past uses of the word and concept have figured centrally in racism, modern slavery, colonialism, and genocide; its current use is a continuing source of harm and injustice in the contemporary world. This moral consideration points to an additional, buttressing, normative reason for the elimination of the kind from our ontology: so long as race has a place in our ontology, the word ‘race’ and the concept race will perforce retain their place in our vocabulary and continue to support racist social practices. Eliminating race from our ontology is an urgent moral imperative.7 Eliminativist commitment to empirical and normative reasons for eliminating the concept of race is illustrated by eliminativist evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin’s well-known contention that “ human racial classification is of no social value and is positively destructive of human relations.”8 Rethinking Race represents a critical response to eliminativism. It maintains that, although racialist races do not exist, minimalist and socialraces do exist and that it is very likely that populationist races exist. It holds that the word ‘race’ should be retained to make it possible to express the concepts minimalist race, populationist race, and socialrace (all of which should be retained) and to refer to minimalist races, socialraces, and possibly populationist races. Crucially, however, the book recognizes that eliminativism contains a significant kernel of truth: there is one specific race concept that ought to be removed from our vocabulary, namely racialist race, and one specific biological kind that ought to be removed from our ontology, namely, racialist race. What eliminativists say about the race concept is true of the racialist concept of race. What they say about the kind race is true of the kind racialist race. Racialist race is vacuous in just the way in which they say that race is vacuous. There are in fact no racialist races. No human group is a racialist race. No human being is a member of a racialist race. Science (population genetics) really does tell us that this is so. Racialist race is pernicious in precisely the way in which eliminativists say race is. Eliminativism teaches us that the philosophy of race must begin with the refutation of the racialist race concept. Unless this pernicious race concept is subject to thoroughgoing criticism, there is the danger that it will surreptitiously creep back into our thinking and operate behind our backs. The refutation of the racialist concept of race in Chapter 1 sets the stage for what

Introduction

5

follows. Every thing said subsequently must be understood against this background. Although eliminativism contains a kernel of truth, eliminativists (some of them, anyway) make a mistake. The mistake consists in the identification of the concept race with the concept racialist race and the kind race with the kind racialist race. Eliminativists who make this mistake do not recognize this identification as a move, let alone a mistake. For them the concept race just is the concept racialist race; there is no other race concept worthy of the name.9 In the same way they take the kind race to be the kind racialist race. My starting point consists in the rejection of this strand of eliminativism. I begin with the observation that the racialist race concept is not identical to the concept race. racialist race ≠ race.

The racialist race concept is but one race concept among others. There are other, nonracialist race concepts that do not say that races have intrinsic biological essences, are distinguished by normatively impor tant features such as intelligence and moral character, and can be ranked as superior and inferior on the basis of these features. Numbered among them are the nonracialist race concepts on which this book focuses. These three concepts—the minimalist concept of race, the populationist concept of race, and the concept of socialrace—lack the pernicious features of the racialist concept. They do not lend support to racist acts and institutions. If the fi rst step toward enlightenment about race is the recognition that there are no racialist races, the next step is appreciation of the nonidentity of race and racialist race. I do not mean to suggest that eliminativism about race reduces to opposition to racialist race. There are eliminativists who recognize the existence of nonracialist populationist race concepts and maintain that races thus understood do not exist. Still less do I mean to suggest that the recognition of the nonidentity of race and racialist race itself establishes the biological reality of race. Emphasizing the nonidentity of race and racialist race serves the specific pedagogical purpose of opening space for consideration of the possibility that race (that is, minimalist and populationist race) might be biologically real. The nonidentity of the concepts race and racialist race can be established by reflection on the minimalist concept of race. This concept, which

6

Rethinking Race

captures the “logical core” of the ordinary concept of race, can be viewed as deflationary vis-à-vis the racialist concept. It lets the essentialist and hierarchical “air” out of the latter concept. The identification of this nonracialist way of understanding what race is makes it possible to begin rethinking race. We have noted that the minimalist concept of race lacks the invidious features that make the racialist concept of race harmful. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson puts the point well: “ There is nothing in the bare ideas of superficial bodily differences or ancestral origin to rationalize contempt, fear, hatred, or ideologies of racial inferiority.”10 The minimalist concept of race says that people differ in shape and color in ways that correspond to differences in their geographical ancestry. Essentially that is all it says. There is nothing harmful or scary about this idea. The concept is nonmalefic. The minimalist concept does have a malefic cousin, namely, the racialist concept of race. But it should not be held responsible for the harms of its relative. We must not project the fearsomeness of the racialist race concept onto the concept of minimalist race. The existence of the minimalist concept of race means that it is possible to think of race without thinking of it as racialist race. One can think of someone as being racially different without thinking of them as being essentially different or different in some normatively important way. The minimalist concept of race makes it possible to think using the word ‘race’ without thinking racist thoughts.11 The admission of minimalist race into our ontology does not provide the slightest support for the use of the concept racialist race. Nor will it open the door to admitting the kind racialist race into our ontology. Science has spoken.12 That door is permanently closed. There is no slippery slope from minimalist race to racialist race because there are definitive scientific reasons for denying that racialist races exist. True, people can illicitly slide from minimalist to racialist race or illicitly invest the differences in shape and color picked out by the minimalist concept of race with a normative significance they do not have. Experience shows that people have conceived of race in dangerous ways in the past and gone on to do horrible things. Experience suggests that this could happen again. But, however unwelcome this possibility, it does not impugn the standing of the minimalist concept of race. The fact that some race concepts are harmful does not entail that all are. The minimalist concept of race is nonpernicious.

Introduction

7

And, in any case, whether or not we choose to deploy the minimalist concept of race, differences of skin color, hair form, eye shape, and lip shape corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry do exist in nature and are readily recognized. Denying their existence won’t prevent racists from taking them as markers of racialist race. Nor will denying that they are racial. The difficult truth is that differences of minimalist race are obtrusively there. The admission of the concept minimalist race into our vocabulary makes it possible to admit the existence of minimalist races while denying the existence of racialist races. It makes it possible to see differences in skin color, hair form, eye shape, and so forth as racial without associating them with normatively impor tant differences. Seeing racial differences as differences of minimalist race makes recognition of their existence less troubling. Minimalist race provides a nonmalefic way of understanding the phenomena (minimalist race) that racialist race purports to capture. I should state explicitly that I do not think the four concepts articulated in this book—the racialist concept of race, the minimalist concept of race, the populationist concept of race, and the concept of socialrace—provide an exhaustive account of what race is. There is much more to be said. But I do think that all four concepts are needed to understand race. Leave one out and your understanding will be incomplete. Together they form a package. To fully understand any one of them, an understanding of the other three is required. This book embraces a determinate ontological outlook about race. I call it deflationary realism.13 The label may sound paradoxical. How can the outlook be deflationary if it is realist? How can it be realist if it is defl ationary? But this confusion is easily corrected. Deflationary realism is realist because it recognizes the social existence of socialraces, the biological existence of minimalist races, and the biological real ity of the kind minimalist race. It also counts as realist because it countenances the possibility that populationist races exist and that populationist race may be real. Deflationary realism is deflationary because it repudiates the existence of racialist races and the reality of racialist race, and because it minimizes the biological significance of minimalist and populationist race. It is the view that minimalist race is a genetically grounded, relatively superficial, but still significant biological reality and that the same is very likely true of populationist race. It represents minimalist race as a legitimate modest biological kind and holds that populationist race is very likely such a kind.

8

Rethinking Race

In introducing deflationary realism, I hope to change the terms of the debate about the reality of race. Arguments against the biological reality of race typically take the form of showing that race does not constitute a very significant biological kind.14 The standard view is that what it is for race to be biologically real is for it to be a very significant biological kind. I accept that race does not constitute a very significant biological kind but reject the notion that being a very significant biological kind is what it is for race to be biologically real. I hold that the question whether race is biologically real is best understood as the question whether race is a legitimate modest biological kind. In my view the biological reality of race (logically) can—and (factually) does— consist in its being such a kind. It turns out, on my account, that biological race is not that big a biological deal. I regard this result as welcome. My conception of the biological real ity of race is deflationary. If deflationary realism is theoretically important because it makes it possible to understand the sense in which races do and do not exist, it is politically important because it provides a new philosophical foundation for antiracism. Most recent antiracist writers have sought to find the philosophical foundation for antiracism in eliminativism. But eliminativism about race is false. It is simply not true that there are no races. This makes eliminativism a poor ground for antiracism. Antiracism needs an alternative view of race. Deflationary realism provides it. Deflationary realism retains eliminativism’s critical bite by maintaining that racialist races do not exist. And it shows that it is possible to acknowledge the obvious truth that there is a sense in which races do exist—minimalist races exist, socialraces exist, and very likely populationist races exist—without falling back into racialism. It thus provides antiracism with a solid philosophical foundation. The first step in making the positive case for deflationary realism consists in showing the existence of minimalist races and the biological reality of the kind minimalist race. Once this kind is recognized, the question concerning what it comes to from a scientific point of view becomes unavoidable. The populationist concept of race provides a plausible candidate answer. It “scientizes” the minimalist concept of race using the scientific vocabulary of ‘phenotype,’ ‘genetic transmission,’ and ‘reproductive isolation,’ notions that are not contained in the minimalist concept of race.15 It locates the category ‘race’ in the framework of population thinking and identifies extrinsic reproductive isolation as race’s biological basis. It makes it possible to see minimalist races as populations that belong to biological lines of descent, distinguished by patterns of phenotypic differences and traced back to

Introduction

9

geographically separated and extrinsically reproductively isolated founding populations. It enables us to see the ordinary kind minimalist race as the scientific kind populationist race. To be sure, the populationist race concept is not the only populationist race concept on offer. All serious attempts to defend race as a biological category post–World War II have deployed nonracialist, populationist race concepts. The specific populationist race concept I defend is distinguished by its inclusion of a morphological component (patterns of phenotypic differences), a feature that connects it to the minimalist concept of race and guarantees its relevance to the race debate, and by the inclusion of the specific notion of reproductive isolation in terms of which it is defined.16 The concept is also distinguished by the fact that it does not require that populationist races exhibit the degree of genetic distinctiveness that is required of subspecies, as the latter notion is standardly understood in biology. These constitute respects in which the populationist race concept is deflationary. The concept of racialist race remains important as a model of how not to think about biological race. Biological races should not be thought of as groups that have intrinsic biological essences, are distinguished by normatively impor tant features such as intelligence and moral character, and can be objectively ranked as superior and inferior on the basis of these features. The pervasiveness of racialist racial thought makes active resistance to thinking of race in racialist terms imperative. The minimalist and populationist race concepts, on the other hand, provide positive models for how to think about biological race. The minimalist race concept allows us to understand biological race in ordinary terms as consisting of differences in color and shape that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. It is analogous to the concept water in being the ordinary counterpart of a scientific concept. The concept populationist race is like the concept H 2O in being a scientific counterpart—or in any case a candidate scientific counterpart—of an ordinary concept. It suggests the possibility of understanding biological race in scientific terms as consisting of patterns of phenotypic differences exhibited by populations belonging to different biological lines of descent that are grounded in extrinsic reproductive isolation. Racist societies—such as ours—are marked by a specifically social phenomenon of race distinct from the biological phenomenon of race.17 This social phenomenon cannot be ignored in discussions of “race.” It is necessary to find concepts to account for it. To this end the concept socialrace

10

Rethinking Race

(closed compound) is introduced. Unlike the ordinary concept of race and the other two race concepts we are considering, the concept of socialrace does not represent its subject matter as biological. The concept socialrace represents its subject matter as social, as consisting of social relations and social practices.18 In representing its subject matter thus, socialrace unmasks the social groups in racist societies that appear to be racialist races as social groups that falsely appear to be biological groups. It criticizes the claim of the phenomenon socialrace to be a biological grouping and emancipates agents from the illusion that socialraces are biological groups. It is a critical and emancipatory concept.19 The existence of the phenomenon of socialrace has been recognized for some time. What has not been recognized until recently is the necessity of providing a dedicated social concept to conceptualize this phenomenon.20 This may be due to the possibility of using the ordinary English word ‘race’ to refer to the phenomenon of socialrace. ‘Race’ can mean “socialrace.” Th is circumstance can generate the illusion that it is possible to refer to socialrace using the ordinary concept of race. But inasmuch as the ordinary concept of race represents its subject matter as biological, it cannot capture the phenomenon of socialrace. To capture this social phenomenon, a nonbiological social concept of race is required. When we succeed in referring to socialrace— something we regularly do—we are using the concept socialrace or a concept much like it. Socialrace is a thoroughgoingly social phenomenon. Sophisticated eliminativists recognize that it has a biological “correlate,” but they are unable— on pain of forsaking their eliminativism—to account for the nature of that correlate.21 The book’s treatment of minimalist race provides an account of the biological correlate of socialrace. It allows us to see that socialrace’s biological correlate consists in (a) the correlation of differences in visible physical characteristics with differences in geographical ancestry (that is, “the minimalist biological phenomenon of race”) and (b), more fundamentally, the groups whose visible physical characteristics constitute the minimalist biological phenomenon of race (minimalist races).22 Rethinking Race’s ontological stance vis-à-vis the social phenomenon of race is constructivist. The book thus combines deflationary realism with moderate social constructivism. Contrary to what one might have thought, biological realism and social constructivism, properly understood, are not competitors. Understood in a deflationary way, biological realism does not deny the existence of socialrace. Understood in a moderate way, social constructionism

Introduction

11

does not deny the existence of minimalist races. Defl ationary biological realism and moderate social constructivism are complementary positions. Both are needed for a full understanding of what race is. The book shows how the conceptual distinctions it introduces can illuminate the debate over the use of race concepts in medical research. Eliminativism about race in medical research, the view that there is no place in medical research for any race concepts, biological or social, is rejected, as is exclusionism about biological race in medical research, the view that there is no place in medicine for biological race concepts. The position ultimately adopted combines inclusionism about biological race in medical research, the view that there is a place in medical research for biological race concepts, and inclusionism about social race in medical research, the view that there is a place for social race concepts in medical research. The view adopted can be called compatibilism about race in medical research. Consideration of the place of race in medicine makes it possible to identify two distinct ways in which race figures in medicine and indicates why distinguishing the four notions presented in this book is important. As the book’s title suggests, Rethinking Race is a call for a thoroughgoing rethinking of race. Although its positive account starts with the ordinary concept of race and ends with a conception that is remarkably commonsensical, it does not try to “rehabilit[ate] a popular conception of race.”23 The metaphysics of race it presents is revisionary. My hope is that the reader who engages with it will come away with a new philosophical understanding of what race is. Chapter 1 presents the racialist concept of race and shows why there are no racialist races. Chapter 2 introduces the minimalist concept of race and shows it to be a nonracialist version of the ordinary concept of race. Chapter 3 argues for the existence of minimalist races. In Chapter 4 the biological reality of the kind minimalist race is defended and the notion of deflationary realism is explained. Chapter 5 introduces the populationist concept of race as a candidate scientific concept of race. The existence of populationist races and the biological reality of populationist race is discussed in Chapter 6. Chapter 7 introduces the concept of socialrace. Chapter 8 illustrates the ecumenical outlook expressed in this book by discussing the place of race concepts in medical research. The book concludes with a summary of lessons learned and morals to be drawn.

CHAP TER

1

The Racialist Concept of Race

T

he 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 nineteenthcentury 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 12

The Racialist Concept of Race

13

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. Th is identification (the racialist race concept = the concept of race) is rarely made explicit. We need a fi rm 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 behav ior to be made explicit does not

14

Rethinking Race

(3)

(4)

(5)

(6)

entail that one does not operate with it. If someone’s behav ior 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 behav ior and thought. 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. 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. 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. The racialist race concept haunts the polemic against the existence of races. Many arguments presented as arguments for the nonexis-

The Racialist Concept of Race

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

15

tence 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. 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 impor tant 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. 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. A firm grasp on the falsity of the racialist race is essential to understanding the project of this book. Every thing that follows this chapter will be predicated on the premise, established in this chapter, that the racialist race concept is false. 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 fi xed set of “heritable” physical, moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics common and peculiar to his or her race;

16

Rethinking 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 behav ior. 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 par ticular 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 behav ior 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 impor tant traits. Th is strict

The Racialist Concept of Race

17

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 impor tant 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 profi ling 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 impor tant 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 distinguish the two terms. ‘Racialism’ as I hear it is less charged than ‘racism’ and does not immediately invoke the same opprobrium. Racialism can overlap with racism. It overlaps, for example, with doxastic racism (racism in belief) and doctrinal racism (racism as doctrine). Racism as doctrine is the proposition that racialist races exist. Belief in the existence of racialist races is the racist belief par excellence. The belief that there are biologically caused statistical differences in normatively impor tant traits between the races is also racist (and can be dubbed ‘neoracialist’). Doxastic racism can also be exemplified by belief in racial stereotypes (for example, the idea that blacks are lazy), which instantiate the racialist concept of race. The racialist race concept also underwrites affective-voluntative racism (hostility to, contempt for, or indifference toward Rs because they are Rs).9

18

Rethinking Race

It makes it possible to represent members of races as being worthy of hostility, deserving of subordination, and meriting indifference by virtue of the normatively impor tant characteristics that they possess as members of their race. The racialist race concept provides a rationale for the existing de facto social hierarchy of race: the fact that most members of some races (for example, whites) occupy higher social positions than most members of some other races (for example, blacks). It offers a putative naturalistic explanation of why members of putatively inferior races occupy low social positions. It holds that racial differences in social position are due to race-based differences in abilities, aptitudes, and talents. According to the racialist concept of race, members of inferior races occupy low social positions because, owing to their race, they lack abilities and talents required for superior positions. Correlatively, members of superior races occupy high social positions because, owing to their race, they possess the abilities and talents that superior positions require.

1.3 How the Racialist Concept of Race Could Have Seemed Plausible For those of us who are disposed to think the racialist concept of race is obviously false and clearly pernicious, one obvious question is how anyone could ever have found the concept plausible and attractive. Here is a sampling of reasons: 1. The racialist concept of race would have seemed plausible if one were vividly aware of the differences in visible physical appearance between typical members of putative racialist races (that is, existing human populations that were taken to be racialist races, for example, Caucasians, sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, and so on), if one had little or no appreciation of the extent to which differences in human skin color change smoothly across geographical regions, and if one failed to register the degree to which the skin color of members of the same putative racialist race can vary. The concept might seem especially plausible to people of European ancestry whose sense of racial differences in visible physical features (skin color, nose shape, hair form, and such) reflected caricatured representations of members of different racial groups.

The Racialist Concept of Race

2.

3.

4.

5.

19

It is worth remembering that before 1972, it was not obviously false that the variation in genes (or “blood”) that underlay obvious physical differences was not typical of the variation of the genome (blood) in general. Individual races might well have seemed to be biologically very homogeneous and different races might well have seemed to be biologically very heterogeneous. If one were antecedently inclined to accept typological thinking or essentialism about species (the biological view that remained dominant until the emergence of the so-called new synthesis of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and Gregor Mendel’s theory of genetics), one would likely have been inclined to adopt a typological or essentialist outlook with respect to infraspecific divisions, that is, races. Essentialism may be dead now but it wasn’t always dead. During the heyday of the racialist concept of race, it was the standard scientific view. Failure to draw a sharp distinction between ethnicity and race might have led one to view cultural differences between different putative racialist races as biological and consequently made one favorably disposed to counting cultural characteristics among the fi xed set of fundamental “heritable” biological characteristics common and peculiar to each race. To ethnocentric and chauvinistic people of European ancestry, the idea that people of color were inferior and the general idea that races could be ranked on an objective scale of values would have seemed “natural.” To people of European ancestry with an interest in colonizing or enslaving people of color, the fact that the racialist concept of race could be mobilized to mount a defense of these courses of action would have made the concept attractive.

It is not surprising in hindsight that many people found racialism plausible.

1.4 Why There Are No Racialist Races The reasons why there are no racialist races have been laid out by others. My aim in this section is to make the logic of these arguments perspicuous and to provide insight into the grounds of the concept’s falsity.

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1.4.1 A general empirical argument against the existence of racialist races starts from the tenets of population thinking. ‘Population thinking’ is Ernst Mayr’s term for the general biological outlook that arose out of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection and replaced an earlier, essentialist mode of thought Mayr refers to as “typological thinking.” In contrast to typological thinking, population thinking holds that there are no intrinsic biological essences, no intrinsic property or set of properties that all and only members of a species necessarily share. For the populationist, “all organisms and organic phenomena are composed of unique features and can be described collectively only in statistical terms. Individuals, or any kind of organic entities, form populations of which we can determine the arithmetic mean and the statistics of variation. Averages are merely statistical abstractions. . . . For the typologist the type (eidos) is real and the variation is an illusion, while for the populationist the type (average) is an abstraction and only the variation is real.”10 What is true of species is true of subspecific taxa. There are no intrinsic properties that all and only members of a race necessarily share. It could turn out that all and only members of a race happen to share a given intrinsic property, but that would be a biologically accidental fact. A person properly classified as Caucasian (assuming ‘Caucasian’ is a racial category within a valid scientific classification of race) might in principle have none of the phenotypic or genotypic traits thought to be specific to Caucasians. However unlikely, such a circumstance is not biologically impossible. Population thinking maintains that there is no single ideal way in which genotypes are expressed in phenotypes. All relations between environment and phenotype are equally “natural.” No phenotype or genotype is privileged. Consequently, there is no phenotypic or genotypic property that could play the role of a biological essence. Since there are no biological essences, there are no racialist race essences, and since there are no racialist race essences, there are no racialist races. The existence of racialist races is incompatible with a broad structural principle of biology. 1.4.2 A closely related line of argument points out that population thinking’s broad structural principle is supported by the data on human populations. Philip Kitcher summarizes the point this way: human populations have been found to differ “only in the frequency with which various alleles are found, often in complicated and bewildering ways.”11 The evidence

The Racialist Concept of Race

21

indicates that there are no essential differences between human populations and hence that there are no racialist races. 1.4.3 A third line of argument starts from the idea that in order for racialist races to exist, certain things must be true of human genetics, namely the following: (a) The fraction of human genetic diversity between populations must exceed the fraction of diversity within them. (b) The fraction of human genetic diversity within populations must be small. (c) The fraction of human genetic diversity between populations must be large. (d) Most genes must be highly differentiated by race. (e) The variation in genes that underlie obvious physical differences must be typical of the variation of the genome in general. (f) There must be several impor tant genetic differences between races apart from the genetic differences that underlie obvious physical differences. Note: (b) says that racialist races are genetically relatively homogeneous groups; (c)–(f) say that racialist races are distinguished by major biological differences. Call (a)–(f) the racialist concept of race’s genetic profile. The relevant question concerning the truth of the racialist concept of race, then, is this: Does the concept’s genetic profi le fit the facts concerning human genetic variation?

Of particular interest is whether the amount of between-group genetic diversity is larger than the amount of within-group genetic diversity, as the racialist concept of race’s genetic profi le would lead us to expect. More than forty years ago, Richard Lewontin posed this question using “classical” markers (blood groups, serum protein, and red blood cell enzyme variants, the then-available proxies for genes). Performing the first statistical partition of such markers into between- and within-group components in his celebrated 1972 paper, “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Lewontin found that the answer is no.12 More specifically, he determined on a locusby-locus basis that 85.4 percent of total human genetic variation falls within human populations. Local populations within classically defined human

22

Rethinking Race

races (Caucasians, Africans, Mongoloids, South Asian Aborigines, American Indians, and Oceanians) accounted for 8.3 percent. Variation between classically defined human races amounted to a mere 6.3 percent of the total variation. Call this Lewontin’s cleaver. The upshot is that the portion of human genetic diversity that falls within human populations (including classically defined races) is larger—much larger—than the portion that falls between classically defined human races, which is contrary to what the racialist race concept would lead one to expect. Moreover, the portion of human genetic diversity that falls within human populations is “large” and the portion of human genetic diversity that falls between classically defi ned races is “small,” where “large” and “small” mean large and small relative to what many theorists had expected prior to Lewontin’s analysis. It should also be mentioned, and indeed stressed, that the genetic diversity among humans Lewontin was partitioning is itself very, very small. Human beings as a species turn out to be very nondiverse genetically. Lewontin’s study showed that the genetic profile of the racialist concept of race is inconsistent with genetic evidence, which supports the conclusion that there are no racialist races. Lewontin’s analysis of the apportionment of human genetic diversity has been confirmed by many studies using a variety of different types of data and different analytical methods.13 It is worth noting that the force of the argument against the existence of racialist races from Lewontin’s data analysis is unaffected by the critique A.  W.  F. Edwards made in his 2003 paper “Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin’s Fallacy.” The fallacy Edwards imputes to Lewontin consists in inferring that racial classification has no taxonomic significance from the finding that the between-race component of human genetic diversity is very small. That inference is fallacious because the fact that the betweenrace component of human genetic diversity is small does not entail that racial classification has no taxonomic significance. Lewontin’s locus-by-locus analysis (which does not consider the possibility of a correlation between individual loci) does not preclude the possibility that individual loci might be correlated in such a way that people could be grouped into traditional racial categories. The underlying thought is that racial classification would have “taxonomic significance” were it possible to group people into traditional racial categories by making use of correlations between individual loci. However, Lewontin’s argument that there are no racialist races because the

The Racialist Concept of Race

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component of within-race genetic variation is larger than the component of between-race genetic variation is untouched by Edwards’s objection. That conclusion rests solely on Lewontin’s statistical analysis of human variation (the validity of which Edwards grants) and does not presuppose the absence of correlational structure in the genetic data. In short, Lewontin’s data do not preclude the possibility that racial classification might have taxonomic significance but they do preclude the possibility that racialist races exist. Lewontin’s 1972 analysis also showed that most genes are not highly differentiated by race and that the variation in genes that underlie obvious physical differences is not typical of the variation of the genome in general. These considerations buttress the case against the existence of racialist races. The question whether the amount of between-group genetic diversity is larger than the amount of within-group genetic diversity, as the racialist concept of race’s genetic profi le would lead us to expect, can also be answered using the results of Noah A. Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 landmark “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” the first statistical study of the Human Genome Diversity Project– Centre Etude Polymorphism Humain panel of cell lines, described by Marcus Feldman as “the broadest and best documented sampling of human populations today.”14 Again the answer is no. Looking at genotypes at 377 autosomal microsatellite loci in 1,056 individuals from fifty-two populations, Rosenberg and his colleagues found that 93–95 percent of human genetic variation falls within populations and that differences among “major groups” account for 3–5 percent of human genetic variation. Much as before, the portion of human genetic diversity that falls within human populations (including those corresponding to the “major geographic regions” Africa [that is, sub-Saharan Africa], Europe, the Middle East, Central / South Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and America) was found to be larger than the portion of human genetic diversity that falls between classically defined human races. Again, the portion of human genetic diversity that falls within human populations was found to be “large” and the portion of human genetic diversity that falls between the populations corresponding to the major geographic regions is “small.” Rosenberg and colleagues thus confirm Lewontin’s conclusion that the apportionment of human diversity is inconsistent with the existence of racialist races. Rosenberg and colleagues’ estimate of within-population genetic diversity is obviously higher than Lewontin’s and their estimate of between-population

24

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genetic diversity is clearly lower. The differences may be due to the rapidly mutating character of the specific genetic markers Rosenberg and colleagues used. They are not in any case material. Rosenberg and colleagues’ estimates of the between-population component of genetic variation are on the low end of accurate estimates of human genetic variation. The important point is what the different studies have in common, namely that the withinpopulation component of genetic variation is large and the between-population component of genetic variation is small. Rosenberg and colleagues also confirm Lewontin’s findings that most genes are not highly differentiated by race and that the variation in genes that underlie obvious physical differences is not typical of the variation of the genome in general. They also suggest that it is not the case that there are many impor tant genetic differences between races apart from the genetic differences that underlie the obvious physical differences. These considerations further buttress the case against the existence of racialist races. 1.4.4 A further condition that must be met in order for racialist races to exist is that racial categories must have great predictive power for yet unstudied characteristics. It must be the case that, for every racialist race RR, members of the race share a very large number of important properties that do not follow from the features by virtue of which they count as members of the racialist race. The corresponding argument against the truth of the racialist concept of race is that science has not found it to be the case that members of the groups thought to be racialist races share a very large number of important properties beyond the properties by virtue of which they count as members of such groups. Nor does it seem likely that science will find that members of groups thought to be racialist races share a very large number of such properties. The results of Lewontin’s 1972 study and Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study strongly suggest that it is extremely unlikely that there are many important genetic differences between races apart from the genetic differences that underlie the obvious physical differences. 1.4.5 Another argument starts from the idea that if racialist races existed, human populations that were racialist races would be sharply distinguished from one another along a broad range of phenotypic and genotypic dimensions. What the facts show, however, is that human genetic variation is mostly “clinal,” that is, most characteristics exhibit a gradual linear change with increasing geographic distance. Allele frequencies change

The Racialist Concept of Race

25

smoothly across geographical regions with few sharp breaks. Because human genetic variation is mostly clinal, human populations are not sharply distinguished from one another along a broad range of phenotypic and genotypic dimensions. It follows from this that there are no racialist races. 1.4.6 A particular version of the preceding argument focuses on skin color. If racialist races existed, human populations would be sharply divided by skin color, but they are not. Michael Root puts the point well: “Differences in color are continuous rather than sharp and vary as much within as between racial groups, and differences in skin color divide us into subgroups that cut across rather than match the groups we call races.”15 This is a reason for thinking that there are no racialist races. 1.4.7 The racialist concept of race requires that human genetic variation conform to “discrete packages labeled races.”16 If racialist races existed, genetic variation would be concordant. Explaining this notion, Frank  B. Livingston reminds us that variation is concordant “if the geographic variation of the genetic characters is correlated, so that a classification based on one character would reflect the variability in any other. Such a pattern of variation is almost never found among the local populations of a wide-ranging species.” Because variation in Homo sapiens is nonconcordant, there are no racialist races. 1.4.8 Comment: The case against the existence of racialist races does not stand or fall with any one of these arguments. It rests rather on their collective force. Taken together, they provide a very strong set of reasons for thinking that it is highly unlikely that racialist races exist. The likelihood that racialist races exist is especially low relative to the available alternative hypotheses, which include the hypothesis that there are no races, period, and the hypothesis that, whereas racialist races do not exist, minimalist races do exist. It is safe to conclude that there are no racialist races, period.

1.5 Conclusion The conclusion we have reached was set out at the chapter’s beginning. There are no racialist races. The racialist concept of race is false. Were the racialist concept of race identical to the concept of race, the nonexistence of races could be validly inferred from the nonexistence of

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Rethinking Race

racialist races. But, as will be made clear in Chapter 2, the two concepts are distinct. As of yet, however, nothing has been done to show that the race concept can be distinguished from the racialist race concept. The possibility of a nonracialist race concept has not been established. Nor has it been shown what the content of such a concept might be. The task of Chapter 2 is to remedy these omissions. It exhibits a nonracialist concept of race. Seeing that there is a nonracialist race concept will make it possible to consider the subject matter of race in a fresh way. Before going on, I should acknowledge one limitation of the present chapter. The refutation of racialist race it provides does not preclude scientific racists from advancing nonessentialist racist conceptions of race, such as conceptions that assert statistical correlations between race and intelligence and attempt to ground those correlations in genetics (neoracialist conceptions). The case made in subsequent chapters for the actual existence of minimalist races and the likely existence of populationist races entails that the “stake-through-the-heart” maneuver of blocking scientific racism by flat-out denying the existence of biological races won’t work. The results of Lewontin’s 1972 study and Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study make the existence of neoracialist races much less likely. But they do not logically preclude their possibility. It seems to me likely, then, that much of the argument against contemporary scientific racists will come down to straightforward empirical arguments about their lack of evidence for genetic correlations and so on.17 Th is does not, however, mean that refutation of the racialist concept of race has no bearing on scientific racism. Should we encounter someone claiming to be operating with the minimalist or populationist concept of race who is nonetheless disposed to find correlations between geographically based morphological differences and differences in normatively important traits, we have good reason to suspect that the racialist concept of race is playing a significant if unrecognized role in the background. Without some racialist notion in play, the will to associate normatively important differences with geographically based morphological differences simply would not exist.

CHAP TER

2

The Minimalist Concept of Race

his chapter articulates the minimalist concept of race.1 Section 2.1 discusses the concept’s status. The procedure through which the concept is arrived at is the topic of Section  2.2. The concept is laid out in Section 2.3. Section 2.4 revisits the racialist concept of race. Section 2.5 shows that the minimalist concept is neither racialist nor racist. The three basic conditions of this concept are elaborated in Section  2.6. Section  2.6.1 discusses condition C(1). Section 2.6.2 addresses the status of the two remaining conditions. Condition C(2), the first of the remaining two conditions, is examined in Section 2.6.3. Condition C(3), the second of the two remaining conditions, is the topic of Section  2.6.4. Section  2.6.5 notes that visible physical features that correspond to geographical ancestry count as racial. Section  2.7 asks whether the minimalist concept of race allows for races within races. Section 2.8 contrasts the concepts of race and racial classification. Section 2.9 discusses the transportability of the concept. The concept’s coherence is discussed in Section 2.10. Section 2.11 asks whether the minimalist concept of race is a genuine race concept. Section 2.12 asks whether the minimalist concept of race is biological or social. The merits of the minimalist concept are discussed in Section 2.13.

T

2.1 Status The minimalist concept of race (minimalist race concept, minimalist concept) is so called because it represents the barest, most stripped-down characterization of the ordinary concept of race possible.2 The ordinary concept of race is the concept expressed in ordinary uses of the English word ‘race’ and its cognates. The minimalist concept captures what, if anything, is “rational” 27

28

Rethinking Race

or “true” in this concept. It constitutes what could be called the ordinary concept’s “logical core.” It just is the ordinary concept, stripped down to its barest bones.3 Its specification captures a hidden but already existing meaning for ‘race.’ The minimalist concept of race is not a philosopher’s invention. It is, to repeat, the ordinary concept of race stripped down to its barest bones. It is a concept people already operate with, even if they do not recognize it. If they don’t, it may be because the concept is obscured by the ordinary conception of race. The ordinary conception of race is a racialist (essentialist and hierarchical) conception.4 It holds that the concept of race is the concept of a group that has a biological essence that determines normatively important features of its members. It takes the racialist concept of race to be the ordinary concept of race. People regularly mistake the racialist ordinary conception of race for the ordinary concept of race. But the ordinary concept of race and the ordinary conception of race are two different things. The ordinary conception of race is racialist; the ordinary concept of race is not (or so I contend). The philosophical distinction between concept and conception on which I rely was introduced by H. L. A. Hart and gained currency through the work of John Rawls.5 It is also found in the work of Tyler Burge.6 In A Theory of Justice, Rawls employs the distinction to distinguish his preferred conception of justice (that is, justice as fairness) from the concept of justice it articulates—a concept that is shared with other competing conceptions of justice.7 Concept and conception stand in a one-to-many relationship. It is part of the idea of a concept that one and the same concept can be articulated in a number of different and competing ways. It is part of the idea of a conception that a conception represents but one of a number of possible different and competing articulations of a given concept. ‘Concept’ and ‘conception’ are thus correlative terms. To characterize an idea as a concept of X is to characterize it as the object of a pos sible correlative conception of X and conversely. The terms ‘concept’ and ‘conception’ operate in tandem. The concept of X specifies what X is. A conception of X indicates how the concept of X is to be understood.8 The racialist ordinary conception of race represents one possible way of articulating the ordinary concept of race. It can be arrived at by starting with the concept’s logical core and superadding logically adventitious racialist elements such as biological essence and normatively important feature. Inasmuch as the ordinary conception of race holds that the

The Minimalist Concept of Race

29

superadded logically adventitious racialist elements are essential features of the ordinary concept of race itself, it is mistaken.9 This can be seen from reflection on the fact that there is no contradiction in saying that Caucasians are a race but have no biological essence or that sub-Saharan Africans are a race even though there is no normatively impor tant feature common and peculiar to them. As we shall shortly see, all that is required for Caucasians or sub-Saharan Africans to count as a race is that they exhibit distinctive patterns of visible physical characteristics that correspond to their geographical origin.10 Let me pause to make a point explicit. The minimalist concept of race does not purport to capture everything that people mean when they refer to “races.”11 It is more abstract. What it purports to capture is precisely the bare concept that people use when they refer to “races.” It is the concept people use in forming conceptions of race. My decision to use the name ‘minimalist concept of race’ as a label for what is (really) the ordinary concept of race is a concession to the dominance of the ordinary conception of race. One could simply refer to the minimalist concept of race as ‘the ordinary concept of race’ were it not the case that that would be misleading. Say ‘ordinary concept of race’ and people are likely to think of the racialist articulation of the concept. This is because people are most familiar with the ordinary concept in that articulation. The minimalist concept of race is the ordinary concept of race freed of its racialist articulation. The name ‘minimalist concept of race’ provides a discursive handle that facilitates grasping the ordinary concept without the addition of racialist adjuncts. It makes it possible to deploy the ordinary concept without racialist connotation and to see that it is possible to have a nonracialist race concept. I recognize that some readers will not accept that the minimalist concept of race is the ordinary concept of race. Such readers should feel free to regard the minimalist concept of race as a revision of the ordinary concept of race, that is, as a concept that, though in many respects similar to the ordinary concept, is nonetheless distinct from it. What I would insist on is that minimalist races (groups satisfying the minimalist concept of race) are races (that is races properly so called)— either because the minimalist concept of race just is the ordinary concept of race or because it captures enough of the ordinary concept of race for minimalist races to be counted as races. My view is that if it can be shown that minimalist races exist, races exist. And if it can be shown that minimalist race is real, race is real.

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2.2 Methodology The minimalist concept of race can be arrived at by starting with the ordinary concept of race and making the best possible sense of it (for example, in terms of coherence and empirical plausibility).12 We proceed by finding a fit between intuitive specifications of the contents of the ordinary concept (claims about what races are) and archetypical examples of candidate races. I say “candidate races” because whether races exist at all is controversial. Archetypical examples of candidate races are groups that count as races if any do. Such groups can be easily be found in the history of racial thought and contemporary racial practice. They include the four “varieties” Carl Linnaeus (1758) took himself to have identified— americanus, europaeus, asiaticus, and afer [African]; the five groupings that Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1795) took to constitute the basic human “varieties”— Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay; the “big three” proposed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) (1965)—the Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid divisions; and the US Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) 1997 division—the groupings of American Indian or Alaska Native, black, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and white.13 A group G is a race if and only if it satisfies the conditions of racehood fi xed by the minimalist concept of race. Guided by the regulative principle of avoiding the attribution of conceptual confusion and empirical error, the dialectic seeks to arrive at a factually correct characterization of the examples. To this end it makes use of the best available scientific understandings, including facts with which fully competent users of the word ‘race’ may not be familiar. Because of the central role assigned to examples and the authority given to scientific understanding, the process is scientifically informed and sensitive to empirical facts. The reflective process by which we arrive at the minimalist concept of race is open to the world. Intuitions do not constitute the final court of appeal.14 In the course of reflection, characterizations of race that rely on empirical errors (such as the notion that the groups we call “races” have biological essences or that there is a strict correlation between visible physical characteristics and normatively important traits) are discarded. Consequently, racialist elements that might initially be attributed to the ordinary concept of race are weeded out. Central race beliefs not subject to empirical errors are

The Minimalist Concept of Race

31

retained. What one arrives at, at the end of the process, is the most appealing articulation of the ordinary concept of race possible.15

2.3 The Minimalist Race Concept Defined A race is group of human beings (C1) that, as a group, is distinguished from other groups of human beings by patterns of visible physical features, (C2) whose members are linked by a common ancestry peculiar to members of the group, and (C3) that originates from a distinctive geographic location. C(1)– C(3) fi x the conditions of minimalist racehood. The minimalist concept of race is, first of all, a group-level notion. The predicate race is in the fi rst instance a predicate of groups rather than individuals. The minimalist race concept is the concept of a kind of group. The concept does not require or allow a “constituent definition” in philosopher of science Elliott Sober’s sense of the term: what it is for a group to be a race is not defined in terms of what it is for an individual to be a member of race.16 What it is to be an individual member of a minimalist race is defined in terms of what it is for a group to be a race. Now, one can have a basic grasp of the minimalist concept of race without recognizing that it is a group-level concept. A competent user might mistake it for an individual-level concept. Its status as a group-level concept is something that becomes clear on the basis of reflection. The fact that it is a group-level concept puts it in line with population thinking, which understands specieshood to be a characteristic of populations, which is to say groups. In representing races as groups of human beings, the minimalist concept of race represents race as a division of the human species. This is another feature of the concept that might not be immediately obvious. A competent user (for example, Voltaire) might fail to recognize that a group he or she regards as a race belongs to the human race. But the concept of race is the concept of a subspecies, insofar as the concept subspecies is understood generically as the concept of a subdivision of the species.17

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Rethinking Race

2.4 The Racialist Concept of Race Revisited Our account of the minimalist concept of race makes clear that the characterization of the racialist concept of race provided in Chapter 1 was incomplete. It did not specify the features by virtue of which racialist races count as races. A full specification of the racialist concept of race’s content would have to include conditions C(1)– C(3). The racialist concept of race = the minimalist concept of race + the racialist elements (1–4) spelled out in Chapter 1. It will be convenient to have a label for these elements. Let us call them “the four adjuncts.”

2.5 Neither Racialist nor Racist A quick survey of the three basic conditions of the minimalist concept of race makes it clear that the concept is not racialist. It does not (i) represent racial characteristics as necessarily possessed by all and only members of a race, (ii) mention normatively important characteristics, (iii) posit a significant correlation between visible physical features and normatively important characteristics, (iv) posit the existence of a racial essence, or (v) rank human populations on an evaluative scale. Point (ii) deserves special emphasis. C(1), C(2), and C(3) do not pick out normatively important features. The fact that a group is characterized by a distinctive pattern of visible physical features is of no intrinsic normative significance. The fact that a group consists of members who are linked by a common ancestry peculiar to those members is of no intrinsic normative significance. And the fact that a group originates from a distinctive geographic location is of no intrinsic normative significance. Also, the conjoint fact that a group is characterized by a distinctive pattern of visible physical characteristics and consists of members who are linked by a common ancestry and originates from a distinctive geographic location is of no intrinsic normative significance. The status of being a minimalist race has no intrinsic normative significance. By the same token, the status of being a member of a minimalist race has no intrinsic normative significance. In and of itself, minimalist race is what Elizabeth Anderson calls an “arbitrary identity group.”18

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The minimalist race concept is nonessentialist by clauses (iii) and (iv). It is nonhierarchical by virtue of clause (ii) and (v). Not being essentialist or hierarchical, it is nonracialist. It should also be pointed out that the content of the concept contains no elements that would incline people to reach the conclusion that people who differ in shape and color are likely to differ in normatively important characteristics. There is nothing in the features picked out by C(1)– C(3) that cause or motivate people to associate differences in visible physical characteristics with differences in normatively impor tant features. The fact that the minimalist race concept represents certain conditions C(1)– C(3) as “essential” to racehood (individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a group’s counting as a race) does not entail that the concept is “essentialist” in the objectionable sense. For a race concept to be essentialist in that sense, it must posit an intrinsic racial essence. It must say that possession of a racial essence (a set of intrinsic properties) is an essential condition of being a member of a race and say that each race has a shared racial essence. The minimalist concept of race says neither of these things. It does not attribute racial essences to race members or races. It does not posit the existence of racial essences. Relative to the racialist concept of race, the minimalist race concept is deflationary. It lets the racialist air out of the racialist concept, so to speak. Unlike the latter, it does not purport to explain human behavior or the social hierarchy of race. It does not purport to have any correlation with characteristics “currently thought to be impor tant for moral or social life.”19 Explaining cultural and social phenomena falls outside its job description. The fact that it does none of these things is a plus.20 It is also worth noting that the minimalist concept of race does not purport to be central to biological thinking about human beings. This is another feature that distinguishes it from the racialist concept of race, which does claim to be central to biological thinking about human beings. I also regard the minimalist concept of race’s epistemic modesty in this regard as a plus. The fact that the minimalist concept of race does not contain the concepts of normatively important features or essences, the fact that it does not purport to explain human behavior or the social hierarchy of race, and the fact that it does not purport to be central to biological thinking are all respects in which it is deflationary. Now, a race concept might be racist without being racialist. There could be a concept that dropped the idea of biological essence and the notion that there are normatively impor tant features common and peculiar to members

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of race and understood race to involve biologically caused statistical differences in normatively impor tant traits. Such a race concept would be racist. It would exemplify “neoracialist racism.” It is clear that the minimalist concept of race does not represent races in this way. It is not racist. The minimalist concept of race does not preclude the possibility of saying that races are characterized by biologically caused statistical differences in normatively impor tant traits. But we should not expect a race concept to do that. All we can reasonably ask is that there be nothing in a concept’s content that suggests that races are characterized by biologically caused statistical differences in normatively impor tant traits. The minimalist concept of race satisfies this condition.

2.6 The Three Basic Conditions Examined 2.6.1 Condition C(1) Condition C(1) says that races are distinguished by patterns of visible physical characteristics. It guarantees that human groups, such as the Amish, economic classes, and Ivy Leaguers, that are not distinguished from other human groups by visible physical differences will not count as races.21 It captures the basic intuition that people who belong to different races look different. This point requires immediate qualification. A given individual member of R may not exhibit a visible physical characteristic typical of Rs. C(1) says that people who belong to different races generally look different from one another. It allows for the possibility that individual members of two different races may not differ in visible physical features. The visible physical features that figure in race are the sort of biological characteristics that biologists call “phenotypic.” The ordinary idea of a race is the idea of a group with a distinctive phenotype. To think of a group as a race is inter alia to think of it as having a distinctive pattern of phenotypic features. One might wonder whether the physical features that figure in a race’s distinctive pattern of physical features must be visible. Suppose it turned out that there were human subpopulations distinguished by patterns of nonvisible physical traits, such as resistance to disease, that corresponded to differences in geographical ancestry but that exhibited no visible physical differences. Would these populations be races? My answer is no, not in the sense of the term fi xed by the ordinary concept of race. The idea that races

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are distinguished by visible physical differences seems to be one of the ordinary concept’s bare bones. One could have a race-like notion that made no reference to visible physical features, and such a concept might possibly be useful, but it would not be the ordinary concept of race. The ordinary concept of race requires visible physical differences.22 The prototypical example of a visible physical feature of race is, of course, skin color (that is, pigmentation). Differences of skin color are often said to be the differences people think of first when thinking of racial differences. It is, however, crucial to distinguish the concept race from the concept skin color. Skin color ≠ race. The skin color of members of two distinct races may be indistinguishable. We should not be surprised to find that this is the case. Confusion can arise because it is possible to speak of skin color as race. This possibility is explained by the fact that skin color can function as a metonym for the full range of relevant physical features (for example, skin color, eye shape, lip form, hair type, and so on) associated with race and indeed for race as such. The figurative identity of race and skin color should not be interpreted literally. Not all differences in skin color are racial. Differences due to sun exposure, color-altering chemicals, illness, the operation of science-fictional visiblephysical-appearance-changing machines, infusions of synthetic melanin, or pre- or postnatal genetic engineering are not racial. To be counted as racial, a feature must be innate. The innate visible physical features of race are inherited, passed down biologically to offspring from their parents. To count as racial, a visible physical feature must be heritable. Because the visible physical features of race are heritable, the skin color, hair type, and eye shape of children of Rs tend to resemble the skin color, hair type, and eye shape of their parents. Some heritable innate visible physical characteristics are not racial. Adam’s apples, for example. Why this is so is easy to see. The division between people who have Adam’s apples and people who lack them is a division between sexes, not a division between races. Race and sex are different concepts. This distinction is basic. A person who failed to grasp it would lack a minimal understanding of the concept race.23 To count as racial, a visible physical characteristic must be real (as opposed to imaginary).24 One might mistakenly regard G1 and G2 as different races based on merely imagined differences. But unless G1 actually exhibits a pattern of visible physical features distinguishing it from some

36

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other group, G2, G1 is not a race. If (as seems to be the case) there are no patterns in differences in visible physical features that distinguish the Amish from other Caucasians, the Amish are not a distinct minimalist race.25 It should be stressed that races are characteristically distinguished from one another by a number of different visible physical features: skin color and eye shape, hair type and gross morphology, and so forth. 26 Races are not defined by reference to any one trait alone. Different races can have the same skin color. Sub-Saharan Africans and Negritos, for example. Two races that share a visible physical characteristic (for example, skin color) will typically differ with respect to some other visible features (for example, hair type). The common objection that there is no objective reason to choose one visible physical feature over another to define ‘race’ misses the point that ‘race’ is not defined in terms of any one visible physical feature.27 The visible physical features characteristic of races form patterns (multiplicities of features arranged in different ways): this skin color going with this eye shape and this hair type. The pattern of visible physical features each race exhibits distinguishes it from some other race. Nonetheless, the patterns any two races exhibit may be similar. This is likely to be the case if the ancestral homes of the two groups are adjacent. The lines distinguishing patterns of visible physical features of different races and, like them, the lines distinguishing the visible physical features of individual members of different races may not be sharp. The minimalist concept of race allows that the boundaries between races may be blurry. Reflection on the minimalist concept of race makes clear that racial groups are not defined as “discrete” groups of people.28 The fact that the minimalist race concept allows for the possibility that the boundaries between races may be blurry distinguishes it from the racialist concept of race, which requires sharp boundaries.29 If one had hitherto thought that a group has to have sharp boundaries to be a race, this is an indication that one may have been operating with the racialist race concept. The minimalist concept of race turns out to be a vague notion. This feature should not, however, be regarded as a defect. It reflects the ontological blurriness of the objects to which it purports to refer. Here it is salutary to recall that we are used to the idea of objects with blurry edges in biology. There is nothing unbiological about the notion that races have boundaries that are blurry. On the contrary. How precisely the pattern characteristic of any given minimalist race is to be characterized is a matter of some delicacy. I don’t propose to settle the matter here. Properly specifying such a pattern would require the competence

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of a physical anthropologist. Fortunately, such a specification is not required for an adequate characterization of the concept of minimalist race. Nonetheless, we can say that for any given race R, there is an in-principle answer to the question, What pattern of visible physical characteristics does it exhibit?—an answer we can get wrong.30 This is one respect in which racehood is objective. It is, however, possible to specify the kind of visible physical traits the minimalist concept of race picks out in a general way. They are visible physical features that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry.31 Differences in skin color, eye shape, nose form, hair type, and so forth count as racial because they are differences that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. Inasmuch as the kind of visible physical features that count as racial are fi xed by reference to differences in geograph ical ancestry, they are not defi ned by reference to the fact that they are “features to which human perceptions are most fi nely attuned” or picked out as racial because they are features people “ordinarily use to distinguish individuals,” as Richard Lewontin suggests.32 From the standpoint of the minimalist race concept, the attunement of human perception to patterns of racial features is an accidental matter. The fact that human perception happens to be attuned to these patterns does not show that the concept is invidiously subjective. The patterns of visible physical features that count as racial would count as such even if human perceptions were not finely attuned to them. These patterns, being instances of order in nature, are not gerrymandered. They are nonarbitrary objects of attention. The set {skin color, nose shape, hair type} constitutes a grouping that could be intuitively characterized as “natural” in contrast to the “unnatural” set formed by my left shoe, Einstein on the Beach, and Pluto. Moreover the features that figure in the patterns characteristic of race—for example, skin color, nose shape, and hair type—are united by a real commonality: they all share a common geographical origin. The fact that these features have a common origin constitutes a further respect in which the patterns they form are “natural.” What the geneticist and statistician Alan Templeton refers to as the dominance of “easily observed morphological characters” in the concept of race finds its objective justification in the fact that the objective patterns they constitute are the dominant feature of the phenomenon the concept purports to picks out.33 The upshot is that there is nothing arbitrary about the minimalist race concept’s focus on visible physical features that correspond to differences in

38

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geographical ancestry. Focusing on these features is the concept’s job. If it didn’t focus on these features, it wouldn’t be the concept it is.

2.6.1.1 The Modesty of C(1)’s Demands A full understanding of C(1) requires a clear grasp of what it does not demand. It does not require that racial groups be distinguished by each of their visible physical features. Nor does it demand that the visible physical features of each member of a race be identical. It allows that skin pigmentation can vary as much within a race as between races. And it allows that there can be “a good deal of variation with these areas, in skin, hair color, and the morphology of the skull.”34 In allowing that the boundaries between the patterns of visible physical features may be blurry, it allows that the differences between the visible physical features of different races may be what biologists call “clinal” (that is, vary gradually across geographical space). Physical anthropologist Frank Livingstone’s well-known adage “ There are no races, only clines” overlooks the possibility that, logically speaking, races might be clines.35 The concept of race does not require that differences of skin color be “orderly” (for example, that every black person be darker than every white person).36 These negative points might be summed up by saying that, contrary to what one might think, condition C(1) does not make the minimalist race concept essentialist or typological.

2.6.1.2 Examples and Hard Cases If one runs through our sample of archetypical examples of candidate races, it is evident that each of these groups exhibits a distinctive pattern of visible physical characteristics corresponding to differences in geograph ical ancestry. Europaeus and asiaticus do. So do Ethiopians and Americans. Ditto for Negroids and Mongoloids. And the same again for American Indians and African American blacks. It seems plausible to suppose that the reason these groups count as races in the ordinary sense of the term is that they exhibit patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to geographical ancestry. The fit between C(1) and the examples provides support for the idea that C(1) captures an essential discursive element of race. C(1) provides a partial characterization of this concept. Whether Latinos / Hispanics count as a race is disputed. According to the minimalist concept of race, they do not. The reason for this is simple. They do not share a single pattern of visible physical characteristics. There is

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no one pattern of skin color plus hair type plus lip shape and so forth that is characteristically Latino. Nor do Latinos share a single common geographical origin. Africa is the ancestral home of some; Europe, the ancestral home of others; the Americas, the ancestral home of still others; and Asia, the ancestral home of others still. And many Latinos are of mixed ancestry. Latinos are phenotypically and geographically heterogeneous in a way in which, for example, East Asians are not. Latinos are best thought of as a mixture of minimalist races rather than a single minimalist race. The minimalist concept of race provides a principled reason for not counting Latinos as a race. It says that the group should not be counted as a race because it fails to exhibit characteristics that are necessary for racehood. This finding may be controversial but it is not idiosyncratic. It is shared by, for example, the (most recent) US Census classification of Latinos, which classifies Latino as an ethnicity rather than a race.37 Caveats: To deny that Latinos constitute a race is not to deny that individual Latinos or Latinos as a group can be the targets of racism (for example, owing to skin color). Nor is it to deny that Latinos are often regarded as “racially other” (as differing in some essential humanly important way corresponding to skin color) by members of other racialized groups (for example, Anglos). It is not to deny that they constitute what Lawrence Blum calls a “partially racialized” group.38 Nor is it to deny that they constitute a socialrace in my sense of the term.39 Still less does it imply that Latinos ought not to aspire to a degree of solidarity connoted by the Spanish word raza. It is worth noting that nothing in the content of the minimalist concept of race makes minimalist racehood a group status to be aspired to. As we have noted, minimalist race is what Anderson calls an “arbitrary identity group.” In itself, minimalist racehood is evaluatively neutral.40 The bare fact that two individuals belong to the same minimalist race does not imply that they share a set of common interests or enjoy a special kind of intimacy. Two members of the same minimalist race may share nothing beyond a similar set of visible physical features (and even that is not guaranteed by their membership in the same race) and a common geographical ancestry. This is an important respect in which the minimalist concept of race is deflationary. The case of Latinos illustrates the fact that whether a given group G is a race (in the sense of the term fi xed by the minimalist race concept) is not determined by whether anyone (including members of G) thinks of G as a race. In other words, minimalist racehood is not fi xed by the subjectivity (the selfconception) of group members. It instead is an objective status determined

40

Rethinking Race

factually by whether G satisfies the three basic conditions. This is another respect in which racehood is an objective matter. Mention of Latinos raises the question of the relation between the concept of minimalist race and the concept of ethnicity.

2.6.1.3 race and ethnicity The concept race is distinct from the concept ethnicity. Ethnicity is a cultural concept. Its conditions make essential reference to items such as language, nationality, religion, outlook, habits, norms, styles, or skills. The concept of ethnicity is also cultural in that human subjectivity figures constitutively in it: in contrast to the identity of a racial group, the identity of a “mature” ethnic group (an ethnic group that has a developed self-conception) is determined at least in part by its members’ conception of what it is to be a member of that group. The minimalist concept of race is not a cultural concept. Its conditions make no reference to the sort of cultural items that figure essentially in the specification of the concept ethnicity. Members of the same race (for example, an Afro-Caribbean and African American) may not share a common culture. Even if most members of minimalist race MR share a common culture, the fact that an individual member of MR is not a part of that culture does not entail that he or she is any less a member of MR than any other member of MR. Not being a cultural concept, the minimalist race contains no features with respect to which an individual could be said to be inauthentic. If A and B belong to different races, they may exhibit cultural differences that are (historically) associated with the race to which they belong, but these cultural features are not in themselves racial. To think of individuals A and B as racially different using the minimalist concept of race is not eo ipso to conceive of them as culturally different. Although distinct, the concepts race and ethnicity do not differ in every respect. The concept ethnicity resembles the concept race structurally in making essential reference to ancestry. Each ethnic group shares a common ancestry. Inasmuch as the concept of ethnicity includes the concept of ancestry, it contains a biological “moment.” We therefore cannot say flatly that the concept of race is biological and the concept of ethnicity is not. Ethnicity is a biocultural notion. Race is a noncultural biological notion.41

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In contrast to race, the concept ethnicity makes no essential reference to patterns of visible physical differences. There is no tension in the idea that individual members of two distinct ethnicities may be visually indistinguishable. Members of a particular ethnic group E (for example, Italian Americans) may regard racial identity (being white) or the possession of par ticular racial traits (having white skin) as a constitutive element of their ethnicity. WASPs presumably regard whiteness as a constitutive feature of their ethnicity. But it is not clear (to me at least) that ethnic groups must regards race as a constitutive element of ethnicity.

2.6.1.4 Is C(1) Essential to Race? It seems to me that, if anything is obvious about the concept race, it is that differences in patterns of visible physical characteristics such as skin color, eye shape, and hair type are necessary features of it. But not everyone agrees. The scientist Jared Diamond is the best-known dissident. In his influential essay “Race without Color,” Diamond maintains that it is possible for a genuinely racial division to be based solely on differences in invisible biological features such as the presence (or absence) of antimalaria genes or the enzyme lactase.42 He speaks of (white) Swedes as belonging with (black) Fulani in the “lactase-positive race,” and holds that most African “blacks,” Japanese, and American Indians belong together in the “lactase-negative race.” If Diamond secures our agreement on this point, it is by seducing us into playing a novel language game that consists of extending the application of the word ‘race’ beyond its ordinary bounds. The success he has experienced in gaining his readers’ assent is testimony to his rhetorical genius. But, once his rhetorical move is exposed for what it is, it becomes obvious that, when the application of the word ‘race’ is expanded in this way, it is no longer being used in its ordinary sense. The so-called lactase-positive and lactasenegative races simply are not races in the ordinary sense of the term. The Swedes and Fulani (the lactase-positive “race”) do not constitute a race in the ordinary sense of the term because they share neither a common pattern of visible physical characteristics nor a common geographical ancestry. The same point holds of the Japanese and the American Indians (the lactasenegative “race”). Two groups do not count as a race merely by virtue of sharing a single arbitrarily chosen physical feature.

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Diamond trades surreptitiously on an ambiguity in the true idea that there is something arbitrary about race. There are many contexts in which appeals to race are arbitrary. Illicit appeals to race in ethical and political contexts (unfairly denying someone a job on the basis of his or her race) immediately come to mind. But from the fact that it is possible to appeal arbitrarily to race, it does not follow that the concept race itself is arbitrary. Its content cannot be fi lled in any way one pleases. One can construct a concept by collecting arbitrary biological properties and declaring groups who share the chosen properties to be “races.” But one cannot construct a genuine race concept in this way. With respect to the first basic condition, then, Diamond appears to be an outlier. Considered as a characterization of one essential element of race, C(1) is relatively uncontroversial.

2.6.2 The Status of C(2) and C(3) Like C(1), C(2) and C(3) represent intuitively plausible partial characterizations of race that can be seen on reflection to capture essential constituents of the whole concept. But their dialectical status is somewhat different from that of C(1). Competent users of the word ‘race’ generally recognize the essentiality of C(1) right off the bat. The essentiality of C(2) and C(3) may not be as readily recognized. Patterns of visible physical characteristics are or figure in the primary epistemic characterization of race: the characterization of conditions speakers treat as basic for applying the concept of race. Ancestry and geography do not play this role. They don’t lie on the surface of the concept, so to speak. Recognizing that they are essential to race requires more reflection than grasping the essentiality of C(1).

2.6.3 Condition C(2) Condition C(2) makes it explicit that ‘race’ is not defined in terms of visible physical characteristics (what Lewontin calls “manifest morphological traits”) alone.43 It shows that race is also defined in terms of ancestry. Ancestry is essential to race. Race has an essential historical dimension. Races are morphologically marked ancestry groups. If this is correct, it is misleading to speak of racial classification, as is sometimes done, as a partitioning of human phenotypes, period.44 Racial

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classification is a partitioning of differences of phenotypes that correspond to differences in ancestry. You may be able to distinguish between some members of distinct races on the basis of their visible physical features alone, but there is no guarantee that this can be done generally. Differences in ancestry must be appealed to for a full metaphysical characterization of race (that is, a full characterization of what race is). They must also be appealed to for a full characterization of the visible physical features that figure in C(1). The visible physical features that figure in that condition are features that vary according to geographical ancestry.

2.6.3.1 Support In support of the claim that races are ancestry groups, I would fi rst appeal to the sheer intuitiveness of the idea. I would then note that all the archetypical examples of races we considered earlier—Linnaeus’s americanus, europaeus, asiaticus, and afer; Blumenbach’s Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay; UNESCO’s Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid; and the OMB’s American Indian or Alaska Native, black, Asian, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander, and white are ancestral groups. The fit between C(2) and the archetypical examples provides support for the claim that C(2) is an essential constituent of the concept of race.

2.6.3.2 Admixture Does racial ancestry that figures in the minimalist race concept allow of admixture? If so, how much? Just as C(1) does not require sharp lines between the visible physical characteristics exhibited by different races, so too C(2) does not require that all the ancestors of an R be Rs. A race is a biological line of descent—a sequence of ancestors and descendants—that allows of some admixture. In biological terms, the point being made is that C(2) does not require that races be monophyletic.45 A racial line of descent (i) originates in a distinctive geographical location and (ii) preserves the visibly distinctive pattern of phenotypic features characteristic of the race. This characterization is consistent with the scientific finding that there are no “pure” biological races. A race is a more or less endogamous group. Just how much interbreeding R can undergo and remain a race is a function of the amount of interbreeding it can undergo and retain its pattern of visible physical characteristics. No sharp line determines the point at which, owing to

44

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admixture, a race ceases to be a race. Th is is another respect in which the concept race is vague.

2.6.3.3 The Ecumenicalism of the Minimalist Race Concept I have emphasized that the minimalist race concept does not require that races be sharply distinguished discrete groups because it is often (falsely) suggested that the very idea of a race is the idea of a sharply distinguished discrete group.46 But I should make clear that the minimalist race concept does not preclude the possibility that races are sharply distinguished discrete groups. It does not require that the boundaries between races be blurry. If the sort of groups that the racialist race concept counts as races existed, the minimalist race concept would count them as races too. There is room in the minimalist race concept for sharply defi ned races. Furthermore, there is, paradoxically, room in the minimalist race concept for racialist races. The racialist race concept, fully specified, is the minimalist race concept plus the four racialist adjuncts (a fi xed set of physical, moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics; strict correlation; essence; and rankability).47 This means that, if there were any racialist races, they would, strictly speaking, satisfy the minimalist concept of race (C(1)–(3)). How can this be? The minimalist concept of race is nonracialist. It contains no racialist components. But it does not itself specify that minimalist races are nonracialist. So, strictly speaking, racialist races, if such there were, would be minimalist races. So, we need to distinguish between minimalist races that are and minimalist races that are not racialist races. Let us adopt the term ‘racialist minimalist race’ (which sounds like an oxymoron but strictly speaking is not) as the formal designation for minimalist races (groups satisfying C(1)– C(3)) that are also racialist races (groups that also satisfy the four racialist adjuncts). And let us adopt the term ‘nonracialist minimalist race’ (which sounds like a pleonasm but strictly speaking is not) as the formal designation for minimalist races (groups satisfying C(1)– C(3)) that are not racialist races (groups that do not satisfy the four racialist adjuncts). To simplify matters, I will follow the convention (which I have been implicitly following) of using the expression ‘minimalist race’ (unmodified) to refer to nonracialist minimalist races unless other wise specified. No major conceptual moves are being made here. I’m simply clarifying the terminology. Since there are no racialist races, there are no racialist minimalist races.48 The expression ‘racialist minimalist race’ does not refer.

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The only minimalist races there are, if indeed there are any, are nonracialist minimalist races. So there should be no problem in using the expression ‘minimalist race’ (in the way we have been using it) to refer to nonracialist minimalist races.

2.6.3.4 Objections 2.6.3.4.1 glasgow Joshua Glasgow denies that C(2) is an essential component of the ordinary concept of race. He invites us to imagine that tomorrow “God creates a world exactly like ours, such that the only difference is that the people in it—our doppelgangers—and every thing else, were created from scratch. Should we say that those people—the people who look exactly like us in twin Africa, Asia, Europe, and so on—constitute races any less than we do, just because the members of each apparently racial population have no distinctive ancestries?” 49 The thought experiment is intended to elicit the answer no. We are supposed to infer that ancestry is not essential to race. But let us suppose that it really is the case that the inhabitants of Racial Twin Earth look “exactly like” us, that is, exactly like all of us. If they do, then children on Racial Twin Earth will bear the same physical resemblance to their parents that children bear to their parents in our world. They will tend to resemble their parents with respect to skin color, eye shape, head form, and so forth. Presumably they will also resemble their parents genetically with respect to the underlying genes for these visible physical features. But if the only thing that distinguishes our Racial Twin Earth Doppelgängers from us is the fact that they have been created from scratch, then it is plausible to suppose that all the empirical evidence available on Racial Twin Earth would indicate that the groups that exhibit distinctive visible physical appearances have distinctive ancestries and therefore that they also satisfy C(2). But if this is the case, the sense in which these groups “have no distinctive ancestries” is wholly “metaphysical” (in the old-fashioned, pejorative sense of the term). Glasgow envisages Racial Twin Earth in such a way that, from an empirical (that is, human) point of view, these groups would have distinctive ancestries, even if they did not have distinctive ancestries an sich. But if this is so, the groups do not provide a good example of races that lack distinctive ancestries and so do not constitute a clear counterexample to C(2). Glasgow also mounts an empirically based argument against C(2). Subjects were asked to consider, as a thought experiment, the case of George,

46

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“who has all black ancestry but invents a machine to change his appearance so that he looks white.”50 It was found that that “41 percent of respondents said that George was not black after his transformation.” Drawing on this result, Glasgow concludes that “if two-fifths of people can deny that George is black, it’s hard to see how it’s conceptually true that one must have the same race as one’s ancestors.”51 But is this so hard to see? The conceptual waters are muddied by the vagueness of the expression “change of appearance.” Was George’s transformation merely “cosmetic” (or cosmetic-cum-medical) à la Michael Jackson? (How exactly did the subjects understand the terms of the thought experiment? What exactly is supposed to have happened in the experiment? The answers to these questions are unclear.) But let’s suppose charitably that George undergoes “a deep constitutional change” (Glasgow’s expression) such that not only are his skin color and hair transformed but his skull shape and bone structure are as well, and that this is understood by the experimental subjects.52 We can ask, Supposing all this is true, does George cease to be black? I would contend that the philosophical answer to this question is no. Although George’s transformed visible physical characteristics look like the kind of characteristics that are biologically inherited from one’s parents, they are not in fact biologically inherited (remember they are the product of George’s transmogrification in the appearance-changing machine) and hence not of the relevant kind. Now, to this, Glasgow might object that the idea that visible physical characteristics of race must be inherited is question begging. It is open to him to say that testing this very idea was one of the points of the experiment. So I won’t rely on this premise. And since Glasgow could mount a parallel objection to the idea that, to count as racial, visible physical differences must be innate, I won’t rely on it either. I can imagine George stepping into a machine with the pattern of visible physical characteristics associated with one race and stepping out with the pattern of visible physical characteristics associated with another race. What is not clear to me is that that there is a fact of the matter concerning George’s postmetamorphosis race. Why should we suppose there is one? Why should we assume that the George who steps out of the machine is a George who has a race? It comes as no surprise that many people will say that the white-looking George who steps out of the machine has a race. The idea that everybody

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has a race (even if that race is mixed) is a deeply entrenched cultural assumption. But this is not philosophically dispositive. Couldn’t the explanation of the observed split among the experimental subjects about the race of the George who steps out be that there is no fact of the matter concerning his postmetamorphosis racial status? We should also bear in mind that, although many visible physical features of race can be modified or masked through the use of cosmetics, wigs, or cosmetic surgery, the fact remains that, in the world we inhabit, these features are to a large extent inalterable. This inalterability (the so-called “immutability” of race) is contingent in the sense that the future may bring a technology that would make the sort of machine Glasgow envisages possible. But one important fact about the phenomenon of biological race as we know it is that the world contains no such machines. Now, if this is so, then thought experiments about the nature of race involving appearance-transforming machines are inherently problematic. The metaphilosophical lesson here is that contents of empirical concepts are invariably tied to specific contingent features of the empirical world, and, in constructing sci-fi examples to test the specification of their content, we should respect the contingencies to which the concepts are tied. In my view, George’s case does not so much establish a result about race’s content as raise a question about how the concept would be projected—if indeed it would be projected—in a world for which it was not built. Suppose visible-physical-feature-changing machines come to be mass produced and cheap. It’s by no means clear that under those circumstances we would (or should) say there are races anymore. The concept might go out of business. In any case, the most that can be inferred from George’s case is that, for all we know, it may be possible for there to be extraordinary circumstances in which an individual’s race could be different from the race of his or her parents. This result is not, however, sufficient to break the conceptual tie between race and ancestry, for that connection obtains at the level of the group.53 With regard to C(2), the crucial question is not whether under extraordinary circumstances it is conceptually possible for a single individual to be of a different race from his or her ancestors. It is whether it is conceptually possible to have races (plural) that aren’t ancestry groups. This question can be addressed by supposing that—somehow!—a generation of “black-looking” parents gives birth to a successor generation of “white-looking” children, and that that generation of “white-looking” parents gives birth to a successor generation of “Asian-looking” children, and

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that that generation of “Asian-looking” parents gives birth to a successor generation of “black-looking” children. We should also suppose that this process repeats itself over and over again across many generations. Now, in the permuted world, there would at any given time be groups of “white-looking,” “black-looking,” and “Asian-looking” individuals. But from this it does not follow that these groups would constitute races. Moreover, I suspect that people in the permuted world would over time cease to regard the groups—the collections of white-looking, black-looking, and Asian-looking individuals that resulted from this process—as races. It seems to me that this would be a genuinely postracial world. The upshot of these reflections is that Glasgow’s thought experiments do not establish their intended result. They do not show that full specification of race can dispense with C(2).

2.6.3.4.2 brazil It might be suggested that another possible counterexample—a realistic one this time—to the idea that ancestry is essential to race can be found in the well-known Brazilian practice of assigning individuals to racial categories on the basis of visible physical appearance rather than ancestry.54 Doesn’t this practice show that the Brazilians have a race concept that lacks an ancestry component? And wouldn’t that show that you can have a race concept that lacks an ancestry component? The word most commonly used for (what Americans would call) “race” in Brazilian Portuguese is not raça (the cognate of ‘race’) but côr (the cognate of ‘color’).55 It seems plausible to suppose that the word côr expresses a concept distinct from race— one that might be tagged, using our small-caps convention, côr. Côr resembles race in including a variant of C(1). It differs from race in not including C(2) and C(3). Côr = race minus the idea that the visible physical characteristics must correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. The same point could be made about the Brazilian Portuguese term raça (which is interchangeable with côr). Brazilians could of course argue that the concept-label ‘race’ should be reserved for the concept expressed by their terms côr and raça. But this would be a point about labeling rather than a substantive point about the identity of the concepts in question. Who has claim to the concept-label ‘race’ is not a matter of great concern to me. My point is that the concept the Brazilian Portuguese terms raça and côr express is not identical the concept expressed by our term ‘race.’

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Given Brazil’s history, it would not be surprising if a race-like concept distinct from race came into circulation. Perhaps we should regard the categories in Brazil that correspond to American racial categories—white, black, and so on—as color categories, rather than racial ones. On the other hand, it is not clear that the Brazilian concept côr is altogether independent of the phenomenon we Americans designate using ‘race.’ The color that ‘côr’ picks out is racial skin color. The well-known, widespread preference for lighter (whiter) skin in Brazil is at least arguably a racial preference. It seems likely that white skin color is preferred because of its association with the white race. Th is provides a reason for thinking that the minimalist concept of race may be lurking in the background of Brazilian thinking about race. It is also worth noting that, although the sort of discrimination (hostility, subordination, indifference) on the basis skin-color that obtains in Brazil might be aptly called “colorism,” the conceptual proximity of côr to race is such that it would not be inappropriate to call it “racism.”

2.6.3.5 Individual Ancestry In ordinary circumstances the minimalist concept of race is deployed according to the following rule: If both parents of an individual belong to one par ticu lar racial group R, that individual will belong to R.

What happens, however, if one parent belongs to R1 and the other parent belongs to R 2? The minimalist concept of race does not say. Still less does it tell us what one’s race is if one of one’s grandparents belongs to R1, another to R 2, another to R 3, and another to R4. This is a further respect in which the minimalist race concept is indeterminate (vague). Particular conceptions of race (for example, the infamous American “onedrop rule”) may specify the race of individuals of “mixed” parentage, but the minimalist concept of race does not. The idea that a genuine concept of race must specify the race of each individual is a hangover from the racialist race concept. Recall here that the minimalist racehood is not defined in terms of the characteristics of the individuals who belong to races. It is defined in terms of characteristics of groups.

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2.6.4 Condition C(3) C(2) isn’t independent of C(3), so the step to C(3) is short.56 The ancestry that plays a role in race is geographical ancestry. C(3) makes it explicit that the differences in patterns of visible physical features that figure in the determination of race are differences associated with differences of geographical ancestry. It tells us that race is morphologically marked geographical ancestry. Just as C(1) does not require that the patterns of visible physical characteristics distinguishing races be sharply defined, C(3) does not require sharp distinctions in the geographical regions from which different races originate. This is a further respect in which the minimalist concept of race is vague.

2.6.4.1 Philological Support for C(3) Hermeneutic evidence of a discursive association between geography and race can be found in some of the names the major writers on race in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries assigned to racial groups. As we have seen, Linnaeus offered the labels americanus, europaeus, asiaticus, and afer.57 Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon used the labels ‘American,’ ‘African,’ ‘Chinese,’ ‘Laplander,’ and ‘European.’ The terms favored by Blumenbach are ‘Caucasian’ (from Mount Caucasus), ‘Mongolian,’ ‘Ethiopian,’ ‘Asian,’ and ‘Malay.’ The use of typonyms in the naming of racial groups suggests that the thinkers who chose these names were thinking of race as a geographical grouping. The association between race and geography is preserved on or below the surface of many names used for racial groups today. It lies on the surface of ‘Asian’ (which refers primarily to East Asians) and below the surface of ‘white’ (Europe) and ‘black’ (sub-Saharan Africa). The underlying intuitive idea is that racial groups have their origin in different geographical locations. If R1 is a racial group, there is a more or less well-defined geographical location G1 uniquely associated with it that is more or less distinct from some other geographical location G2 uniquely associated with some other racial group R 2. Differences in the patterns of visible physical features that distinguish races reflect and are explained by differences in geographical origin. The geographical regions from which races stem are geographically separated and have more or less distinct climates and environmental conditions,

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factors that are likely to have figured in the development of the patterns of visible physical characteristics races exhibit. Differences in geographical locations can be thought of as proxies for factors that figure in the explanation of the differences in the patterns referred to in C(1). The minimalist race concept does not fi x a minimum or maximum size for the geographical regions that figure in the genesis of races, but prototypical examples of such regions are continental regions (the Americas), subcontinents (sub-Saharan Africa), and what might be called quasi-continental regions (Oceania). Interestingly, Caucasians (in the anthropologists’ sense of the word) are associated with a cluster containing a continent (Europe, which might be more accurately designated a subcontinent) and continental regions (North Africa and western Asia). I would resist the suggestion that the geographical regions that are the aboriginal home of races must be roughly continental because I will want to allow for the possibility that continental races can contain smaller races that originate in regions that are significantly smaller than the continent. (I take this point up later, in 2.7.) In the term ‘Caucasian,’ the Caucasus functions as a metonym for the larger, multicontinental region that constitutes the aboriginal home of the socalled Caucasians. One consideration that may have led Blumenbach to choose a metonym as the designation for this group is that there is no clearly defined geographical region to which he could refer. He famously (or infamously) chose ‘Caucasian’ because he felt that the inhabitants of the Caucasus exhibited “in general, that kind of appearance which, according to our opinion of symmetry, we consider most handsome and becoming.”58 In recent years the concept of the continent has come under fire for not being well defined.59 It is of interest that the formation of the concepts continent and race are roughly coeval. One wonders if the geneses of the two ideas are mutually entwined. Could it be that our idea of a continent derives in part from the idea of the habitat of a racial group? Could it be that the idea of a racial group gets part of its content from the idea of a group whose aboriginal home is a distinctive continent? Perhaps the concepts should be thought of as having been formed in tandem, each helping to fi x the other’s reference.

2.6.4.2 Glasgow Redux Glasgow objects to the notion that C(3) is an essential constituent of the concept race, arguing that if Racial Twin Americans were to deny that

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races have different geographical origins, that would not be sufficient to say that they have a different concept of race.60 I agree. Racial Twin Americans might share our concept of race and deny that races have different geographical origins. This is because they might fail to understand that this is a component of their race concept. If, however, their belief that races do not have different geographical origins did not reflect a misunderstanding of their “race concept,” then their “race concept” would not be the same concept as the concept that is the ordinary concept of race in our world. Their use of ‘race’ would pick out a different subject matter from ours. One final point about C(3). All the “archetypical” examples of candidate races we considered satisfy this condition. Each of these groups has a distinctive aboriginal home. This fit between C(3) and the archetypical examples provides further support for the claim that C(3) is an essential component of the content of minimalist race and for the claim that the minimalist race concept is a genuine race concept. Summing up, it seems to me that the three conditions C(1)– C(3) fi x the minimalist concept of race and capture the core content of the ordinary concept of race. The groups we ordinarily think of as races are all groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical differences that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. Groups that satisfy C(1)– C(3) are races in the ordinary sense of the term.

2.6.5 The Visible Physical Features of Minimalist Race Are Racial The visible physical features of minimalist race that correspond to geographical ancestry count as “racial” because they are defining features of minimalist races. They no more need to be correlated with normatively important features to be properly counted racial than minimalist races need to be characterized by normatively important features to be properly counted races. Just as the concept of minimalist race deflates the concept race, so too it deflates the concept racial. Visible physical features that correspond to geographical ancestry are eo ipso racial.

2.7 Races within Races C(1)– C(3) leave open a possibility that we may not have expected: a race may contain other races.61 Suppose that ‘East Asian’ denotes a minimalist race and suppose further that this race contains subgroups (for example,

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Japanese and Han) that are distinguished by patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry (within East Asia). It would follow that these smaller subgroups are minimalist races too. It may be helpful to recall here that the minimalist concept of race allows that two distinct races may share a common skin color;62 races can be distinguished from one another by visible physical features other than skin color. One could call the larger, more inclusive races “major” races and the smaller, less inclusive races “minor” races, but these terms are likely to connote unwanted ideas of a hierarchy of importance, so it would be better to speak more neutrally of “larger” and “smaller” or more and less “inclusive” races.63 Note that nothing in the minimalist race concept suggests that larger races have more biological significance (or are more “real”) than smaller ones. The differences (phenotypic and genotypic) between the features exhibited by larger races will presumably be greater that the differences between the features exhibited by smaller minimalist races, but the difference between the differences will presumably be a matter of degree. Racehood, on the other hand, is not a scalar notion. A small race is no less a race than a large race. It might be objected that the fact that some races can be subdivided into smaller races entails that the process of racial subdivision can be continued to a point at which race becomes the equivalent of a local population and that this annihilates race’s point.64 There is, however, reason for thinking that this won’t be the case. C(1) guarantees that the pattern of visible physical features of a race must differ from the pattern of visible physical features of some other race. This provides a principled stopping point for the subdivision of races. There will be a lowest level (or infima species) of racial division, that is, a level of division below which races cannot be further subdivided. This will be the level below which the resulting subgroups cease to exhibit distinct patterns of visible physical characteristics. The fact that there is such a stopping point makes it most unlikely that the process of racial subdivision will continue to the level of the local population. The fact that some races can be divided into smaller races does not annihilate the point of the concept race.65 On the other hand, the fact that races may contain (smaller) races does mean that, contrary to what one might have thought, ‘race’ does not pick out a single determinate taxonomic level, but rather a range of levels. If this circumstance violates a desideratum for taxonomic categories (namely, that

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they be strictly hierarchical), it mirrors the taxonomic messiness endemic to biological reality below the level of the species.66 It is not a defect of the minimalist concept of race. Some readers may find the notion that races may contain smaller races revisionary. I do not. The idea is not idiosyncratic. It was part and parcel of the way in which biologists and physical anthropologists standardly thought of races when they still deployed the notion.67 To be sure, if one started out thinking, for example, of Caucasians, East Asians, Africans, and Native Americans as undivided racial groups, it might come as a surprise to learn that some or all of them could turn out to be subdivided into smaller races. But surely whether any or all of these groups can be subdivided into smaller races is an empirical question. Does this entail that minimalist races are too arbitrary, are too dependent on the decisions we make, and come in too many different sizes to count as races in the ordinary sense of the term?68 I don’t think so. What we have learned is precisely that races in the ordinary sense may be more arbitrary, be more dependent on the decisions we make, and come in a larger number of different sizes than we might have initially thought. There is nothing surprising about this result. It is an instance of the general fact that getting clearer about the content of a concept can sometimes put one in a position to discover surprising things about the concept’s extension.

2.8 Race and Racial Classification A fundamental source of confusion about the concept of race is the failure to distinguish it from the concept of racial classification.69 The concept race is not the concept of a racial classification. It is the concept of what a racial classification is a classification of. The concept race constitutes a general framework within which different and competing racial classifications can be articulated. It also constitutes a framework within which it is possible to articulate different racial classifications for different times. East Asians and Pacific Islanders may constitute distinct minimalist races at the present time. But it is also possible that, at an earlier historical epoch, there was an East Asian race but no Pacific Islander race because the population movements that led to the origination of the latter group had not yet occurred. We can use the minimalist race concept to say that at t 2 there are two distinct races East Asians and Pacific Islanders, whereas at t1 there was an East Asian race but no Pacific Islander race. The fact that the minimalist concept of race makes it possible to say this is one of its strengths.

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Now, if race is not a racial classification, it is not identical with any particular racial classification. A fortiori it is not and does not purport to be identical to “the” (any) commonsense or folk classification. Objections to commonsense classifications (which are legion) are not eo ipso objections to the concept race. Rejecting commonsense classifications of race does not commit one to rejecting the minimalist concept of race. The well-known inconsistency of commonsense racial classifications makes nonsense of the popular idea that the attainment of a perfect fit with existing racial classifications is the standard against which the success of an articulation of the ordinary race concept should be measured. On the other hand, it does seem that one can sensibly demand that there be a “reasonable overlap” between the minimalist concept of race and commonsense races. Were there no such overlap, it would be possible to argue that the minimalist concept of race (so called) is not a concept of race. The minimalist concept of race, however, satisfies this requirement since the archetypical examples of race we considered earlier (2.6.1.2, 2.6.3.1, 2.6.4.2) are commonsense races. The analytical task of articulating the concept race must be distinguished from the empirical task of providing a complete racial classification. The present chapter is devoted to the former, analytical task. The empirical task of providing a complete racial classification falls outside its brief. Distinguishing these tasks makes it possible to see that the completion of the analytical task is not beholden to the completion of the empirical task. Just as it is possible to provide a philosophically adequate account of the concept species without a complete classification of species, so is it possible to provide a philosophically adequate account of the concept race without a complete classification of races. The upshot is that we can have a clear understanding of what the content of the concept race is without knowing whether (to take up an example Lewontin critically deploys) the Sami are to be classified with Caucasians or whether they belong with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia.70 A clear understanding of the minimalist race concept tells us that the Sami are to be classified with Caucasians if and only if they share a pattern of visible physical features and a common geographical ancestry with other Caucasians, and that they are to be classified with the Turkic peoples of Central Asia if and only if they share with them a pattern of visible physical features and a common geographical ancestry. The minimalist race concept will not tell us which of these alternatives is correct. Confusion about racial classification should not be confused with confusion about the concept race.71

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2.9 The Transportability of race Although the minimalist concept of race is used in the United States, I do not think it is peculiar to this country. The infamous one-drop rule is peculiar to this country but it is a feature of the American conception of race, not the minimalist concept of race. The sense that the minimalist concept of race must be peculiarly American is the result of the failure to distinguish the ordinary concept of race from the ordinary conception. The ordinary concept of race originated in the West, specifically in Europe, and spread throughout the globe.72 Originally a Western concept, race is now a world concept par excellence. It is clear that different geographical regions have different conceptions of race. But it is plausible to suppose that these different conceptions of race are articulations of one and the same concept (this fact would explain why they are all conceptions of race). I thus disagree with Michael Root’s well-known adage that “race does not travel.” 73 It seems to me, on the contrary, that the minimalist concept of race is extraordinarily well traveled. It spread from the West to the rest of the world. Root is right, however, about racial classifications. They do not travel. Different societies have different classificatory schemes. To cite the stock example, the same person may be counted black in the United States, white in Brazil, and colored in South Africa. Or again, the main “racial” categories in Singapore are not white, black, and Asian, but Chinese, Malay, and Indian. Furthermore, there is cultural variation in what count as commonsense racial categories. ‘Colored’ purports to designate a race in South Africa. It does not (now) in the United States. Some speakers think of Hispanic / Latino as a racial designation. Some do not. But differences in racial classification do not entail a difference in the race concept being used. The fact that different racial classifications are different racial classifications suggests rather that they share a common underlying concept of race.

2.10 The Coherence of the Minimalist Race Concept It is sometimes said that the concept of race is incoherent.74 But this is not the case. First of all, the minimalist concept of race is consistent inasmuch as C(1), C(2), and C(3) are mutually consistent. One and the same group can satisfy C(1), C(2), and C(3). Moreover, the minimalist concept of race is coherent. C(1), C(2), and C(3) hang together in a “natural” way. The patterns of visible physical characteristics specified in C(1) are transmitted from one

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generation to the next in accordance with C(2) and originate in the distinctive geographical regions referred to in C(3). The conceptual significance of C(3) consists in the fact that it picks out the distinctive geographical regions in which the patterns of visible characteristics referred to in C(1), patterns that are transmitted in accordance with C(2), originate. The conceptual significance of C(2) is that it accounts for the transmission of the patterns of visible physical characteristics referred to in C(1) from the groups that initially exhibited these patterns to the groups that exhibit these patterns today.

2.11 Is the Minimalist Concept of Race a Race Concept? It seems to me that it is. Does minimalist race = ordinary race? It seems to me that it does. Conditions C(1)– C(3) appear to capture the core essential features of the ordinary concept of race. The minimalist concept of race thus appears to capture the intension of the logical core of the ordinary race concept. And inasmuch as our archetypical examples of race all satisfy (or appear to satisfy) C(1)– C(3), the minimalist concept of race appears to capture the extension of the logical core of the ordinary concept of race, at least roughly. One might have antecedently thought that notions such as normatively important feature and essence were essential features of the ordinary concept of race, but reflection makes clear that this antecedently held view is false. The thought that the minimalist concept of race captures the ordinary concept of race can be buttressed by the following consideration. Take the UNESCO “big three”: the Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid divisions. Since we know that there are no racialist races (from 1.4), we know that these divisions are not racialist races. Do we really want to say that they are not racial divisions simply because they do not differ in normatively important features or essences? Isn’t it infinitely more plausible to say that ‘Negroid,’ ‘Mongoloid,’ and ‘Caucasoid’ name races? I find these considerations convincing. But as I have said, not everyone will. I can make sense of the person who would insist that the minimalist concept of race is a revision of the ordinary concept of race as opposed to its logical core. Such a person might say, not altogether unreasonably, that, unless a race concept includes the ideas of normatively impor tant differences and essence, it is not the ordinary race concept.75 I have argued that this response is really a reaction to the fact that the ordinary conception of

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race includes the concepts normatively important feature and essence, rather than the ordinary concept, and that the ordinary concept of race does not include the concepts normatively important feature and essence. I have also suggested that readers who nonetheless think that the concepts normatively important feature and essence are essential to race should feel free to regard the minimalist concept of race as a revision of the ordinary concept. What I have difficulty making sense of is the person who flatly denies that the minimalist concept of race is a race concept. How could anyone deny this obvious truth? Here’s a thought. Perhaps the people who are disposed to deny it are so disposed because they themselves are psychologically unable to disassociate the idea of normatively impor tant differences from the minimalist concept of race. Whenever they think of race, they think of normatively important differences. Whenever they think race, they think racialist race. Such a person would be psychologically unable to recognize a concept that did not include the idea of normatively important differences as a concept of race and would therefore deny that minimalist race is race. It is absolutely crucial that we distinguish the psychological inability to disassociate the idea of normatively impor tant differences from race from the conceptual impossibility of having a genuine race concept that does not include the idea of normatively important differences. The former is a subjective incapacity; the latter is an objective impossibility. The fact that some people have the subjective incapacity to disassociate the idea of normatively impor tant differences from the concept of race does not entail the objective impossibility of having a genuine race concept that does not include the idea of normatively important differences. Those of us who have the requisite psychological ability to dissociate the idea of normatively important differences from the minimalist concept of race are able to recognize the minimalist concept of race as a genuine race concept. We have the subjective capacity to recognize the objective possibility of having a race concept that is not racialist. When one looks at the minimalist concept of race, notes that it does not contain the concepts normatively important feature or essence, and recognizes it as a race concept, one can see that it is possible to have a genuine race concept that does not contain these concepts.

2.12 Is the Minimalist Concept of Race Biological or Social? Shifting gears, I turn now to two basic questions concerning the status of the minimalist race concept: Is it biological? Is it social?76

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The two questions must be considered separately, as they are logically independent. It should not be assumed that because a concept is biological in one respect, it is not social in some other respect. By the same token, it should not be assumed that because a concept is social in one respect, it is not biological in another. I start by considering whether the minimalist race concept is a biological concept and then turn to the separate question whether it is a social concept.

2.12.1 Is the Minimalist Concept of Race a Biological Concept? This question can be divided into three subquestions: Is the concept (a) biological in the “basic” sense? (b) biological in the sense of “biologically respectability”? (c) biological in the “scientific sense”? (a) A concept will be said to be biological in the “basic” sense if and only if it represents the objects to which it purports to refer as biological. To represent something as “biological” is to represent it as being characterized in biological terms and as falling within the domain of living things. I am well aware that the claim that race is biological in the basic sense will not receive universal assent, but I take it to be obvious, nonetheless. One picks up this idea in the course of first acquiring the concept. It is possible to lose the intuition, for example, by fi xating on the truth that racialist race is not biologically respectable. But a person who fails to understand that race is biological in the basic sense fails to understand a basic fact about the concept. It’s plain that the minimalist concept of race characterizes the objects to which it purports to refer in biological terms. The visible physical features in terms of which races are defined, such as skin color, hair texture, nose form, and lip shape, are biological properties. The claim that skin color is a biological property should be uncontroversial. Skin color (understood as skin pigmentation) is an objective property of skin. Biologists tell us skin color is the biological product of melanin, carotene (two biologically produced pigments), and the blood underlying the skin. Now, it is true that the experience of skin color involves the play of cultural (which is to say nonbiological) factors. So skin color isn’t just biological. Much work has been devoted to articulating the myriad cultural meanings and semiotic properties of skin color. Some would argue that it is psychologically impossible to perceive skin color without automatically also

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attributing to it invidious meanings and pejorative properties. Others would argue we are unable to perceive the physical differences of skin color without simultaneously classifying the individuals who exhibit them into invidious, socially sanctioned “racial” groupings called races. None of these points, however, contradicts the plain fact that skin color (understood as skin pigmentation) is biological. The fact that the minimalist race concept makes reference to the notion of a distinctive geographical region does not render the concept unbiological. First of all, the mere presence of a nonbiological element in the content of a concept would not be sufficient to produce this result. The notion that a concept must be defined exclusively in biological terms to count as biological runs afoul of the familiar idea that biology does not constitute an explanatorily closed domain. More fundamentally, the notion of a distinctive geographical region that figures in the minimalist race concept is a biogeographical notion and as such falls within the domain of biology.77 So it is safe to say that the minimalist race concept is biological in the basic sense. It is worth pausing to make clear just how unexceptional the biologicalin-the-basic-sense claim is. It is a descriptive assertion about the manifest content of the minimalist race concept—nothing more. One can say a concept is biological in the basic sense without saying it is biological in any of the stronger senses mentioned previously. One can assert it without saying that the minimalist race concept is biologically basic or fundamental, that it picks out important genetic differences, that it is essentialist or scientific, or even that it refers.78 The last point is illustrated by the concept unicorn, which is biological in the basic sense (unicorns aren’t robots) and vacuous. My reason for belaboring the point that race is biological in the basic sense is that the point is often lost sight of in the discussions of race— and sometimes even denied. It is not a trivial fact about the concept. (b) A concept will be said to be “biologically respectable” if and only if it is (i) biological in the basic sense, and (ii) consistent with the principles and findings of contemporary biology. We have already clarified (i). A pair of examples will suffice to convey what is meant by (ii). homunuclus is not a biologically respectable concept. tree is. There is no place in modern biology for homunculi; there is a place for trees. Likewise, there is a place in modern biology for minimalist races. Another way of putting the point would be to say that the concept of minimalist race is not an unscientific idea.

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Things are other wise with the racialist race concept. It is more like homunculus than tree. It lacks biological respectability because, as we saw in Chapter 1, it violates (ii). We might say the racialist race concept stands in biological disrepute. It is an unscientific idea. Since at one point it represented a respectable hypothesis, we cannot say that it always was an unscientific idea. But we can say that it is an unscientific idea now. It’s worth noting that the concept of biological respectability provides a notion of biologicalness with respect to which it is true and informative to say of the racialist concept of race that it is not biological. It is not biological in the sense of not being biologically respectable. But from the fact that it is not biologically respectable, it does not follow that it is not biological in the basic sense. The racialist concept of race is biological in the basic sense despite being biologically unrespectable. As for the minimalist race concept, nothing in its content confl icts with the principles and findings of contemporary biology. As we have seen, it does not posit the existence of a biological essence or require a correlation between the visible physical features of race and humanly impor tant characteristics. Its “genetic profi le” is much less demanding than that of the racialist race concept: it imposes no requirement that the fraction of amongrace diversity exceed the fraction of between-race diversity. It is compatible with within-race variation being large and between-race variation being small. It does not require that most genes be highly differentiated by race. It is utterly free of the scientifically disrespectable features essential to the racialist concept of race. The minimalist race concept is biologically respectable. In this respect, the minimalist race concept is like tree. Contemporary biology has no objection to the concept tree. It ought to have no objection to the concept minimalist race. (c) A concept will be said to be biological in the “scientific sense” if and only if it is (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

biologically respectable, formulated in a “biological” vocabulary, framed in terms of an accepted biological outlook, suitable for deployment in an accepted branch of biological inquiry, and presents the scientific ground of the phenomenon it represents.

Note that a concept need not be central to biological thinking or actually deployed by working biologists to count as a scientific concept in biology. The former point (that it need not be central to biological thinking) allows

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for the possibility of deflationary scientific concepts. The latter point (that it need not be actually deployed by working biologists) reflects the fact that the status in question (that is, scientific) is a normative one. The minimalist race concept meets (i) but fails to satisfy (ii), (iii), and (v). To say that a concept is formulated in a “biological” vocabulary is to say that it is formulated using the vocabulary of biological science. The minimalist concept of race is not formulated in a “biological” vocabulary. Nor is it framed in terms of an accepted biological outlook. Nor again does it present the scientific ground of the phenomenon it represents. So the minimalist concept of race is not biological in the scientific sense. On the other hand, if the kind minimalist race = the kind populationist race, then the concept minimalist race can function as a “proxy” for the scientific concept populationist race and can be said to have “proxy scientific standing” by virtue of being a proxy for a bona fide scientific concept.79 It is conceivable that biologists and biological anthropologists might choose to deploy the minimalist concept of race in their research. One advantage the term has over the populationist concept of race is that it is less theoretically laden. Should biologists or biological anthropologists come to choose to use the concept, I would say that it counts as a bona fide scientific concept by virtue of being deemed suitable by biologists for deployment in biology.80 The racialist race concept, by contrast, is not biological in the scientific sense. Indeed, since it fails to satisfy all of (i)–(v), it may be said to be counterscientific. The racialist race concept is commonly referred to in the literature as “the biological concept of race.” But it shouldn’t be, for the reason just given.

2.12.2 Is the Minimalist Concept of Race a Social Concept? The question whether the minimalist race concept is a social concept can be addressed by asking whether it is “socially constructed” and whether it is “ideological.” To clarify the notion of social construction I draw on Sally Haslanger’s account of social construction and Raymond Geuss’s account of the concept of ideology, freely adapting the features of their accounts to serve present purposes.81 There are different senses of ‘social construction.’ We can say a concept is socially constructed in the benign sense if social factors play a role in its use. I introduce this sense of ‘social construction’ to set it to the side. The minimalist race concept and racialist race concept are both socially constructed in

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the benign sense. No surprise there. Language is a social factor that plays a role in the use of virtually every concept. Social construction in this sense is perfectly anodyne and absolutely boring. There is no confl ict between a concept’s being socially constructed in the benign sense and its being biological in the basic sense, biologically respectable, or biological in the scientific sense. Social construction in the benign sense does not entail social construction in the pernicious sense. A concept is socially constructed in the pernicious sense if and only if it (i) fails to represent accurately any “fact of the matter” and (ii) supports and legitimizes domination. This notion of social construction has critical bite. Clause (i) is epistemological. Clause (ii) is political; it connects the notion of social construction to the notion of ideology. A concept that supports and legitimizes domination will be said to be ideological in the pejorative sense.82 The notion of ideology itself can be defined by reference to the notion of domination (Herrschaft).83 It is arguable that the minimalist race concept is not socially constructed in the pernicious sense, for it is arguable that some indigenous populations—say, the indigenous populations of sub-Saharan Africa; of Europe, North Africa, and central Asia; of East Asia; and of the Americas— exhibit the relevant sort of distinctive patterns of visible physical characteristics and belong to lineages that originated from geographically distinct locations. If there are such populations, the minimalist race concept accurately captures a fact of the matter and so fails to satisfy condition (i). Because it lacks the nasty features that make the racialist race concept well suited to support and legitimize domination, the minimalist race concept fails to satisfy condition (ii). The racialist race concept, on the other hand, is socially constructed in the pernicious sense. Since there are no racialist races, there is no fact of the matter it accurately represents. So it satisfies (i). As we have seen, the racialist race concept also supports and legitimizes racial domination. So it satisfies (ii). To elaborate, the racialist race concept legitimizes racial domination by representing the social hierarchy of race as “natural” (in a value-conferring sense): as the “natural” (socially unmediated and inevitable) expression of the talent and efforts of the individuals who stand on its rungs. It supports racial domination by conveying the idea that no alternative arrangement of social institutions could possibly result in racial equality and hence that attempts to engage in collective action in the hopes of ending the social hierarchy of race are futile. For these reasons the racialist race concept is also ideological in the pejorative sense.

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2.13 The Merits of the Minimalist Race Concept The minimalist race concept provides an easy-to-understand, workable, allpurpose biological concept of race free of the racialism of the racialist race concept. It is not a revisionary race concept but mirrors covered and hidden but existing definition of ‘race.’ It makes it possible to represent groups as biological races without representing them as essentially different or hierarchically ordered. It makes it possible to think of race without thinking racist thoughts. It also makes it possible to see that it is possible to disassociate the idea of normatively important differences from the idea of race, and that it is possible to have a genuine race concept that does not include the idea of normatively impor tant differences. Its exposition thus serves an impor tant pedagogical function. The minimalist concept of race does not lend itself to formulating, promoting, or legitimizing oppressive racial ideologies. If (as I will argue) minimalist races exist, the minimalist race concept also has the merit of making it possible to explain at least part of what our race talk has been tracking all along.84 A basic question that can be posed about a race concept is whether bringing it into our social discussions is likely to cause harm.85 The minimalist concept of race is unlikely to have this effect. What it says is that people differ in color and shape depending on where their ancestors come from, and that is essentially all that it says. It does not associate those visible physical differences with differences in intelligence, moral character, or tendency to criminality. It does not associate race with normatively important differences. It provides a way of understanding race that reflects and makes it possible to grasp the relative superficiality of race. The minimalist race concept is nonmalefic. Does the minimalist concept of race refer? Are there groups that satisfy its conditions? These questions are addressed in Chapter 3.

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Do Minimalist Races Exist?

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n the face of things, the minimalist concept of race, introduced in Chapter 2, might turn out to be as vacuous or empty as the racialist race concept. This chapter takes up the question whether this is the case. It asks whether minimalist races exist and answers this question in the affirmative. In addressing this question, it answers a fundamental question in the philosophy of race, namely, Do races exist?1 Section 3.1 shows that population genetics poses no obstacle to the existence of minimalist races. Section 3.2 introduces the idea of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race. Section 3.3 considers whether this phenomenon obtains. Section 3.4 advances an argument from the existence of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race to the existence of minimalist races themselves. Section  3.5 registers the implicit commitment of one prominent eliminativist to the existence of minimalist races. Section 3.6 discusses the force of the claim that minimalist races exist. Section  3.7 presents a supplementary deitic argument for the existence of minimalist races. Section 3.8 asks whether minimalist race has a future. Section 3.9 concludes the chapter.

3.1 Can Minimalist Race Survive the Findings of Population Genetics? A crucial step en route to showing that minimalist races exist is to establish that their existence is not precluded by the findings of population genetics. If they can’t withstand Richard Lewontin’s cleaver, they don’t exist. Whether they can turns on the minimalist concept of race’s “genetic profi le,” a specification of what must be true of the genetics of groups in order for them to 65

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satisfy the minimalist race concept. Now, the fundamental fact about the minimalist concept of race’s genetic profi le is that it is remarkably nondemanding. This can be made clear by indicating some of the things that it does not require. 1. To begin with, it does not require that the fraction of human genetic diversity between minimalist races exceed the fraction of diversity within them. 2. It is compatible with within-race diversity being large and betweenrace diversity being small. 3. It does not require that most genes be racially highly differentiated and is compatible with few genes being differentiated to the degree that the genes responsible for skin color, hair texture, nose form, et cetera are differentiated. 4. It does not require the existence of a lot of genetic differences between races apart from the genetic differences that underlie the obvious phenotypic differences between them. 5. Nor again does it require that the underlying variation in the genes for these differences be typical of the variation in the genome in general. 6. The existence of minimalist races is compatible with there being few genetic differences between races apart from the genetic differences that underlie the obvious phenotypic differences and with those underlying genetic differences being aty pical of the genome in general. 7. The minimalist race concept’s genetic profi le does not require that racial categories have great predictive power for yet unstudied characteristics. 8. Nor does it require that there be any genetic differences between races other than those found in the genes that underlie the pattern of visible physical differences that distinguish races. The minimalist race concept’s genetic profi le being what it is (it’s not being what it is not), it survives Lewontin’s cleaver and is compatible with the findings of Noah  A. Rosenberg and colleagues. These (and similar) studies leave open the possibility that minimalist races exist. Rather than taking up the question whether they exist directly, I would like to first consider what might be called the minimalist biological phenomenon of race.

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3.2 The Idea of the Minimalist Biological Phenomenon of Race Let us stipulate that the idea of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race is the idea of a correspondence in human beings between differences in the patterns of visible physical features and differences in geographical ancestry.2 The notion of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race is distinct from the notion of minimalist race. To allow that the minimalist biological phenomenon of race exists is not yet to concede that minimalist races exist. The minimalist biological phenomenon of race consists in correlations such as the one that is recognized to obtain between the pattern brown skin–kinky hair–full lips and sub-Saharan African ancestry and between the pattern white (that is, pale) skin–wavy hair–narrow lips and European ancestry. To conceive of this phenomenon in the appropriate minimalist way, it is essential to refrain from supposing that groups exemplifying geographically based morphological differences differ in normatively impor tant characteristics such as intelligence and behav ior, forbear from supposing that all the members of a race necessarily share a set of intrinsic properties peculiar to that race, and avoid any evaluative ascriptions. The phenomenon is called a phenomenon of race because it is defined in terms of racial features: visible physical features that correspond to differences of geographical ancestry.3 It deserves the appellation ‘minimalist’ because it is fully specified by reference to the correspondence between differences in patterns of visible physical features and differences in geographical ancestry. No reference is made to normatively important features such as intelligence, sexuality, or morality. No reference is made to essences. The idea of sharp boundaries between patterns of visible physical features or corresponding geographical regions is not invoked. Nor again is reference made to the idea of significant genetic differences. No reference is made to groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical features that correspond to geographical ancestry. The characterization of the phenomenon as “biological” is warranted because its constitutive features—patterns of physical features (skin color, nose shape, hair type, and so forth) are biological. Differences of geographical ancestry (sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, the Americas, and so forth) are biogeographical. The phenomenon also counts as biological by virtue of the fact that it has a biological origin in the prehistoric movements and partial isolation of human populations. The idea of the minimalist biological phenomenon is the idea of a phenomenon in roughly phi losophers of science James Bogen and James

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Woodward’s sense.4 Their concept of phenomenon contrasts with that of data. Phenomena are what theories explain. Data are what is uncontroversially observable. To think of something as a phenomenon in their sense is to think of it “as belonging to the natural order itself and not just the way we talk about or conceptualize that order.”5 The idea of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race is the idea of something that belongs to the class of phenomena that are “best thought of as having a structure more like that traditionally ascribed to facts or states of affairs,” as opposed to that of “particular objects, objects with features, events, processes, and states.”6

3.3 Does the Minimalist Biological Phenomenon of Race Obtain? The minimalist biological phenomenon of race exists. There are differences in patterns of visible physical features of human beings that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. It may come as a surprise, but the existence of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race is relatively uncontroversial. Although eliminativists deny that minimalist races exist, no eliminativist of whom I am aware denies the existence of what I am calling the minimalist biological phenomenon of race. On the contrary, eliminativists readily allow that differences in the patterns of visible physical features in human beings corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry exist. Indeed they are at pains to do so, since they wish to make clear that they are not in the embarrassing position of denying their existence. Thus, for example, population geneticist Lewontin (author of “The Apportionment of Human Diversity” [1972]), who denies that biological races exist, freely grants that “peoples who have occupied major geographic areas for much of the recent past look different from one another. Sub-Saharan Africans have dark skin and people who live in East Asia tend to have a light tan skin and an eye color and eye shape and hair that is different from Europeans.” 7 Similarly, population geneticist Marcus  W. Feldman (final author of Rosenberg et  al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations” [2002]), who also denies the existence of biological races, acknowledges that “it has been known for centuries that certain physical features of humans are concentrated within families: hair, eye, and skin color, height, inability to digest milk, curliness of hair; and so on. These phenotypes also show obvious variation among people from different continents. Indeed skin color, facial shape, and hair form are examples of phenotypes whose variation

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among populations from different regions is noticeable.”8 In the same vein, eliminativist anthropologist C. Loring Brace concedes, “It is perfectly true that long term residents of various parts of the world have patterns of features that we can identify as characteristic of the areas from which they come.”9 Eliminativist phi losopher Joshua Glasgow’s version of the refrain is, “Of course most anti-realists are reasonable people. We acknowledge that people look different from one another and have ancestors who came from different places.”10 Now, in claiming that eliminativists accept the existence of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race, I am not claiming that they recognize it as a phenomenon in the sense of recognizing it as something worthy of being dignified with a name. This they emphatically do not do. Their strategy is to tacitly allow that the minimalist biological phenomenon obtains and argue that you can’t get from it to the existence of minimalist races.11 Th is prompts the question, Can you get there (to the existence of minimalist races) from the minimalist biological phenomenon of race?

3.4 From the Minimalist Biological Phenomenon of Race to the Existence of Minimalist Races The step from acknowledging the minimalist biological phenomenon of race to the existence of racialist races is long. There’s no getting there because there are no racialist races. There is, however, a path— one that is straight and narrow—from the existence of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race to the existence of minimalist races. Step 1. Recognize that there are differences in patterns of visible physical features of human beings that correspond to their differences in geographical ancestry. Step 2. Observe that these patterns are exhibited by groups (that is, real existing groups). Step 3. Note that the groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical features that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry satisfy the conditions of the minimalist concept of race. Step 4. Infer that minimalist races exist.

Comments: Eliminativists have no objection to Step 1. It amounts to granting that the minimalist biological phenomenon of race obtains. Nor

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does anyone really object to Step 2. Step 3 follows from the specification of the minimalist concept of race. The inference of Step 4 follows immediately from what is noticed in Step 3. Groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical features that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry satisfy the conditions of the minimalist concept of race. Call (1)–(4) the argument from the minimalist biological phenomenon of race. The argument is, to be sure, less informative than one might like. It does not specify what groups are minimalist races. But this by no means renders it trivial, for its conclusion provides an answer (yes) to the basic question, Do races exist? It provides this answer because, as we saw in Chapter 2, if minimalist races exist, then races exist because minimalist races are races.12 The fact that the argument does not specify which groups are minimalist races can be seen as a dialectical plus, since any such claim is bound to be controversial. The argument from the minimalist biological phenomenon of race is a general philosophical argument for the existence of minimalist races.

3.5 Guess Who Allows the Existence of Minimalist Races? The arch-eliminativist philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah comes pretty close. He explicitly allows the existence of “groups defined by skin color, hair, and gross morphology corresponding to the dominant pattern for these characteristics in the major subcontinental regions, Europe, Africa, East and South Asia, Australasia, the Americas, and perhaps the Pacific Islands.”13 This passage makes clear that Appiah, who denies the existence of races, grasps that these groups exhibit patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry. And this means he implicitly recognizes that they satisfy the three basic conditions of the minimalist race concept. Balk though he might, Appiah’s own words commit him to allowing the existence of minimalist races. Now Appiah attempts to pooh-pooh this possibility by asking pointedly, “Of what biological interest would” groups that exhibit these patterns be, “since we can study the skin and gross morphology separately?”14 Two points. First point: In introducing the notion of biological interest, Appiah is changing the topic. The original subject was existence. Minimalist races might exist and be biologically boring.15 Should this turn out to be the case (which I do not think will happen), they might fail to merit the attention of biologists, but exist nonetheless.

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Second point: In any case, the argument Appiah provides is remarkably weak. It is perfectly true, as he goes on to say, that we can study “skin and gross morphology separately.” But in studying these features separately, we abstract from the fact that they belong to patterns of visible phenotypic features and so lose sight of the biological interest these patterns might have. As biological patterns, they are interesting as instances of order in nature. Moreover, these patterns covary with differences in geographical ancestry. This covariance is another instance of order in nature and another thing that gives minimalist race biological interest. It seems to me that the biological interest of the covariance of patterns of visible physical features with differences in geographical ancestry in minimalist race is sufficient to provide what Glasgow calls a “biology-driven basis” for interest in minimalist races.16 Appiah goes on to argue that “this referent [the groups defined by skin color, hair, and gross morphology, corresponding to the dominant pattern for these characteristics in the major subcontinental regions] would not provide us with a concept that was central to biological thinking about human beings.”17 True enough. But the minimalist concept of race makes no claim to such centrality.18 There is no good reason for thinking that a concept of race— one that we would genuinely want to use—should be central to biological thinking about human beings. The contention that minimalist races exist is hardly boring. Minimalist races are biological in the basic sense and biologically respectable. So they are biological. The fact that their definition makes reference to geography does not render them unbiological, for reasons we have given.19 So if minimalist races exist, biological races exist.20 That’s an interesting claim. It is the—or, in any case, one—point at issue in the race debate. In trying to convince us that the minimalist concept of race is boring, Appiah tacitly invites us to compare it to the racialist race concept. The idea is that the former is far less interest ing than the latter—or would be were the racialist race concept not vacuous. But there is no reason to think that being as interesting as the racialist race concept was supposed to be is a condition of adequacy for a race concept. The fact that minimalist race is less interest ing than racialist race can be thought of as yet another respect in which the minimalist concept of race is deflationary. Appiah goes on to note that “in the United States, large numbers of people would not fit into any of these categories [offspring of indigenous inhabitants of Europe, Africa, East and South Asia, Australasia, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands] because they are the products of mixtures between people

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who do roughly fit this pattern.”21 This point, although surely right, in no way undercuts the interest of the minimalist race concept, since there are still a significant number of people who do fit into these categories.22 Presumably most people in the United States fit. Mixed-race individuals are a growing population in the United States but they are still a minority.23 Moreover, if we want to explain why the people who “are the products of mixtures between people who do roughly fit this pattern” look the way they do, we need to point out that they are the offspring of people who do fit these categories.24 The existence of mixed-race individuals does not undercut the interest of the minimalist race concept. On the contrary, the concept makes it possible to say what it is to be an individual of mixed race. Appiah notes that “if we used this biological notion [that is, a notion similar to the minimalist concept of race], it would have very little correlation with any characteristics currently thought to be important for moral or social life.”25 But the minimalist race concept does not claim that there is a correlation between the pattern of visible physical features it picks out and characteristics currently thought to be important for moral or social life.26 Nor does its interest reside in the existence of such a pattern. Ironically, Appiah’s argument actually directs our attention to one of the minimalist concept’s virtues: the fact that it makes no reference to any characteristics “currently thought to be impor tant for moral or social life.”

3.6 The Force of the Claim That Minimalist Races Exist Let’s step back a moment and ask, Just what is it to say that minimalist races exist? To say that they exist is simply to say that groups satisfying the three basic conditions of the minimalist race concept exist. They enjoy the ordinary spatiotemporal physical existence common to biological entities. They are denizens of the biological world. To say that minimalist races exist is to say that races—that is, biological races, races that are biological in the basic sense—exist. It is to say that the existence of biological races is not an illusion, a mirage, or a fiction but instead a fact.

3.7 A Deitic Argument for the Existence of Minimalist Races Another way to argue for the existence of minimalist races is simply to point to recognized groups (groups whose existence is not disputed)—for example, by pointing to some of their members—and show that these groups

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satisfy the three basic conditions of the concept of minimalist race. Th is is essentially what Appiah has done for us. No one doubts the existence of Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, Americans, and Pacific Islanders, even if their exact boundaries are blurry. If they exhibit patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry (which they do), they are minimalist races. So minimalist races exist.

3.8 Does Minimalist Race Have a Future? The question whether minimalist race has a future is the question whether minimalist races will continue to exist. Since there are minimalist races now, it is likely that they will continue to exist for some time to come. And if minimalist race has a future, concepts that will enable us to understand what minimalist race is have a future too. So minimalist race likely has a future too.27

3.9 Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that the existence of minimalist races survives the fi ndings of population genetics, presented an argument from the minimalist biological phenomenon of race to the existence of minimalist races, noted that one prominent eliminativist philosopher tacitly allows the existence of minimalist races, clarified the force of claiming minimalist races exist, and presented a supplementary deitic argument for the existence of minimalist races. One possible response would be to say that the preceding argument makes showing that minimalist races exist too easy. But why should we suppose that showing that minimalist races exist should be hard? The notion that it must be difficult rests on the mistaken view that minimalist races are occult theoretical entities, the postulation of which requires special justification. The fact of the matter is that minimalist races are ordinary entities—groups—whose existence is not difficult to establish. Now, someone might grant that I have shown that minimalist races exist but deny that I have shown they are biologically real. Such a theorist might insist that biological reality is a more exiguous notion than existence and hold that the case for the biological reality of the kind minimalist race must be separately made. Fair enough. The biological reality of minimalist race is the topic of Chapter 4.

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Is Minimalist Race Biologically Real?

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hapter 3 argued that minimalist races exist. This chapter assumes that minimalist races exist and asks whether the kind minimalist race is biologically real. It may not be immediately obvious that this is a separate point. After all, the concepts of existence and reality are often understood such that, if something exists, it is eo ipso real: once the existence of a thing is secured, there is no further question about its reality. But the notion of reality, or, in any case, the notion of biological reality, is sometimes understood in a more demanding sense. It is sometimes taken to be biological existence plus . . . (where the “plus” can be specified in different ways—for example, biological significance, biological interest, distinguishability “at the level of the gene,” and so on). When it is taken in one of these more demanding ways, a gap between biological existence and biological reality can arise. It is logically possible that minimalist races could exist yet fail to be biologically real. The purpose of this chapter is to close this gap by making the case for the biological reality of the kind minimalist race.1 A number of different considerations will be entertained that, taken together, make a powerful case for the biological reality of minimalist race understood in a deflationary way.2 Section 4.1 considers reasons that might be offered for denying that minimalist race is biologically real. A subsidiary aim of this section is to indicate how not to understand the claim that minimalist race is biologically real. The positive task of showing how the claim that minimalist race is biologically real is to be understood is taken up in the sections that follow. Section 4.2 argues that minimalist race counts as biologically real by virtue of being biologically significant. Section 4.3 argues that it counts as biologically real by virtue of being biologically interesting. Section 4.4 argues that minimalist 74

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race is biologically real because biological races can be distinguished “at the level of the gene.” Section 4.5 looks more closely at the microsatellites discussed in the preceding section. Section  4.6 takes up the idea of race as population partition. Section 4.7 considers the possible bearing of the medically relevant genetic differences among minimalist races on the biological reality of minimalist race. Section 4.8 expounds the idea of deflationary realism. Section  4.9 looks back at the reflective process that arrived at the minimalist concept of race. The chapter concludes with Section 4.10.

4.1 Arguments against the Biological Reality of Minimalist Race 4.1.1 Someone might argue that, whether or not minimalist races exist, minimalist race is biologically unreal because members of different minimalist races are not divided by “genes” in a manner analogous to the way in which men and women are characteristically divided by the Y chromosome.3 It is true that minimalist races are not divided in this way, but it is by no means clear that we should infer the biological unreality of race. A better inference would be that sex is a particularly poor model for understanding race. Race is different from sex. 4.1.2 One might drop the comparison with sex and, like philosopher John Dupré, argue directly that minimalist race is biologically unreal because there is “no gene for race.” 4 A “gene for race” would be a gene whose possession would make an individual a member of a minimalist race. Now, is true that there is no such gene, but this does not entail the biological unreality of minimalist race. The concept minimalist race is such that the kind minimalist race is not the sort of thing for which one should expect there to be a gene. Whether an individual is a member of a minimalist race is not determined by his or her individual characteristics. It is determined instead by his or her parentage. (An individual I is a member of minimalist race MR 1 if I is the offspring of two MR 1s.) There is no gene whose possession could make an individual a member of a minimalist race. In this respect minimalist race is not a genetic kind. What makes a minimalist race a minimalist race is not that its members share a specific gene or set of genes. It is rather the fact that it exhibits a distinctive pattern of visible physical features that correspond to the member’s shared distinctive ancestry. If minimalist race is biologically real, its reality will consist in something other than a “gene for race.”

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4.1.3 Population genetics provides a stronger reason for thinking that minimalist race is biologically unreal: the percentage of the among-minimalistrace portion of human genetic variation is small, significantly smaller than the within-minimalist-race portion, which is large; hence, biological race is not biologically real. 5 Notice, however, that to get to this conclusion, two key assumptions are required: (1) For minimalist race to be biologically real, biological differences of race must be very significant. (2) For the biological differences of race to be very significant, the within-minimalistrace portion of human genetic difference must be significantly larger than the among-minimalist-race portion, which must be small. Why must we suppose that, for minimalist race to be biologically real, the biological differences of race must be very significant? To be sure, the biological differences would have to be very significant for racialist race to be biologically real. But this does not entail that the biological differences of race must be very significant for the biological reality of minimalist race. Minimalist race is a different kind of kind than racialist race. If it is biologically real, its biological reality will presumably be very different from the biological reality that racialist race would have if such races existed. If minimalist race is biologically real, it is likely to count as such, not by virtue of being biologically very significant (which it is not), but simply by virtue of being biologically significant simpliciter (which it arguably is).6 4.1.4 A related reason for thinking races are biologically unreal is the notion that, if race is to be biologically real, race must be a good way to structure the (very small) amount of genetic diversity that exists in human beings generally. Since race does not represent a good way of structuring the overall genetic diversity in human beings generally, race is biologically unreal. But why should we assume that race must be a good way of structuring overall human genetic diversity to be biologically real? Why should we suppose that race is—or is supposed to be—a central organizing principle of human genetic diversity? Might not its biological real ity consist rather in the fact that it organizes a small portion of human genetic diversity? Perhaps the biological real ity of race must be conceived of in a deflationary way. 4.1.5 Some arguments for the biological unreality of race are driven by the assumption that, for race to be biologically real, its biological reality must lie in something other than the fact that races exhibit different pat-

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terns of visible physical differences and have a particular geographical ancestry. Such arguments are often undergirded by the thought that the patterns of visible physical differences associated with race must be the appearance of a deeper hidden nature—an essence—that constitutes the true reality behind the appearance if minimalist race is to be biologically real. Minimalist race is sometimes held to be biologically unreal because it fails to exhibit this structure. But philosophers of biology have by and large abandoned the notion that a putative biological kind must have an essence to be biologically real.7 Most philosophers of biology who think that species are biologically real do not think that they have intrinsic essences. The prevailing view seems to be that biological kinds do not have such essences. It would therefore be odd to insist that to be biologically real, minimalist race must have an intrinsic essence. 4.1.6 Population geneticist Richard Lewontin argues that race is biologically unreal because it “has ceased to be seen as a fundamental reality characterizing the human species.”8 Although it is unclear what exactly is meant by “fundamental reality” (Lewontin provides no gloss for this expression), it is plain that, if we take this notion in an intuitive way, population genetics shows that minimalist race is not a reality of this sort. Presumably, however, there are nonfundamental biological realities. Might not minimalist race be one? To think that race is a nonfundamental biological reality is to adopt a conception of its biological reality that is deflationary. 4.1.7 In a similar vein, philosopher of science Koffi Maglo argues that race is not biologically real because it is not “a fundamental or primitive category in human population genetics.”9 But, again, why must we suppose that race must be such to be biologically real? Why assume that that is what its biological reality must come to?10 4.1.8 Lewontin also disparages race’s claim to biological reality on the grounds that racial categories “do not have great predictive power for as yet unstudied characters.” In the same vein philosopher of science Edouard Machery argues that race is unreal because members of a race do not “share non-accidentally a large number of . . . scientifically important properties (or relations) beside the properties (or relations) that are used to identify them.”11 Lewontin’s insistence on “great predictive power” and Machery’s requirement of a large number of nonaccidentally shared scientifically impor tant

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properties or relations enjoy a common distinguished philosophical pedigree. John Stuart Mill famously divides classes into two groups: those, such as animal, plant, sulfur, and phosphorous, that are properly called Kinds (Mill sometimes calls them “real Kinds”) and those, such as white and red things, that are not properly designated as Kinds at all. The latter represent mere “secondary divisions grounded on differences of a comparatively superficial nature.”12 These secondary divisions “have little or nothing in common to characterize them by except the name: white things, for example, are not distinguished by any common properties except whiteness or if they are, it is only by such as are in some way dependent on, or connected with, whiteness.”13 A Kind, on the other hand, is “distinguished from all other classes by an indeterminate multitude of properties not derivable from one another.”14 Race would be a Kind in Mill’s sense, if races were distinguished from one another “by an indeterminate multitude of properties not derivable from one another.” Are races distinguished in this way? Mill says that this is for the empirical science of the future to decide. In the intervening years, however, science has made it clear that races are not distinguished by unknown multitudes of properties. So minimalist race has proven not to be a Kind in Mill’s sense. Minimalist race might, however, be what we could call a relatively superficial kind— one grounded on a few biological differences of a comparatively superficial nature: differences of color and physiognomy corresponding to differences in geographical origin.15 Mill’s characterization of Kinds was intended to preserve an aspect of the old essentialism, which he other wise rejects, namely, the idea that there is a sharp distinction between classes that are kinds and classes that are not. A more thoroughgoing rejection of essentialism, however, would jettison the idea of a sharp distinction between classes that are and are not kinds, and thus open space for the idea of a relatively superficial kind. Mill, however, suggests that the idea of a relatively superficial kind is a nonstarter. He holds that if “any one were to propose for investigation the common properties of all things that are of the same color, the same shape, or the same specific gravity, the absurdity would be palpable.”16 But there is nothing absurd about the idea of investigating the common properties of human groups that are of the same color, shape, and geographical origin. One might not expect to find endless multitudes of common properties exhibited by such groups but think that the groups might nonetheless have a few determinate items in common—for example, adaptive features or medically

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relevant properties—that bear investigation. One might reasonably come to decide that minimalist race counts as biologically real by virtue of exhibiting just a few such properties. Note that we can hold that minimalist race is a relatively superficial kind without holding that it is as superficial as the putative kind white thing. A kind can be relatively superficial without being completely superficial. The class of white things constitutes a completely superficial kind because there is nothing interesting about the recognition that white things have “whiteness and such properties as are in some way dependent on or connected with whiteness in common.”17 The recognition that white things have whiteness is common does not constitute a discovery. People have always known that. But the recognition that human groups exist that have a common color and physiognomy corresponding to a common geographical origin was a novel finding (made in the Age of Discovery). The class of minimalist races is more interesting than the class of white things. 4.1.9 Joshua Glasgow offers a different reason for thinking the kind minimalist race biologically unreal. He argues that it falls prey to what he calls the “Arbitrariness Objection.”18 This argument begins with the premise that the difference between the visible physical features of minimalist races is one of gradation—the fact of continuity.19 Because of this fact, so the objection goes, there is no nonarbitrary way to demarcate racial groups, and, because of this, the kind minimalist race is biologically unreal.20 Here we should follow philosopher of biology Roberta Millstein in distinguishing two senses of arbitrariness. 21 There is what might be called “boundary arbitrariness.” A biological group is arbitrary in this sense if there is no nonarbitrary way of demarcating its boundaries. Arbitrariness of this sort, which Millstein prefers to call “blurry edges,” arises whenever “there are difficulties in determining the edges of a population or difficulties in determining the exact number of populations in certain cases.”22 This sort of arbitrariness must be distinguished from a second, distinct sort of arbitrariness, the arbitrariness of gerrymandering. A group G is gerrymandered when G seems intuitively unnatural. The kind being green or being divisible by thirteen (I take the example from Tyler Burge) is gerrymandered.23 Group G is biologically gerrymandered when there is no good biological reason for sorting individuals into G. The motivation for the idea that gerrymandered kinds are biologically unreal is straightforward. They are biologically unreal because the groups

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into which they sort individuals seem unnatural. But from the fact that there is no nonarbitrary way of demarcating the boundaries of a group, it does not follow that the kind into which the group falls is gerrymandered. There may be good biological reasons for collecting groups into the kind despite the blurriness of the group’s edges. The grouping may not be unnatural. The idea that a kind is biologically unreal just because the groups it collects have blurry edges is not compelling. This is what Millstein is getting at when she writes, “Blurriness may simply be the biological reality with which we are faced in some situations.”24 Owing to evolution, groups with blurry edges are a commonplace in biology. As Elliott Sober puts it, “The fact that species evolve gradually entails that the boundaries between species are vague.”25 Would Glasgow argue that the kind species is biologically unreal because it is sometimes difficult to determine the boundaries of particular species? To regard a kind as biologically unreal simply because the boundaries around the groups it collects are blurry is unbiological.

4.2 The Biological Significance of Minimalist Race Minimalist race enjoys biological significance. The fact that it does constitutes a good reason for sorting individuals into minimalist races and regarding minimalist race as biologically real. That minimalist race enjoys biological significance can be seen by reflecting on the racial trait skin color. Skin color (skin pigmentation) is a relatively superficial biological character. The adverb serves the negative function of marking the fact that there are a broad range of contexts in which differences in skin pigmentation play no significant role and the equally important positive function of indicating the existence of biological contexts in which differences in skin pigmentation are significant. Here’s a familiar one. Darkly pigmented skin is known to afford protection against ultraviolet radiation (UVR) damage to DNA and to be associated with lower rates of skin cancer than lightly pigmented skin. In the context of skin disease (and human life and death), differences in skin color matter. Skin color has medical significance. And, as philosophers of science Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan have noted, skin color is also an ecologically important trait.26 It figures in the explanation of the fit or lack of fit between organism and environment. To get a sense of what it is for there to be a lack of fit, think of northern Europeans in Arizona who must cover their skin to avoid the risk of contracting skin cancer. Being a medically and

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ecologically important trait, skin color is biologically significant. Minimalist race is biologically significant by virtue of being defined in terms of a biological trait that has medical and ecological significance. Skin color is, furthermore, almost certainly an evolutionary adaptation.27 It is likely that the dark pigmentation of sub-Saharan Africans is an adaptation to the high-UVR environment of equatorial Africa. Darkly pigmented skin helps protect the body from the injurious effects of UVR, specifically protecting folate—folate (a naturally occurring B vitamin, the synthetic form of which is folic acid) being needed for normal embryonic and fetal development. It is also likely that light pigmentation is an adaptation to the relatively low-UVR environment of Europe and Asia. The body needs vitamin D to absorb and use calcium and to maintain proper cell function. Dark pigmentation reduces the intradermal production of previtamin D. This is not a problem near the equator since the doses of UVB (medium-wave UVR) absorbed there are sufficiently high for the production of ample amounts of previtamin D. Modern Europeans and East Asians, who evolved in sunpoor latitudes, appear to have separately and independently undergone a loss of pigmentation as an evolutionary adaptation that enabled them to better absorb the lower levels of UVB available in their respective environments. So skin color has evolutionary significance.28 The kind minimalist race enjoys evolutionary significance by virtue of being defined in terms of a property that has evolutionary significance. Biological raciation—the biological process through which minimalist races are formed—consists in the development of distinctive patterns of visible physical features associated with geographical ancestry. It appears to be a process through which human populations came to be adapted to their specific ecological niches. As these populations moved throughout Eurasia and Oceania over the course of human natural history and came to people the Americas, they encountered different ecological conditions and developed different visible physical features in response.29 Northern Europeans tend to have light skin because they belong to a morphologically marked ancestral group—a minimalist race—that was subject to one set of environmental conditions (low UVR) in Europe. Explaining how human beings were able to survive as they settled in new geographical regions falls within the aims of biology. Positing minimalist race serves this explanatory goal. Being relevant to general explanatory aims of biology, minimalist race counts as a relevant kind (in Nelson Goodman’s pragmatic sense of the term).30

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And inasmuch as this kind is relevant to biology, it counts as a biological kind as well. The fact that minimalist race is a legitimate biological kind is a reason to regard it as biologically real. None of this is to say that minimalist race is a profound biological kind. It isn’t. But, unlike racialist race, minimalist race does not aspire to that status. Its claim to biological reality cannot be debunked by showing that it is superficial.31 If minimalist race does not support the sort of inferences you would usually expect of a biological kind term, perhaps that is because ‘minimalist race’ is not your usual kind of biological kind term. ‘Minimalist race’ is a modest biological kind term. Minimalist race counts as a modest biological kind by virtue of having modest explanatory value in biology and, as we will see in the next section, intrinsic biological interest.32 The fi xation of philosophers of science on natural kinds like gold (kinds that are fecund sources of inductive generalizations) may have left them with the false impression that we are faced with the alternative of saying either that minimalist race is a very important kind like gold or that it is a trivial, unimportant, and worthless kind like white thing.33 But we are not. There is a third alternative. Minimalist race may be a legitimate modest biological kind. The idea of such a kind is not an oxymoron. And minimalist race gives it a point.34 The ideas of minimalist race and legitimate modest biological kind go hand in hand. Each motivates the other.

4.3 The Intrinsic Interest of Minimalist Race We have seen that minimalist race has explanatory value in biology. This gives it biological interest. But it is a mistake to think that minimalist race’s claim to biological interest rests wholly on what it can explain. We touched on this point earlier in rebutting Kwame Anthony Appiah’s attempt to show that minimalist race is biologically boring: Minimalist race is interesting— intrinsically interesting—from a biological point of view. The fact that minimalist race enjoys intrinsic biological interest provides a reason for counting it real. The idea that a scientific phenomenon may be intrinsically interesting is not unfamiliar. Scientists take the aurora borealis to be interesting for its own sake. My suggestion is that minimalist race is likewise interesting for its own sake. Minimalist race is intrinsically interesting from a scientific point of view by virtue of the fact that it constitutes a complex biological pattern—a pat-

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tern of visible physical features corresponding to differences in geographical origin. It also enjoys intrinsic scientific interest because it represents a distinctive salient systematic dimension of human biological diversity. To clarify: Minimalist race counts as (i) salient because human differences of color and shape are striking.35 Racial differences in color and shape are (ii) systematic in that they correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. They are not random. Racial differences are (iii) distinctive in that they are different from the sort of biological differences associated with the two other salient systematic dimensions of human diversity: sex and age. The preceding paragraph makes clear that philosopher Tommie Shelby’s suggestion that the concept of race has no analytical or explanatory value in helping us understand human variety is incorrect.36 It is true that race is not central to understanding human variety in general.37 But minimalist race has clear analytical value when it comes to helping us understand the specific dimension of human variety that involves differences in shape and color. It performs the analytical ser vice of unifying this dimension under a single concept. In suggesting that minimalist race is intrinsically interesting from a scientific point of view, I do not mean to suggest that alien biologists would necessarily regard it as such. They might regard its complex biological patterns as trivial. My point is that minimalist race is intrinsically interesting from a scientific point of view to human beings. Minimalist race is something we human beings find interesting in human beings. We might not regard minimalist race in species other than our own as especially interesting. Our interest in minimalist race is a reflection of our own legitimate interest in ourselves. There is nothing inherently unscientific about this parochialism. Earth science is of interest to us because we happen to reside on the planet and it is no less a science for that. An additional consideration: Like sex and age, minimalist race constitutes one member of what might be called “the triumvirate of human biodiversity.” An account of human biodiversity that failed to include any one of  these three elements would be obviously incomplete. Minimalist race’s claim to be biologically real is as good as the claim of the other members of the triumvirate. Sex is biologically real. Age is biologically real. Minimalist race is biologically real. Real does not mean deep. Compared to the biological differences associated with sex (sex as contrasted with gender), the biological differences associated with minimalist race are superficial. Many (though not all) biological differences associated with sex mark differences in the biological roles males

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and females play in sexual reproduction. The biological differences associated with minimalist race mark no functional differences in sexual reproduction. In comparison with sex, race is biologically superficial. The relative superficiality of minimalist race should not go unremarked. The fact that it is biologically superficial is itself interesting. For in the absence of evidence to the contrary, one might have thought that the dimension of human variation corresponding to minimalist race was impor tant and deep. But it’s not. The fact that for hundreds of years minimalist race was taken to be a big deal biologically makes the fact that it is not a big deal a big deal. The fact that minimalist race is relatively superficial— superficial in most contexts—is a fact of tremendous human importance. Among other things, it undermines one fundamental ground of racism: the idea that, biologically speaking, racial differences matter quite generally.38

4.4 Can Minimalist Races Be Distinguished “at the Level of the Gene”? Some theorists might allow that minimalist races are “biological” and “exist” but refuse to grant biological reality to minimalist race unless minimalist races can be distinguished on the basis of genetic information alone. My purpose in this section is to address such theorists by arguing that the well-known 2002 article by population geneticist Noah A. Rosenberg and colleagues can be interpreted as showing that minimalist race can be distinguished solely on the basis of genetic information.39 I will also argue that the study suggests that, contrary to Glasgow’s view, there is a nonarbitrary way of distinguishing continental-level minimalist races. This will constitute an argument for the biological reality of minimalist race. In their 2002 study, Rosenberg and colleagues deployed the computerimplemented clustering algorithm structure to assign 1,056 individuals from fifty-two human populations, with each individual genotyped for 377 autosomal microsatellite markers represented in the Human Genome Diversity Project– Centre Etude Polymorphism Humain (HGDP-CEPH, a publicly available repository of human genetic data), to genetic “clusters” (groupings) based on measures of overall genetic similarity.40 The article shows that it is possible to use genetic information to assign individuals to “clusters” corresponding the “major geographic areas”—Africa, Eurasia (Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia), East Asia, Oceania, and Amer ica— without prior knowledge of individual origins.

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Now, it must be acknowledged that the article itself is not directly about race. It does not identify the populations corresponding to the five major geographic regions as races. Nor does the word ‘race’ appear in its pages. It does not deploy the minimalist or populationist concepts of race. The article speaks circumspectly of “populations” and “clusters” instead. This distinguishes it from Lewontin’s “Apportionment of Human Diversity” (1972), which talks explicitly about race. In a follow-up paper (2005), Rosenberg and colleagues emphasize this point, stating that their evidence for clustering “should not be taken as evidence of [their] support for any particular concept of ‘biological race.’ ” 41 Nonetheless, the 2002 article can be brought to bear on the question concerning the genetic distinctiveness of races by performing two theoretical operations: (i) importing an exogenous race concept, namely, the minimalist concept of race, and (ii) supposing that the indigenous inhabitants of Africa, Eurasia, East Asia, Oceania, and America satisfy this concept. Now, as it happens, the populations corresponding to the five major geographic areas coincide at least roughly with the groups Johann Friedrich Blumenbach identified as the principal “varieties” (races) of mankind: Ethiopian, Caucasian, Mongolian, Malay, and American.42 These populations are apt candidates for the application of the minimalist concept of race because they appear to be distinguished by patterns of visible physical features corresponding to geographical ancestry. So let us provisionally assume that the five populations are minimalist races (and hence that minimalist races exist) and ask, What does the 2002 Rosenberg article show about the genetic distinctness of minimalist races modulo (that is, if we make) this assumption? What it shows is that it is possible to assign individuals to minimalist races—more specifically continental-level minimalist races—on the basis of genetic information alone. Consider the K = 5 graph in figure 1 of Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 article.43 This graph represents the result of telling structure to produce five genetic clusters. It is divided into five segments corresponding to the five genetic clusters: one segment is mostly orange, one mostly blue, one mostly pink, one mostly green, and one mostly purple. If the five populations corresponding to the major areas are continental-level minimalist races, the

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clusters represent continental-level minimalist races: The cluster in the mostly orange segment represents the sub-Saharan African continental-level minimalist race. The cluster in the mostly blue segment represents the Eurasian continental-level minimal race. The cluster in the mostly pink segment represents the East Asian continental-level minimalist race. The cluster in the mostly green segment represents the Pacific Islander continental-level minimalist race. And the cluster in the mostly purple segment represents the American continental-level minimalist race. Crucially, each cluster is clearly demarcated from the cluster immediately adjacent to it. Modulo our assumption, the graph represents the five continental-level minimalist races as being separated by lines marking relatively sharp allele frequency breaks—lines that are clear to the naked eye. The five continental-level minimalist races turn out to be “genetically discrete units,” in that they are distinguishable on the basis of genetic information alone. It is clear why this is so. If the populations of the five major areas are continental-level minimalist races, to assign individuals to clusters corresponding to the five major areas is to assign them to clusters corresponding to continental-level minimalist races. When structure assigns an individual I to one of the clusters corresponding to the five major areas, it eo ipso assigns I to a continental-level minimalist race. The assumption that the five populations are continental-level minimalist races entitles us to interpret structure as having the capacity to assign individuals to continental-level minimalist races on the basis of markers that track ancestry. In constructing clusters corresponding to the five continental-level minimalist races on the basis of objective, race-neutral genetic markers, structure essentially “reconstructs” those races on the basis of a race-blind procedure. Modulo our assumption, the article shows that it is possible to assign individuals to continental-level races without knowing anything about the race or ancestry of the individuals from whose genotypes the microsatellites are drawn. The populations studied were “defi ned by geography, language, and culture,” not skin color or “race.” 44 Structure’s “capacity” to assign individuals to continental-level minimalist races is parasitic on its ability to assign individuals to clusters on the basis of markers that track ancestry. Structure does not “track” race directly. It tracks race indirectly via the sequences of DNA (the microsatellites) it analyzes. These markers can be seen as doing double duty, functioning as indirect markers of race and direct markers of ancestry. The reason they can perform

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both duties is that minimalist race is morphologically marked geographic ancestry. The markers track minimalist race by tracking geographic ancestry that is morphologically marked. As philosopher of science Quayshawn Spencer notes, Rosenberg’s K = 5 result is robust if a worldwide sample of ethnic groups is used. He points out that “it has been reproduced in 69% of worldwide human genetic clustering studies since 2002 using different sets of genomic polymorphisms, humans, human ethnic groups, and clustering algorithms.” 45 Marcus W. Feldman and Lewontin’s contention that it is only on pain of a confusion of the concepts race and ancestry that the Rosenberg results can be brought to bear on race is incorrect.46 The explicit introduction of a race concept that is exogenous to (that is, not already contained in) the study makes clear that the concept race has not been confused with the concept ancestry. Our interpretation exploits the semantic connection between the two concepts. Ancestry is, as we have seen, a discursive component of the concept race, part of the meaning of the word ‘race.’ 47 The inference from the presence of geographic-ancestry-reflecting microsatellites to membership in continental-level minimalist races is licit. It is licensed by the logical relationship of the two concepts and the assumption that the five populations are minimalist races. It should be emphasized that there is nothing particularly “racial” about the genetic markers used to assign the individuals to clusters. They are microsatellites, short tandem repeat sequences that do not encode any expressed genes, and are selectively neutral. Feldman and Lewontin remind us that “a microsatellite is any of numerous short segments of DNA that are distributed throughout the genome, that consist of repeated sequences of usually two to five nucleotides, and that tend to vary from one individual to another.” 48 Human microsatellites are highly variable and provide considerable information about human genetic diversity and its geographic distribution.49 They are not biologically significant in themselves. They have no obvious influence on phenotype (for example, skin color). They are not the analogues of the genes found on the sex chromosomes. They are not racial essences. They play no role in “making” populations that are races, races. They are race markers, not race makers. The fact that these markers are not race makers makes the result more, not less, striking. One would expect it to be possible to assign individuals to genetic clusters corresponding to continental-level races using the genes that underlie the visible physical features of race. What is surprising is that

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it is possible to make these assignments using race markers that perform no such function. Now, as critics have pointed out, the number of clusters structure forms is researcher predetermined.50 Set K (the number of clusters) at 4 and you get four clusters. Set K at 5 and you get five clusters. So the fact that the number of clusters structure generated at K = 5 in the 2002 study is 5 is not surprising. What is surprising is that the 5 clusters constitute well-formed, clearly demarcated segments that show that the populations represented are genetically “structured,” which is to say, meaningfully demarcated solely on the basis of genetic markers. This result was in no way guaranteed by setting K at 5. Using language introduced in the Rosenberg and colleagues 2005 paper, we can say that the K = 5 graph exhibits “high clusteredness,” which is to say that the extent to which each individual was placed fully in a cluster by the K = 5 run of structure is high. High clusteredness is not guaranteed by the choice of K but instead reflects the specific genetic structure of the populations.51 Now, when K was set at 6, a sixth cluster emerged, consisting of members of the Kalash, an isolated group who speak an Indo-European language and live in northwest Pakistan. Not being a continental-level population, the Kalash are not a continental-level race. The fact that structure represents a population as genetically distinct does not entail that the population is a race. Nor is the idea that the populations corresponding to the five major geographic areas are minimalist races undercut by the fact that structure picks out the Kalash as a genetically distinct group. Like the K = 5 graph, the K = 6 graph shows that modulo our assumption, continental-level races are genetically structured. It also shows, surprisingly, that the Kalash can be distinguished genetically from the five populations corresponding to the major geographic areas.52 Biological anthropologists David Serre and Svante Pääbo argue that the genetic clusters Rosenberg and colleagues found are a mere artifact of the latter’s original sampling scheme.53 They maintain that “when individuals are sampled homogenously from around the globe, the pattern seen is one of gradients of allele frequencies that extend over the entire world, rather than discrete clusters.”54 In response Rosenberg and colleagues expanded their data from the original 377 microsatellite markers to 933 markers, including 783 microsatellites and 210 insertion / deletion polymorphisms. They found that, if sufficient data are used, “the geographic distribution of the sampled individuals has little effect on the analysis.”55 Their results veri-

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fied that the genetic clusters “arise from genuine features of the underlying pattern of human genetic variation, rather than as artifacts of uneven sampling along continuous gradients of allele frequencies.”56 Interestingly, Rosenberg and colleagues agree with Serre and Pääbo that human genetic diversity consists of clines of variation in allele frequencies. Their disagreement consists in the fact that they hold that human genetic diversity also consists of clusters—clusters “which structure observes to be repeatable and robust.”57 They resolve the apparent paradox concerning how human genetic diversity can consist of both clines and clusters by noting (i) that the discontinuities between the clusters arise as geographic barriers (oceans, Himalayas, Sahara) are crossed and (ii) that, although small, the genetic distance between most population pairs on opposite sides of geographic barriers is larger than that between pairs on the same side of the barriers that are separated by the same geographic distance as the population pairs on opposite sides of the barriers. The discontinuity is generated by the difference in the size of the genetic distance between these two sets of pairs. One commentator pooh-poohs the general significance of the Rosenberg result, arguing that the study does no more than our eyes can do: “You can look at someone and stand a pretty good chance of identifying the continent where that person’s recent ancestors lived, especially if you’re gazing at someone whose family has resided in the same place for several generations— as did all the subjects of the study. In other words, the study accomplished the same thing our eyes do everyday.”58 But this is point missing. It is misleading to say that all Rosenberg and colleagues accomplished was to do something in a particularly complicated and roundabout way that we do every day. Prior to their study, the possibility of assigning individuals to their continent of origin solely on the basis of genetic information had not been established. Nor had the possibility been established of assigning individuals to the continental-level minimalist race to which they belong on the basis of genetic information alone. These are two significant results. And it would be incorrect to say that, in identifying the continental-level minimalist race to which individuals belong, structure simply performs a task we can already perform with our eyes. Assigning individuals to continental-level minimalist races on the basis of similarities and differences in microsatellites requires the operation of an extremely sophisticated computer-implemented algorithm. It is not something that can be done with the eyes.

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Inasmuch as Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 article shows that, modulo our interpretation, it is possible to use a computer-implemented algorithm to assign individuals to continental-level races solely on the basis of genetic information, sociologist Steven Epstein’s contention that continental races “simply cannot be demarcated by any scientific means” is untrue.59 The fact that there is a race-blind scientific “mechanical” procedure (a statistical algorithm) to assign individuals to continental-level minimalist races on the basis of genetic markers also means that, contra Alan Templeton, there is a scientific method for assigning individuals to continentallevel races that is utterly independent of “easily observed morphological traits.”60 The method is not “subjective” in the sense in which morphologically based race assignments are. It is not limited by or dependent on what Templeton called “the sensory constraints of our own species.”61 To be sure, the method is not “purely objective” (free of any pragmatic elements), since the choice of the number of clusters to which individuals are to be assigned is researcher determined. But inasmuch as the procedure (a) is based on something “objective” (microsatellites) and (b) is itself “mechanical,” it has a fair claim to be called “objective.” The fact that it is possible modulo our assumption to demarcate continentallevel races solely on the basis of genetic information means that the fact of continuity, that is, the fact that “people occupy very many different locations on a spectrum of shades, from very light to very dark” and the fact that “similar points are true of our facial features and hair types” do not entail that there is no nonarbitrary way of demarcating the boundaries of minimalist races.62 Constructing genetic clusters using microsatellites constitutes a nonarbitrary way of demarcating the boundaries of continentallevel minimalist races. And the fact that it is possible to construct genetic clusters corresponding to continental-level minimalist races in a nonarbitrary way is itself a reason for thinking that minimalist race is biologically real.63

4.5 More on Microsatellites It is widely recognized that there are genes that underlie differences in visible physical characteristics (skin color, nose shape, hair type, et cetera) characteristic of race. One might think that this ought to count as a metaphysical consideration in favor of the biological reality of minimalist race. Many theorists, however, deny this, holding that races must differ in genes

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other than those underlying the visible physical features of race for race to be counted as biologically real. Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study shows that, if the five populations corresponding to major geographic regions are minimalist races, minimalist race satisfies this more demanding condition. The study makes clear that, modulo our assumption, such races differ in microsatellites. Consequently, there are differences in DNA dividing continental-level minimalist races that do not underlie the visible physical features of race.64 This is to say that there are differences between continental-level races “at the level of the gene”— differences that meet the more demanding condition. The study arguably also shows that, if the five populations corresponding to major geographic regions are minimalist races, continental-level minimalist races are also divided by a very small number of coding genes (possible example: alleles that underlie disease susceptibility and drug responsiveness). This claim is supported by the following consideration: It is common in population genetics to argue that if one studies a set of markers spread throughout the genome and not ascertained a priori to have a par ticular property (and this holds true of the microsatellites used in the study), then the results obtained from those markers will be applicable to the genome in general. This is an intuitive use of the law of large numbers.65 Since the results obtained from these markers are applicable to the genome in general, they apply to coding genes. The upshot is that theorists who insist that race must be “more than skin deep” to be counted as biologically real have a reason to count continental-level minimalist race as biologically real. The study’s results do not, however, establish that continental-level minimalist race is more than skin deep in normatively impor tant ways. Nor do they show that it is biologically very impor tant or that it is a profound kind. They show, on the contrary, that the overwhelming majority of human genetic variation is not distributed in accordance with the division between continental-level minimalist races but rather falls within continental-level minimalist races. Only a very small fraction of human genetic variation is due to differences among these races. The results indicate that minimalist race is not a major dimension of human genetic variation. But the fact that a small fraction of human genetic variation is due to differences among continentallevel minimalist races is consistent with the view that minimalist race is a biological kind, if only a modest one. The study’s result that a small fraction of human genetic variation is due to difference among continental-level minimalist races supports the biological reality of minimalist race.

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A further result of the study is that the average proportion of genetic difference between pairs of individuals from different continental-level minimalist races exceeds— albeit only slightly—that between unrelated individuals from a single population. Human geneticist Neil Risch and colleagues’ well-known characterization of this point—“genetic differentiation is greatest when defined on a continental basis”—is potentially misleading.66 Read as a comparison of the size of the overall within-population component of human genetic variation and the overall among-population component, it is contradicted by the evidence showing that the percentage of human genetic differentiation found between continental populations is much smaller than that found within continental populations. But understood as a comparison of the size of the average proportion of genetic difference found between pairs of individuals belonging to different continental-level races with that of the average proportion of genetic difference found between pairs of individuals within continental-level minimalist races, the point is correct. The genetic differences between members of two different continental-level minimalist races is likely to be greater than the genetic differences between two members of the same continental-level minimalist race. The greatest average genetic difference between individuals is between individuals belonging to different continental-level minimalist races. This represents a small quantitative consideration in favor of continental-level minimalist race’s biological reality. That point being made, it should also be noted that pairs of individuals from different continental-level minimalist races tend to be only slightly more genetically different than pairs of individuals from the same continental-level minimalist races.67 The fact that the statistical differences are slight counts against the idea that continental-level minimalist race has great biological significance. Still another result of the Rosenberg and colleagues 2002 study is that, if the five populations corresponding to the major geographic regions are minimalist races, minimalist race is a minor principle of human genetic structure. The fact that minimalist race constitutes a dimension within which a small amount of genetic variation appears means that it is possible to speak meaningfully of the “racial structure” of human genetic variation, consisting of the human genetic variation that corresponds to differences in continentallevel minimalist race. This too speaks in favor of minimalist race’s biological reality. Our discussion of the significance of the Rosenberg and colleagues 2002 article puts us in a position to make a slight modification of our earlier

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characterization of the biological reality of minimalist race. Rather than simply saying that minimalist race is a relatively superficial biological reality, we can say that it is a genetically grounded, relatively superficial biological reality.

4.6 Race as a Human Population Partition Spencer uses the results of the Rosenberg and colleagues 2002 study to argue that ‘race,’ as used in current US race talk, is biologically real.68 He takes the meaning of this term in US “race talk” to be its referent, which he identifies, using the Office of Management and Budget’s list of races, as the set of human population groups {black, white, Asian, American Indian, Pacific Islander}. He holds that this entity is biologically real because it is identical to a (genetic) partition of the human species, namely the partition corresponding to Rosenberg and colleagues’ K = 5 level of human genetic structure. Although I reject the view that the US meaning of ‘race’ just is its referent, since I hold that ‘race’ has the descriptive meaning fi xed by C(1)– C(3) of the minimalist concept of race (2.3), I accept the position that black Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Amerindians, and Oceanians constitute races in the ordinary sense of the term. And as for the idea that these races are biologically real because they constitute a partition of the human species, it is a notion that I’m happy to take on board. In 4.4 and 4.5 I argued that one reason for counting minimalist race as biologically real is that continental-level minimalist races are distinguishable “at the level of the gene.” In those sections I took the fact that sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Amerindians, and Oceanians constitute a partition of genetic clusters (the one illustrated by the K = 5 graph in figure 1 of Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 article) as evidence of the fact that they are genetically distinguishable (on the basis of noncoding, nonfunctional microsatellites). Spencer takes the fact that these populations constitute a partition of genetic clusters (of the sampled microsatellites) to be evidence of the fact that these populations constitute a scientifically recognized partition of the human species and—interestingly—takes the latter fact itself to be a reason for counting the set consisting of these populations as biologically real. It is perhaps worth noting that inasmuch as Spencer takes the biological reality of the referent of ‘race’ as used in current US race talk to consist in its being a partition of the human species, he holds a deflationary view of the

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biological reality of race; in this respect his position is allied with mine. My position differs from his in that (i) I take minimalist race to be a legitimate modest biological kind69 and (ii) I think that the biological reality of this kind is not exhausted by the fact that black Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Amerindians, and Oceanians constitute a partition of the human species but also consists in the fact that minimalist races exist (Chapter 3), together with the fact that minimalist race is biologically significant by virtue of having explanatory value in biology (4.2) and being intrinsically interesting (3.5, 4.3) and the fact that differences between minimalist races exist “at the level of the gene” (4.4).70 I should emphasize that the case I have made for the biological reality of minimalist race does not rest on any one of these considerations taken by itself but rather on their totality.

4.7 Biomedicine and the Biological Reality of Minimalist Race I have deliberately postponed discussion of this topic because I wanted to see how far it is possible to go in making a persuasive case for the biological reality of minimalist race without establishing its medical relevance. I believe that the considerations presented in the preceding discussion suffice to show that minimalist race would be biologically real even if there were no medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races. If indeed there are medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races, this bolsters but does not make the case for the biological significance and biological reality of minimalist race. I do not think that the case for the biological reality of minimalist race can be made on the basis of medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races alone. As the medical significance of minimalist race will be discussed more fully in Chapter 8, my treatment of this topic in this section will be brief. The key claim is the following: Medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races appear to exist. For example, if you are white, you are more likely to have a felicitous polymorphism (the CCR5-delta 32 deletion mutation) that is protective against HIV than if you are a member of some other race. The mutation knocks out the CCR5 receptor through which most strains of HIV-1 gain cell entry. If you are not white, it is extremely unlikely that you have this polymorphism. The difference could be one of life or death. If you are Asian, the likelihood that you carry the allele HLA-B*1502 means that your risk of contracting Stevens-Johnson syndrome or toxic epi-

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dermal necrolysis (in which your skin falls off ) if you take the drug Tegretol is such that use of this drug is contraindicated without further testing. It is, however, unlikely that you carry the allele that puts you at risk of these adverse drug reactions if you are not Asian. These examples illustrate the point that minimalist race may be important from a medical point of view. In other words, membership in a minimalist race can be medically significant. The fact that there are medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races constitutes a reason for thinking minimalist race biologically real. Talk of medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races requires immediate qualification. To say that the category minimalist race is medically significant in some cases is not to say that it is medically significant in most or even many cases. Current research suggests that occasions in which minimalist race is medically significant will be rare. There is nothing like a simple one-to-one correspondence between diseases and minimalist race. With respect to most common diseases, minimalist race makes no biological difference. The relation between minimalist race and disease is complex and subtle. Physicians should ideally be aware of minimalist race (the fact that it is biologically real in a deflationary sense), be cognizant of the minimalist race (or races) of their patients, and be knowledgeable about the medically relevant genetic differences between minimalist races.71 They should also be aware of the risk of falling into racialist thinking about race. But, in all likelihood, minimalist race will remain a relatively minor consideration for the physician.

4.8 Deflationary Realism Over the course of this chapter I have attempted to convey the idea of minimalist race as a biological reality that is nonfundamental yet worthy of biological attention. One way of capturing this thought is to say that minimalist race is a legitimate modest kind. Another is to say that it is a genetically grounded, relatively superficial, but still significant biological reality. It will be useful to have a name for the general attitude toward the metaphysics of biological race articulated here. It can be called deflationary realism. The deflation of deflationary realism consists in the repudiation of the idea that racialist races exist and that race enjoys the kind of biological reality that racialist race was supposed to have— and in its refusal to regard race as a fundamental reality or a Millian Kind. The realism of deflationary realism consists in its acknowledgment of the existence of minimalist races and the

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genetically grounded, relatively superficial, but still significant biological reality of minimalist race. The metaphysical deflation carried out in this chapter should be distinguished from the discursive (conceptual) deflation carried out in Chapter 2. The discursive deflation executed in that chapter took the form of showing that the concept race can be conceived of as minimalist race. The metaphysical deflation carried out in this chapter takes the form of showing that the idea of the biological reality of minimalist race can be understood as the idea of a biological reality that is relatively superficial but still significant. The two forms of deflation go hand in hand. Both are required for the articulation of a suitably deflationary conception of minimalist race. Deflationary realism is anodyne. It takes the pain out of recognizing the biological real ity of race. The race it recognizes as biologically real is not racialist race. The biological reality it ascribes to race is not the fundamental biological reality traditionally ascribed to racialist race. Deflationary realism renders the idea that biological race is real nonscary by interpreting it as the idea that minimalist race is a relatively superficial biological reality.

4.9 A Look Backward In Chapter  3 I argued that minimalist races exist. In this chapter I have argued that minimalist race counts as biologically real by virtue of being a legitimate modest biological kind. These two results put us in a position to better understand why the reflective process undertaken at the beginning of Chapter  2 arrived at the result it did. The reason it yielded a single concept—the minimalist concept of race—with the content it has is that there is a kind for the concept to capture. What tips the balance in favor of the minimalist concept of race is the world.72

4.10 Conclusion I have been arguing that minimalist race is biological real. My contention is that minimalist race is a modest biological kind and genetically grounded, relatively superficial, but still significant biological reality. It is not implausible to suppose that our shared background conception of race is racialist—or at least that our cognition is still infected by this conception. The conception may dispose us to treat differences of skin color, hair texture, and eye shape as normatively impor tant— even against our

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will. It is, however, a mistake to think of this shared background conception as a fi xed and inalterable piece of our cognitive apparatus. It is not hardwired. Deflationary realism provides a worked-out alternative to racialism—it is a theory that represents race as a genetically grounded, relatively superficial biological reality that is not normatively important in itself. Deflationary realism makes it possible to rethink race. It offers the promise of freeing ourselves, if only imperfectly, from the racialist background conception of race.73

CHAP TER

5

The Populationist Concept of Race

W

e have seen that racialist races do not exist, distinguished the minimalist concept of race from the racialist concept of race, and argued for the existence of minimalist races and the biological reality of minimalist race. Now, the minimalist concept, although scientifically respectable, has this limitation: it does not provide a specifically scientific characterization of biological race. It does not tell us what races are from a scientific point of view. This chapter fi lls that gap by providing a candidate scientific concept of race. Section  5.1 introduces the populationist concept of race. The idea of population thinking is discussed in Section 5.2. Section 5.3 contrasts the populationist concept of race and Ernst Mayr’s biological concept of species. Section  5.4 responds to the objection that the populationism of the populationist race concept is “constrained.” Section 5.5 discusses the notion of reproductive isolation that figures in the populationist race concept. Section 5.6 contrasts the populationist race concept with Philip Kitcher’s biological race concept. Section  5.7 asks whether populationist races are subspecies in the technical sense of the term. Section 5.8 contrasts the notion of biological line of descent with the technical notion of lineage. Section 5.9 asks whether the populationist race concept is phylogenetic. Section  5.10 explains the sense in which the populationist race concept counts as a candidate scientific concept. Section 5.11 points out that the populationist concept is not itself a racial classification. Section 5.12 characterizes the populationist concept of race as a “scientization” of the minimalist race concept. Section 5.13 discusses the continuities between the populationist and minimalist concepts of race. Section 5.14 emphasizes the deflationary character of the populationist race concept. Section 5.15 explains that the populationist race concept is nonmalefic. Section 5.16 concludes the chapter. 98

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5.1 The Concept Introduced The populationist race concept (populationist concept of race) is a refinement of Kitcher’s biological concept of race, which is modeled on Mayr’s celebrated biological species concept.1 The latter concept figures in the present discussion as a foil for the populationist concept of race.

the biological species concept: Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations which are reproductively isolated from other such groups.2

the populationist race concept: A race is a subdivision of Homo sapiens—a group of populations that exhibits a distinctive pattern of genetically transmitted phenotypic characters that corresponds to the group’s geographical ancestry and belongs to a biological line of descent initiated by a geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding population.

Let us call populations that satisfy the criteria of the populationist concept of race populationist races. One reason for calling the populationist race concept populationist is  that it represents races as groups of populations. 3 The fundamental point of similarity between it and the biological species concept is that both instantiate the general biological attitude Mayr calls “population thinking.” The populationist race concept differs from the minimalist race concept in that its content includes the scientific concepts of genetic transmission, phenotype, reproductive isolation, and founding population— none of which are found in the content of the minimalist concept of race.4 The two concepts are clearly distinct.

5.2 Population T hinking Population thinking contrasts with an older biological attitude Mayr calls “typological thinking.”5 Typological thinking holds that for every species there is a set of intrinsic properties common and peculiar to each species member—the species’ essence—that makes the species the species it is and explains why members of the species are as they are. The typological

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interpretation of race understands race in a parallel way. The racialist concept of race is a typological concept. A fundamental feature of population thinking is its rejection of essentialism (or typology). It asserts that there is no intrinsic property an individual must have to count as a member of a species. It similarly asserts that there is no intrinsic property an individual must have to count as a member of a race. So, an individual might in principle lack specific alleles that figure in the production of the skin color, nose shape, and head form characteristic of the populationist race to which he or she belongs. Th is is, of course, unlikely, as each member of a populationist race has elevated probabilities of possessing alleles that were present in the founding population, but it is not impossible, except in the theoretical case in which alleles that affect the relevant phenotypes are “fi xed” (that is, everyone has them) in a populationist race. Population thinking recognizes that members of a given populationist race are likely to exhibit genetic traits distributed with a high frequency in that race, but holds that there is no biological guarantee that any individual member of a race will have any traits characteristic of the populationist race to which he or she belongs. The populationist race concept does not assert a strict correlation between a race’s phenotypic features and its distinctive constellation of normatively important characteristics. It does not hold that races have a distinct constellation of normatively impor tant characteristics. It does not hold that each member of a populationist race will share a set of intellectual, moral, and cultural characteristics common and peculiar to that race. Nor does it rank populationist races. Inasmuch as the concept contains no essentialist or hierarchical elements, it is nonracialist and so can be counted deflationary. It is also deflationary in not maintaining that there are vast numbers of properties that all or most members of a race have in common by virtue of being members of the same race. It does not represent races as Millian Kinds. According to population thinking, there is no single ideal way in which genotypes are expressed in phenotypes. All relations between environment and phenotype are equally “natural.” No phenotype is privileged independent of the specification of environment. There is no phenotypic property that could play the role of species essence. By the same token, there is no phenotypic property that could play the role of race essence. Population thinking removes the explanatory need for positing intrinsic essences for species, and, because of this, it might be said to be anti-

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essentialist. Combine its antiessentialism with moderate ontological parsimoniousness and you have an argument from population thinking to the nonexistence of species essences. The same point carries over to race. According to typological thinking, different species consist of individual organisms of different kinds (divided by differences in their species essence). Typological thinking likewise holds that different races consist of individual organisms of different kinds (divided by difference in their race essence). Population thinking, on the other hand, does not represent species or races as consisting of individual organisms of different kinds. There is no species (race) essence the possession of which makes an individual organism a member of a species (race). Population thinking brings about a profound shift from a conception of species and races as kinds of individuals to a conception of them as kinds of populations.6 Population thinking effects this transformation by conceiving of species and races in a way that does not depend on the possibility of providing “constituent definitions,” definitions in terms of the characteristics of the individual organisms that constitute the race or species. The populationist race concept holds that, to be a race, a group must exhibit a pattern of phenotypic characteristics (for example, skin color, nose shape, and hair type). Such patterns will typically be apparent to laypeople but need not be. It suffices that the differences in these patterns be discernable by experts. There will presumably be borderline cases in which it is indeterminate whether the patterns of phenotypic characteristics distinguishing apparently different races really are distinct. In this respect the populationist concept of race, like the minimalist race concept, is vague.7 The concept’s vagueness is a reflection of the blurriness of the kind it represents. The idea that possession of a pattern of phenotypic characteristics is an “essential” feature of racehood is not the unwelcome essentialist idea that there is some particular phenotypic characteristic an individual must possess to count as a member of a particular race. It is just the unobjectionable idea that there is a set of conditions a group must satisfy to be counted as a populationist race. Population thinking’s focus on populations makes the populationist race concept holistic. The visibly distinctive patterns of phenotypic characteristics associated with populationist races are best understood as group properties— properties of the population considered as collectively. These properties are best identified by focusing on the portions of populations that are found at maximal geographical distance from adjacent racial groups.

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If uniformity is the hallmark of typological thinking, variety is the hallmark of populationist thinking. Typologists hold that each “normal” representative of the species is the same by virtue of sharing the essential characteristics of that species. Ditto for topologists’ conception of race. For them variation represents a deviation from the norm that must be explained by reference to the intervention of interfering forces. Populationists, on the other hand, take variation to be the norm. They hold that every individual is different and hence unique. A populationist race is essentially heterogeneous.

5.3 Contrasts between the Populationist Race Concept and the Biological Species Concept One feature distinguishing the populationist race concept from the biological species concept is the role morphological characteristics such as skin color, head shape, and hair type plays in it. Such characteristics figure centrally in the populationist race concept under the rubric of phenotypic features. The biological species concept makes no reference to morphological features whatsoever. Contrary to what Mayr insinuates, however, the populationist concept of race’s implicit reference to morphological features does not render it unscientific. Mayr denied the typological species concept’s claim to biological standing on the grounds that morphology alone cannot render a concept biological (scientific). But, from the fact that reference to morphology does not suffice to confer biological standing, it does not follow that such reference renders a concept unscientific. A biological concept that makes reference to morphology might be biologically less “deep” than a concept that refers exclusively to genetic features (though this is not obviously true), but being less deep is not the same as being unscientific. Morphology is a branch of biology. The inclusion of a morphological component in the populationist concept of race ensures that Jared Diamond’s lactase-positive and lactase-negative “races” will not count as populationist races.8 It also ensures that the Amish, economic classes, and Ivy Leaguers will not count as populationist races.9 It guarantees that populationist races will be races in the ordinary sense of the term. The populationist race concept cannot, in any case, be classified as purely morphological, since it invokes such nonmorphological ideas as biological lines of descent and reproductive isolation. Two phenotypically identical (or

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similar) subpopulations of a species that belong to different biological lines of descent count as distinct races. Thus, for example, sub-Saharan Africans and Negritos, who have separate geographical origins, do not constitute a single race despite their physical similarity. Nor would they count as a single race if the physical similarity between them were greater. Geographical origin, reproductive isolation, and biological line of descent trump morphology as race-determining factors in the populationist concept of race. The populationist race concept’s morphological component does not make the concept phenetic.10 Phenetics is the attempt to classify organisms based on overall similarity, usually in morphology or other observable traits, regardless of their phylogeny or evolutionary relation. The populationist race concept does not classify organisms based on overall similarity nor does it ignore the phylogeny or evolutionary relation of the groups it classifies. Another respect in which the populationist race concept differs from the biological species concept is that it is historical, whereas the biological species concept is not. The populationist race concept is historical in that races are defined as belonging to biological lines of descent. The populationist race concept is also historical in that race membership is determined through descent. It specifies that the offspring of two Rs is an R. Mayr fl ags the nonhistorical character of the biological species concept by calling it “nondimensional.” The biological species concept is defined for populations occupying the same place at the same time.11

5.4 Constrained Populationism Joshua Glasgow would object to the populationist concept of race on the grounds that it instantiates what he calls “constrained populationism.” Constrained populationism “holds that for populations to count as races, the members of those populations must by and large share various visible traits of the relevant kind.”12 Constrained populationism contrasts with unconstrained populationism, which holds that, “for populations to count as races, it suffices that they conform to certain specified breeding patterns; they need not share any roughly distinctive visible or genetic traits.”13 Glasgow maintains that constrained populationism is not a genuine form of population thinking because it abandons “the very point and purpose” of such thinking, namely, liberation from the similarity-based forms of classification.14 The populationist race concept doesn’t specify that the phenotypic characteristics that figure in the required patterns must be visible, so one

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might think that it does not instantiate constrained populationism at all. But, since many of the phenotypic characteristics to which it refers are visible, the concept does instantiate this form of thinking. The crucial question, then, is whether it thereby abandons populationism’s “very point and purpose.” About the original motivation of population thinking, Glasgow is absolutely right. Population thinking did indeed arise historically as a reaction to the older typological approach that sought to represent populations in terms of morphological similarities alone. But, as originally conceived (by Theodosius Dobzhansky and Mayr), population thinking was concerned to account for the character of species. Now, if Dobzhansky and Mayr are right, a key fact about species is that morphology plays no essential role in their proper determination. According to the biological species concept, a species is constituted as the species it is by its breeding patterns (reproductive isolation) alone. Now, this is a perfectly plausible way of thinking about species. But is not possible to provide a full specification of what it is intuitively to be a race without making reference to morphological difference.15 So if population thinking is to account for race in an intuitive sense, it must make reference to patterns of morphological differences. It follows that the morphology constraint in the populationist concept of race is neither ad hoc nor principle abandoning. It reflects the fact that the populationist race concept is an attempt to scientize the minimalist concept of race.

5.5 Reproductive Isolation The biological species and the populationist race concepts have this fundamental feature in common: both can be framed in terms of a generic concept of reproductive isolation. The concepts species and populationist race are distinguished by the specific form of reproduction isolation that figures in each. These forms can in turn be distinguished by reference to the type of isolating mechanism in terms of which each is defined. An isolating mechanism (in the generic sense) is a structure that prevents individuals from mating, thereby reducing the probability that they will reproduce. The generic sense of this term corresponds to Dobzhansky’s original definition of ‘reproductive isolation,’ according to which an isolating mechanism is “any agent that hinders the interbreeding of groups of individuals” (my italics), and isolating mechanisms “may be divided into two large categories, the geographical and the physiological one.”16

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The isolating mechanisms that divide Mayrian biological species are intrinsic to the biology of the individual organism. They consist of biological (that is, genetically based) properties of individual organisms.17 Species are prevented from interbreeding by features such as morphological incompatibility of sex organs or by genetic differences large enough to prevent viable offspring. The hallmark of reproductive isolation between species is that, when members of different species are brought into geographical proximity, they tend not to reproduce. The isolating mechanisms in terms of which populationist races are defined are extrinsic to the biology of the individual organism. They consist in geographical barriers, such as deserts and seas, and social factors, such as customs prohibiting mating between members of different races. Geographical factors play an especially prominent role when races are coming into being. As the geograph ical barriers separating races are overcome, social practices become increasingly important. The hallmark of reproductive isolation of populationist races is that, when members of different populationist races are brought into geographical proximity, then, providing no social factors oppose their union, they tend to reproduce. As has become clear, my use of the terms ‘reproductive isolation’ and ‘isolating mechanism’ deviates from standard biological practice. Mayr himself did not countenance a race-specific concept of reproductive isolation or kind of isolating mechanism. His primary concern was to identify what is distinctive about species. Focusing exclusively on this category, he tacitly identified the features of reproductive isolation and isolating mechanisms that are distinctive of species with the nature of reproductive isolation and isolating mechanisms as such. Th is led him to hold that geographic barriers (for example, between Alcatraz and San Francisco) do not count as isolating mechanisms.18 I have recast the notions of reproductive isolation and isolating mechanisms to make them applicable to populationist race. This recasting illustrates the fact that the introduction of the populationist concept of race involves a rethinking of what race is—a rethinking that makes the concept suitable for application to Homo sapiens. Recognizing these points makes it possible to see that there is something over and above the fact that race is a division of species that separates populationist races from species. The two categories are also divided by the specific kind of reproductive isolation in terms of which they are defined. Species constitutes a division rooted in the biology of individual organisms. Populationist race constitutes a division rooted in geography and social

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relations.19 Reproductive isolation in populationist race is, to repeat, extrinsic. As Mayr recognized, the division between species (which is rooted in differences in the biology of individual organisms) is biologically “deeper” than the division between populationist races (which is not rooted in the biology of individual organisms). Populationist race counts nonetheless as a bona fide biological division because it, like biological species, is characterized in terms of patterns of reproduction.20 Our account makes it possible to see the commonplace that human races do not exhibit reproductive isolation of any kind as an error that results from a failure to distinguish the sort of reproductive isolation peculiar and appropriate to the populationist race concept from the sort of reproductive isolation peculiar to biological species.21 Populationist races do not exhibit the kind of reproductive isolation found in species. In what follows, I will use ‘reproductive isolation’ to refer to the kind of reproductive isolation specific to populationist races.

5.6 Contrasts between the Populationist Race Concept and Kitcher’s Biological Race Concept Kitcher follows Mayr in holding that the reproductive isolation characteristic of races is essentially the same as the reproductive isolation characteristic of species, differing only in its being less developed. Reproductive isolation in race is an embryonic version of reproductive isolation in species. In keeping with the modern (posttypological / postracialist) biological tradition of race thinking, he sees raciation in human beings as speciation writ small. But the reproductive isolation that figures in the definition of populationist race is different in kind from the reproductive isolation that figures in the definition of biological species. Human raciation is not speciation writ small. Kitcher follows Dobzhansky in regarding races as species in statu nascendi (species in the state of being born). For Dobzhansky, biological races are nature’s way of making new species. Populationist races, on the other hand, are not incipient species. They represent nature’s way of allowing one and the same species to survive and flourish in climatically different geographic areas while retaining its identity as a single species. Many theorists find the idea that human races are species in statu nascendi distasteful, inasmuch as it suggests that the human species is heading in the direction of further speciation. The populationist race concept jettisons

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this idea on empirical grounds. Evidence of continued genetic flow between human populations before 1492, the rapid breakdown of geographical separation after 1492, and the subsequent increase in gene flow between human populations provide reasons for doubting that human populationist races ever had independent evolutionary trajectories. Alan Templeton tells us that “ human evolution has been and is characterized by many locally differentiated populations coexisting at any given time, but with sufficient genetic contact to make all of humanity a single lineage sharing a common evolutionary fate.”22 The populationist race concept is better suited to the idea that the human population’s common evolutionary fate was to remain a part of the larger species than is Kitcher’s biological race concept. Kitcher’s biological race concept is a genuine race concept. It is continuous with the minimalist concept of race. But there is reason to think that it fails to capture the kind of races into which our species is divided. It requires that races be species in the making. Homo sapiens does not to satisfy this condition. We can reject the idea that populationist races are species in statu nascendi without rejecting the idea that races in species other than Homo sapiens are species in the making. The common chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), which has traditionally been divided into five races on morphological grounds, may be subdivided into races in Kitcher’s sense of the term. The point here simply is that our species is not divided into races of that kind.

5.7 Are Populationist Races Subspecies? ‘Race’ and ‘subspecies’ are generally taken to be synonymous.23 But the term ‘subspecies’ is used in contemporary biology in a technical sense, which makes it sensible to ask whether the populationist race concept satisfies the currently accepted, technical concept of a subspecies. The answer is no.24 The currently accepted technical concept subspecies (which is used in connection with nonhuman animals) is the concept of a sharply differentiated species division. A fi xation index (Fst), “the correlation of genes drawn at random from each subpopulation,” is “commonly used as a measure of the degree of genetic differentiation of subpopulations.”25 The widely accepted single-locus criterion for subspecies division is an Fst value of 0.25 to 0.30. It should be noted that this accepted Fst threshold for subspecieshood is a biologist’s convention (an arbitrary determination), which may be motivated by the wish to preserve the idea that subspecies marks a very impor tant

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biological status. The technical concept of a subspecies is the concept of a biological division that is very important. There is no standard criterion for delineating subspecies using the multilocus technique of genetic clustering, but philosopher of science Adam Hochman makes the plausible proposal that, in order to say that clusters represent subspecies, where ‘subspecies’ is understood to be a very important biological status, the following four conditions must be met: (i) the range of allele frequency differences between genetic clusters corresponding to race must be relatively uniform, (ii) there must be a determinate number of such clusters, (iii) the allelic frequencies within such clusters must be relatively homogeneous, and (iv) there must be a large jump in genetic differences between such clusters.26 The human species does not contain subspecies in the technical sense of the term. The evidence indicating that it does not includes the fact that human Fst estimates, being around 0.05 to 0.15, fall short of the threshold for subspecieshood.27 It also includes the fact that the human clusters identified in Noah A. Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 article do not meet any of the four conditions that Hochman suggests must be met for clusters to pick out subspecies.28 A further reason from a genetic perspective for thinking that there aren’t human subspecies is that there isn’t a lot of genetic diversity at all within the species, and what there is isn’t particularly well structured.29 But the populationist race concept does not require that a species division exhibit any par ticu lar Fst value to count as racial. Nor does it say that Hochman’s four conditions must be met in order for clusters to be said to correspond to races. It is not the concept of a sharply differentiated species division. It is not the concept of a subspecies in the technical sense of the term. This is a further respect in which it is deflationary. The fact that the populationist concept of race is not the concept of a subspecies in the currently accepted technical sense suggests that we may want to be pluralists in biology about the biological concept of race, adopting one concept of race that is equivalent to the technical concept of subspecies and another concept of race that is not equivalent to the technical concept of subspecies. The former biological concept of race may find application to some species (for example, Pan troglodytes).30 The latter biological concept of race may find application to other species (for example, Homo sapiens). There is room in biology for both sorts of biological race concepts. The general underlying idea is that the structure of infraspecific division may not be uniform across different species. Some species may be divided into

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sharply defined subgroups. Others may be divided into subgroups that are not sharply defined. We may not be interested in vague infraspecific divisions in species others than our own. But the possibility that our species exhibits the vague sort of infraspecific division specified by the populationist concept of race is of interest to us. Thinking of the populationist race concept in this way does not undercut its universality.31 For although our formulation of the concept is framed in terms of our species (“a race is a subdivision of Homo sapiens”), the concept can be formulated in universal terms (“a race is a subdivision of a species”). This reformulation makes clear that the populationist race concept is perfectly universal: it applies to any species that is subdivided in the way in which it specifies. Whether any species other than Homo sapiens are subdivided into populationist races is an empirical question. The fact that the populationist race concept is not the concept of a subspecies in the currently accepted technical sense is impor tant because it makes it possible to accommodate the fact that existing human populations do not count as subspecies thus understood. If we were to suppose that populationist races must be subspecies in the currently accepted technical sense of the term, we would be forced to conclude that there are no races in human beings. And this, Hochman argues, is the conclusion we should draw. But since the populationist concept of race does not purport to be coterminous with the technical concept of a subspecies, the fact that human populations are not subspecies in the technical sense does not force this conclusion on us. Note, however, that there is a sense of ‘subspecies’ relative to which the populationist race concept can be said to be the concept of a subspecies. The concept of subspecies in the generic sense is the concept of an infraspecific division, a division into subgroups, larger than demes, that may or may not be sharply defi ned. If we take the concept of subspecies in this generic sense, we can say that the populationist concept race is the concept of a subspecies and, in this way, preserve the traditional association of race and subspecies.

5.8 Biological Line of Descent The populationist race concept is characterized in terms of the notion of a biological line of descent rather than the technical notion of a lineage. Now, the terms ‘lineage’ and ‘biological line of descent’ are often used interchangeably.

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Not here. ‘Lineage’ is a technical term that belongs to or is closely associated with phylogenetic systematics. It was never defined for its own sake but was instead co-opted in the course of providing a phylogenetic definition of ‘species.’32 Thus, the technical notion of a lineage has become something like the idea of a lineage of a species. So wedded is it to the idea of monophyly that ‘monophyletic lineage’ is a near pleonasm. Since, as is well known, human infraspecific populations are not monophyletic, it would be inappropriate to formulate a race concept designed to capture human races in terms of the technical notion of a lineage. Biological line of descent is a generic concept. It is the concept of a sequence of ancestors and descendants that need not be monophyletic. The technical concept lineage is one logical species of this concept. The fact that the populationist race concept is framed in terms of the concept biological line of descent means that it does not require monophyly. A monophyletic taxon is a “group composed of a collection of organisms, including the most recent common ancestor of all those organisms and all the descendants of that most recent common ancestor.” 33 The fact that the populationist race concept does not require monophyly distinguishes it from philosopher of science Robin Andreasen’s cladistic race concept. She defines races as monophyletic “ancestor-descendant sequences of breeding populations, or groups of such sequences that share a common origin.” 34 Since human populations are not monophyletic, the cladistic race concept’s requirement of monophyly makes it a poor device for representing human populations. As for the biological line of descent that figures in the populationist race concept, it consists of an infraspecific sequence of ancestors and descendants that (i) originates in a distinctive geographical location and (ii) preserves the visibly distinctive pattern of phenotypic features characteristic of a race. The suite of phenotypic traits that is preserved across generations constitutes the “line” in a racial line of descent. A descendant group belongs to the same line of descent as its predecessor if it preserves the distinct pattern of phenotypic traits of the former. Let us call biological lines of descent in races infraspecific lines of descent to mark the fact they do not threaten the common evolutionary fate of the species within which they are found. The introduction of the idea of an infraspecific line of descent makes it possible to escape the objection that there are no human races owing to the fact that there are no human lineages (other than the human species lineage) by observing that populationist races are not characterized as lineages. The

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populationist race concept instead represents races as transitory historical subdivisions within a single species that share a common evolutionary fate as parts of that one species. This is another respect in which the concept is deflationary.

5.9 Phylogeny The question whether racial lines of descent count as “phylogenetic” is largely terminological. If ‘phylogenetic’ is taken in its usual biological sense, the question whether racial lines of descent are phylogenetic amounts to the question whether they capture “evolutionarily significant” relationships. And if ‘evolutionarily significant’ is construed in the usual way, the answer to this question is no. For the term ‘evolutionarily significant’ is generally understood in such a way that for a division between populations to count as “evolutionarily significant,” the differences between the populations must block “extensive” gene flow. Reflection, however, shows that the populationist race concept’s account of race may actually be of genuine interest to evolutionary biologists, despite the fact that the division between populationist races allows of extensive gene flow. If (as seems to be the case) some of the phenotypic characteristics that figure in the populationist race concept are indeed adaptive, then biological raciation may serve the function of making it possible for divisions of the species to survive in the diverse climatic conditions of the various regions in which they found themselves or migrated into (for example, the heat of sub-Saharan Africa or the extreme cold of the far north). If one wants to explain how it was possible for Homo sapiens to adapt to radically different climatic conditions, a story about raciation may be indispensable. If so, then populationist race is of interest to evolutionary theory generally and to researchers in the biological subfields of bioclimatology and biogeography in particular. There are two interpretive options here. We can cleave to the idea that, to count as properly “phylogenetic,” a division between populations must block extensive gene flow, but grant that populationist race may be of genuinely evolutionary interest despite being nonphylogenetic. Or we can preserve the semantic link between ‘phylogenetic’ and “evolutionary interest,” and maintain that because populationist race may be of interest to evolutionary biologists, populationist race turns out, surprisingly, to be phylogenetic. But what is really important here is not whether populationist race can properly be said to be “phylogenetic” or of “evolutionary interest” in the technical sense of the terms, which is a purely verbal matter. It is rather whether populationist

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race may be of real interest to biologists. And we have seen that the answer to that question may be yes.

5.10 The Populationist Race Concept as a Candidate Scientific Concept I am supposing that, for a concept to be genuinely scientific, it must successfully refer. My characterization of the populationist race concept as a candidate scientific concept is meant to allow for the possibility that it fails to refer, that is, for the possibility that there are no populationist races. In this section, I want to bracket the question of reference and ask instead whether the populationist race concept has the “form” of a scientific (and more specifically biological) concept. Taking over the elements that specify what it is for a concept to be biological in the scientific sense in 2.12.1, we can say that concept C has the “form” of a scientific concept in biology if (i) it is formulated in a “biological” vocabulary, (ii) it is framed in terms of an accepted biological outlook, (iii) it is suitable for deployment in an accepted branch of biological inquiry, and (iv) it presents the scientific ground of the phenomenon it represents. The populationist race concept satisfies (i)–(iv). (1) It is formulated in a “biological” vocabulary (for example, ‘phenotype,’ ‘gene,’ and ‘reproductive isolation’). (2) It is framed in terms of an accepted biological outlook: population thinking. (3) It is suitable for deployment in scientific theory in any number of branches of biology, including ethology, ecology, and evolutionary biology. (It should be of special interest to bioclimatology, biogeography, and ethnobiology. It is suitable for deployment in these branches of biology because each of them has a disciplinary interest in the explanation of how it is that human populations came to adapt to the new climates they encountered when they migrated out of Africa and settled in Eurasia, Oceania, and the Amer icas.) (4) In representing races as arising from reproductively isolated founding populations, the populationist concept of race presents the biological ground of the phenomenon it represents and so satisfies (iv). Does populationist race matter to population geneticists? It is safe to say that at the present time populationist geneticists do not regard race as

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central to their field. They can satisfy most of their current explanatory interests by talking about populations without concerning themselves with whether the populations that interest them are races. On the other hand, many of the specific populations with which population geneticists (for example, Rosenberg and colleagues) concern themselves appear to be populationist races. This would suggest that some population geneticists are actually interested in and indeed “quantifying over” populationist races—populations that satisfy the populationist race concept—whether they recognize that they are doing so or not. Now, if population geneticists have been reluctant to enter into the question of the existence of races, one reason for this may be that they have not had a nonracialist scientific concept of race suitable for application to Homo sapiens. The introduction of the populationist race concept changes this situation. Should they wish to enter directly into the controversial topic of race, the populationist race concept would provide them with a concept suitable for doing so.

5.11 Classification A noteworthy feature of the populationist race concept is that it does not specify a par ticular racial classification. In this respect it is like the minimalist concept of race.35 The populationist race concept’s job is to account for the general fact of the differentiation of the human species into populations whose phenotypic differences reflect differences of geographic ancestry. It constitutes a scientific framework within which various competing classifications of race can be articulated. The task of articulating the populationist concept of race is prior to and independent of the task of producing a scientific classification of races. If the populationist race concept applies to Homo sapiens, this fact entails that the species is divided into different racial groups. But this would not entail that all the divisions are sharp, still less that there is One True Racial Classification. The failure to recognize the division of labor between a scientific concept and a scientific classification of race is a persistent source of misunderstanding.

5.12 Scientization The populationist race concept can be characterized as a “scientization” of the minimalist concept of race. It recasts the contents of the minimalist

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concept of race in scientific terms in a way that promises scientific insight. If the ancestral lines of minimalist race are indeed biological lines of descent initiated by geographically separated and reproductively isolating founding populations, explaining that this is so is scientifically illuminating. But the populationist concept of race does more than to recast the content of the minimalist concept of race in scientific terms. It adds an idea not contained in the latter concept: the idea of extrinsic reproductive isolation. The reproductive isolation of populationist races can explain the emergence of the distinctive suite of phenotypic features, some of which turn out to be adaptive to the environments in which the populationist races fi nds themselves. Admittedly, there is a sense in which the minimalist concept of race is already scientized. The process through which it is arrived at weeds out gross scientific error.36 This is what ensures its biological respectability. But the scientization that the populationist race concept provides is rather different. It adds theoretical content to the minimalist concept of race. The populationist concept of race is scientific in a way in which the minimalist concept of race is not.

5.13 Continuity with the Minimalist Concept of Race Although scientific, the populationist race concept is “continuous” (in an intuitive sense) with the minimalist concept of race. The idea that minimalist races exhibit distinctive patterns of visible physical characteristics is taken up in the idea that populationist race exhibit distinctive patterns of phenotypic characteristics. The idea that minimalist races are distinguished by their geographical ancestry is preserved in the idea that, since populationist races are biological lines of descent that were originated by geographically separated founding populations, they necessarily differ in geographical ancestry. Inasmuch as the populationist race concept is continuous with the minimalist race concept, it is also continuous with (what is empirically defensible in) the ordinary concept of race. It is not, however, continuous with the racialist concept of race. No one would suggest that continuity with ordinary concepts is a general desideratum for scientific concepts. But it is a desideratum for a scientific concept of some scientific concepts, for example, the concept planet.37 And it is a desideratum for a scientific concept of race. That this is so can be seen by comparing the populationist race concept with two other candidate scientific race concepts that lack this feature.

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Dobzhansky famously defines races as “populations which differ in the incidence of some genes or chromosome structure in the gene pool.”38 Since the inhabitants of New York City and those of Los Angeles presumably differ in the structure of their respective gene pools, his definition has the counterintuitive consequence that the inhabitants of the two cities count as two different races. But of course the inhabitants of New York City do not constitute a single race in the ordinary sense of the term. Nor do the inhabitants of Los Angeles. The fact that the genetic concept of race counts these groups as races makes it discontinuous with the ordinary concept of race. This matters because Dobzhansky intends for his scientific discussion of race to bear on the popular discussion of race. It is, for example, supposed to be relevant to the general question concerning the existence of races. This is the question, posed by scientists and laypeople alike, as to whether races exist. Were someone to argue that races exist because the inhabitants of New York City and Los Angeles each constitute a race (in Dobzhansky’s sense of the term), we would say that the subject had been changed. From the standpoint of the general question, the genetic race concept is an irrelevant, homonymous notion. One desideratum in a scientific concept of race, then, is that it be suitable for addressing the general question concerning the existence of biological races. For a concept of race to satisfy this desideratum, however, it must be continuous with (what is empirically defensible in) the ordinary concept of race. Philosophers of science Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan’s concept of race as ecotype differs from Dobzhansky’s genetic race concept in that it satisfies the phenotype constraint his concept fails to meet.39 It represents races (that is, ecoraces) as populations exhibiting phenotypic differences that are ecologically adapted to a particular environment.40 But it makes no provision for ancestry and because of this is discontinuous with the minimalist and ordinary concepts of race. Race as ecotype counts two populations that exhibit the same ecotype as one and the same race even if the populations do not share a common geographical ancestry peculiar to them. Thus, if sub-Saharan Africans and Negritos shared the same ecotype, it would count them as belonging to one race. The counterintuitiveness of this result reflects the fact that the concept of race as ecotype is at odds with the ordinary concept of race. Now, Pigliucci and Kaplan more or less acknowledge the discontinuity between their race concept and the ordinary concept of race. They allow that human ecotypic races do not in general correspond with ‘folk’ racial categories, grant that ecotypic races have little or nothing in common with

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‘folk’ races, and go so far as to recommend avoiding the use of the term ‘race’ to express the concept of race as ecotype with respect to the human case. The idea that a race concept advertised as being applicable to human beings should not be applied to human beings using the word ‘race’ is curious.41 Why call it a race concept at all? Why not present ecotype as a concept that can be illuminatingly applied to human beings and leave the question of race to the side? Contrary to the pedagogical promise of their article’s title (“On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans”), the question their essay addresses is not the general question (which concerns race as ordinarily understood) concerning the existence of biological races but instead the rather different question whether it is possible find a “race concept”—that is, some notion or other that can be called a “race concept”—that can be applied to human beings. In order for a scientific concept to bear on the general question concerning the existence of biological races, the groups its counts as races must be races in the ordinary sense of the term.

5.14 The Populationist Race Concept Is Defl ationary Although the populationist race concept, incorporating as it does scientific concepts ranging from phenotype to reproductive isolation, is “stronger” than the minimalist race concept, it is still a deflationary concept. It is deflationary not only in the sense of being nonessentialist and nonhierarchical but also in the sense that it does not represent race as a Millian Kind, representing it instead as a modest biological kind.

5.15 The Populationist Race Concept Is Nonmalefic The populationist race concept does not introduce a conceptual framework that can easily revive unjust and damaging social practices.42 There is nothing in its content to rationalize contempt, fear, hatred, or ideologies of racial inferiority. Like the minimalist concept of race, the populationist concept of race is nonmalefic.43

5.16 Conclusion The populationist concept of race provides what might be called a scientific constituent explanation of race—an explanation of what biological race is from

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a scientific point of view. It supplements the minimalist concept of race by placing the kind minimalist race in an explicitly scientific framework. It suggests that there is a place in biology for human biological race. Do populationist races exist? If so, is the kind populationist race biologically real? These questions are taken up in Chapter 6.

CHAP TER

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C

hapter  5 introduced the populationist concept of race. This chapter asks whether populationist races, races satisfying the concept of populationist race, exist and whether the kind populationist race is biologically real. Section 6.1 clarifies the question concerning the existence of populationist races. Section 6.2 considers whether there are populations that exhibit distinctive patterns of genetically transmitted phenotypic characteristics corresponding to geographical ancestry. Section 6.3 asks whether populations that exhibit such patterns belong to biological lines of descent tracing back to geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding populations. Section  6.4 considers the ontological relation between populationist and minimalist races. Section 6.5 asks whether population genetics precludes the existence of populationist races. Section 6.6 asks whether it is likely that such races exist. Section 6.7 asks whether races are on their way out. Section  6.8 asks whether populationist races are still reproductively isolated. Section 6.9 asks whether the recent results of population genetics support the biological real ity of the kind populationist race. Section 6.10 raises the question whether populationist race is biologically real. Section 6.11 considers the respects in which populationist race is deflationary. Section 6.12 asks whether the role that human activity plays in the genesis and maintenance of populationist races undercuts populationist race’s claim to biological reality. Section  6.13 asks whether the populationist race concept is “reifying.” Section 6.14 asks whether populationist race is illusory. Section 6.15 concludes the chapter by considering biological race as “the trope of ultimate difference.” 118

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6.1 The Question Concerning the Existence of Populationist Races This is the question whether there are populations that (i) exhibit distinctive patterns of phenotypic characteristics that correspond to the populations’ geographical ancestry and (ii) belong to biological lines of descent that trace back to geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding populations. If the answer is yes, populationist races exist. If the answer is no, populationist races do not exist. Let’s consider each part of the question in turn.

6.2 Are There Populations That Exhibit the Right Sort of Patterns? The answer to this question is yes. We have seen that there are populations that exhibit distinctive patterns of visible physical features corresponding to the population’s geographical ancestry. They include sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. These populations are minimalist races. The patterns of visible physical features they exhibit are genetically transmitted phenotypic characteristics that correspond to geographical ancestry. Minimalist races satisfy the first condition of populationist racehood by definition. So the question whether they are populationist races turns on whether they satisfy the second condition of populationist racehood.

6.3 Do Populations T hat Exhibit the Right Sort of Patterns Belong to the Right Sort of Biological Lines of Descent? If populations that exhibit distinctive patterns of genetically transmitted phenotypic characteristics corresponding to the population’s geographical ancestry (which is to say, minimalist races) have the specific history the populationist race concept ascribes to them, these populations are populationist races and populationist races exist. But it is controversial whether minimalist races satisfy the second condition of populationist racehood, so it is controversial whether populationist races exist. The controversy may turn on a misunderstanding. In claiming that populationist races belong to biological lines of descent, the populationist race concept does not assert that populationist races belong to lineages in the technical sense of the term.1 The populationist race concept is not subject to the objection that Homo sapiens is not divided into distinct biological

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lineages. In claiming that the biological lines of descent to which populationist races belong were founded by reproductively isolated populations, the populationist race concept does not claim that the human populations were ever reproductively isolated in the sense in which species are—even in some incipient form. Properly understood, the populationist race concept’s claim about the history of human populations is much more likely to be true than one might antecedently have thought. Nonetheless, the claim is an empirical thesis for which evidence is required. Consequently, I leave it as a hypothesis. The populationist race concept is a candidate scientific concept.

6.4 On the Relation between Populationist and Minimalist Races The populationist concept of race’s continuity with the minimalist concept of race guarantees that if populationist races exist, they are minimalist races. In postulating the existence of populationist race, we do not introduce a new kind of entity. We instead ascribe a par ticular historical origin to minimalist races, entities whose existence we have already recognized.2 Now, since they are characterized by different concepts, the (putative) kinds minimalist race and populationist race might appear to be different kinds. But if minimalist races are populationist races, then the kind minimalist race = the kind populationist race. The identity of the two kinds is less surprising than one might have thought. Just as the concept H 2O provides a scientific characterization of water, so too the concept populationist race provides a scientific characterization of minimalist race. The claim that minimalist race = populationist race is analogous to the claim that water = H2O. The latter claim, since true, provides scientific insight into the nature of water. The former claim, if true, provides scientific insight into the nature of minimalist race. It is perhaps worth noting that the truth of minimalist race = populationist race would account for the remarkable affinity between the (ordinary) minimalist concept of race and the (scientific) populationist concept of race. A skeptic who did not register this identity might be struck by the underlying similarity of the two concepts and wonder whether the fact that they are so similar shows that something has been rigged.3 But if minimalist race = populationist race, then it is no wonder that the concepts minimalist race and populationist race are so similar. They are alternative conceptual representations of one and the same kind.

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6.5 Does Population Genetics Preclude the Existence of Populationist Races? If there is anything in the genetic profi le of the populationist concept of race that runs afoul of the findings of population genetics, there are no populationist races. But the genetic profi le of the populationist race concept does not violate the findings of population genetics. It does not require that the percentage of among-population genetic variation exceed the percentage of within-population genetic variation. It is compatible with the results of Richard Lewontin’s 1972 study and Noah A. Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study. About the relation between the magnitude of among- and within-population genetic variation, it is agnostic. It is compatible with any apportionment of genetic diversity consistent with the existence of differences in patterns of phenotypic characteristics. It does require that members of populationist races have elevated probabilities of possessing the alleles that were present in the founders of the lineage, but this is compatible with recent findings in population genetics concerning human population structure.

6.6 Is It Likely T hat Populationist Races Exist? Yes. The claim that populationist races exist should be plausible inasmuch as it has been tailored to be consistent with what biology tells us about the history of populations such as sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans. Moreover, its truth would go a long way toward explaining why populations that exhibit patterns of visible physical features that correspond to geographical ancestry exhibit such patterns. It is plausibly thought of as providing the best explanation of this phenomenon. This provides a powerful reason for thinking that minimalist races are populationist races and hence that populationist races exist.

6.7 Are Populationist Races on Their Way Out? Some theorists who grant that populationist races exist claim they are going out of existence. Robin Andreasen holds that “races once existed, but they are on their way out. With the advent of the modern world came the intermixing of previously isolated populations and the gradual dissolution of racial distinctness. It isn’t that science must recognize that race, like phlogiston,

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never existed; rather, human activity is causing race to lose its biological reality.” 4 It is true that in the modern (post-1492) world there is vastly more racial interbreeding than there was before 1492. And if one is referring to the very long run, then races are almost certainly on their way out. But it is one thing to say that human races will cease to exist at some point in the distant future and quite another to say that they are likely to disappear anytime soon. It is by no means clear that we are in an epistemic position to make the latter claim. Contrary to what some writers suggest, recent trends in racial intermarriage in the United States do not indicate the imminent end of populationist (or minimalist) races. 5 The skyrocketing of rates of racial intermarriage in this country notwithstanding, it remains true that the vast majority of Americans continue to marry within their own conventionally designated racial group. Despite the remarkable fact that multiracial, multiethnic Americans have apparently become the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, their numbers are still swamped by individuals who are members of a single continental-level minimalist race.6 I don’t think that the significant fraction of DNA traceable to “Europeans” in most black Americans, and the small but real fraction of DNA traceable to “Africans” in white Americans, makes the end of populationist (or minimalist) race significantly more imminent. There is no evidence of which I am aware indicating that the rate at which racial interbreeding in the United States (or anywhere else) is occurring is one that would lead to the elimination of all racial differences—a situation in which no two groups could be distinguished on the basis of patterns of visible physical differences corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry—in the near future. To sum up: the increased frequency of encountering individuals of mixed racial ancestry does not mean that the concept of race is going to go out of business anytime soon.

6.8 Are Populationist Races Still Reproductively Isolated? To ask whether populationist race is on its way out is to ask whether populationist races remain reproductively isolated. The maintenance of populationist races depends, definitionally, on the maintenance of patterns of phenotypes, which depends, causally, on the continuation of reproductive isolation. If populationist races are no longer reproductively isolated, they are on their way out.

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Speaking schematically, we can say that, prior to 1492, the main isolating mechanisms separating the current constellation of populationist races were geographical (for example, mountains, oceans, and deserts). The year 1492 witnessed the inauguration of the decline of the importance of geographical boundaries, owing to the development of oceangoing transport in Europe. It also witnessed the corresponding increase of the relative importance of social isolating mechanisms such as norms prohibiting “miscegenation.” The rapid and the dramatic increase of “marrying out” we are now observing in the United States indicates that one par ticular race-related social isolating mechanism (hostility to interracial marriage) is becoming significantly weaker. It does not, however, show that other race-related social isolating mechanisms are disappearing. The social isolating mechanisms that remain in place in the United States include residential and role segregation, racism (especially institutional racism and unavowed and unconscious personal racial hostility, contempt, and indifference), racial stigmatization and stereotypes, in-group favoritism, and differences of culture and class.7 Some of these factors, such as explicit avowed racial hostility, are no doubt diminishing. But many of them remain firmly in place. So it seems safe to say that if populationist races exist, they remain reproductively isolated to some nontrivial extent. This, in turn, provides a reason for thinking that populationist races, if they exist, won’t be going out of existence in the very near future. Some people appear to pin their hopes for a solution to the problems of race relations on the prospect of the disappearance of races. No races, no racism. Or so goes the thought. But placing one’s hopes on this prospect seems ill advised. For one thing, it places the solution to the problems too far in the future. We need to find a solution to racism that is compatible with the continued existence of races. For another thing, it seems beholden to the unduly pessimistic fear that racism must persist as long as races do. It bespeaks an inability to imagine a world with race but no racism.8

6.9 Do the Recent Results of Population Genetics Support the Biological Reality of Populationist Race? Recent results of population genetics support the biological reality of populationist race modulo an assumption about the existence of continental-level populationist races analogous to the assumption that was made in considering whether recent results of population genetics support the biological reality of minimalist race. If it is assumed that the populations that Lewontin

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identified as major “races” are populationist races, Lewontin’s 1972 study can be interpreted as providing support for the biological reality of populationist race. For then the study shows that 6–10  percent of the total human genetic variation falls between populationist races. Th is low percentage is obviously much lower than the 85 percent of the total human genetic variation that falls within human populations, but it is a measurable proportion of genetic diversity, nonetheless. The possible existence of populationist races survives Lewontin’s cleaver. If it is assumed that Africans, Eurasians, East Asians, Oceanians, and Americans constitute continental-level populationist races, Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study can be interpreted as providing support for the biological reality of populationist race inasmuch as it shows that a very small fraction (3–5 percent) of human genetic variation is due to difference among continental-level populationist races. Modulo our assumption, the study’s results indicate that populationist race is a minor principle of human genetic structure and that populationist race is a minor principle of human variation. Modulo our assumption, Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 article can be interpreted as providing support for the biological reality of populationist race inasmuch as it shows that it is possible to assign individuals to genetic clusters corresponding to populationist races on the basis of genetic markers alone. On the assumption that the five populations are populationist races, the points made earlier (4.4, 4.5, and 4.6) about how this study supports the biological reality of minimalist race carry over to the biological reality of populationist race. If the five populations are populationist races, then populationist race corresponds to a partition of the human species, and this is a further reason for thinking populationist race biologically real.

6.10 Is Populationist Race Biologically Real? The shortest route to whether populationist race is biologically real is through minimalist race. If the kind populationist race = minimalist race, populationist race inherits minimalist race’s biological reality. It too is a legitimate modest biological kind. Its biological reality also consists in (i) the fact that populationist race is biologically significant by virtue of having explanatory value in biology and being intrinsically interesting, (ii) the fact that reproductive isolation (in the sense of the term articulated in 5.5) provides a biological ground for dividing the human species into populationist races, and (iii) the

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fact that differences between populationist races exist “at the level of the gene,” and the fact that continental-level populationist races constitute a genetic partition. If minimalist race is populationist race, populationist race is biologically real. Since there is reason to think that minimalist race is populationist race, there is reason to think that populationist race enjoys biological reality too.

6.11 Populationist Race Is Deflationary The sort of biological reality populationist race enjoys, if it is biologically real, is deflationary. Populationist race is not real in the sense in which racialist race would be real if it existed. It is neither a fundamental biological reality nor a Millian Kind. If populationist races exist, populationist race, like minimalist race, is a legitimate modest kind—a genetically grounded, relatively superficial, but still significant biological reality.

6.12 Does the Fact That Human Activity Plays a Role in the Genesis and Maintenance of Populationist Races Undercut Populationist Race’s Claim to Biological Reality? If populationist races exist, human activity plays a central role in their genesis and maintenance. Populationist races, if such there are, first came into being as the presumably wholly unintended result of the migration of human populations from one geographical region to another. These migrations are, of course, instances of collective human action. This is part of what Philip Kitcher is getting at when he says that human races are both biologically real and socially constructed.9 If populationist races exist, populationist race is both biologically real in a deflationary sense and “socially constructed” in the sense of being the product of human action. The fact that populationist races are “socially constructed” (= the product of human action) does not, however, undercut the kind’s claim to (relatively superficial but still significant) biological reality. Let’s get clear about why this is so. Nothing in the deflationary characterization of the (possible) biological reality of populationist races implies that human activity played no part in their production. The fact that the biological reality populationist race may enjoy allows for human action can be thought of as a further respect in which the idea of biological reality associated with deflationary realism is deflationary. There are, to be sure, views

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that count kinds as “natural” only if they are not the product of human action. Deflationary realism is not one of them. Provided that ‘biologically real’ is understood in a suitably deflationary way, there is no contradiction in saying that populationist races are socially constructed and a biological kind. If populationist races exist, the role human action plays in their maintenance is rather more pronounced than the role it played in their genesis. Insofar as social norms and practices prohibiting or discouraging intermarriage have been the primary mechanisms preventing racial interbreeding since 1492, the maintenance of the separation has been intentional: this outcome is the very point of the discriminatory activity and practices in question. There is thus an especially strong sense in which, if populationist races exist, populationist race has been socially constructed since 1492. In light of these considerations, we would do well to be wary of using the word ‘natural’ in connection with populationist race. Populationist race is not “natu ral” in the sense of being immutable or inalterable. Its existence is not an invariant, unchangeable “natural” fact. Populationist race could go out of business. The maintenance of populationist races is not a natural process outside human control. Unlike hurricanes or floods, the continued existence of populationist race is not a natural occurrence that does not require or admit of legitimation.10 It results from human activity. The continued existence of populationist races, if it is a fact, is a fact within our power to change. On the other hand, if populationist races exist, they are “natural” in the vague sense of being “there in nature.”

6.13 Reification Does the claim that populationist race is biologically real “reify” biological race? Some eliminativists would say yes and regard this as a reason for rejecting the biological reality of populationist race. The answer to this question depends on how the weasel word ‘reify’ is understood. (i) In critical circles, the term ‘reify’ is commonly used in such a way that to “reify” race is to take racialist race to be biologically real or to take the biological reality of race to be the kind of reality that racialist race claims to have. To say that populationist race is biologically real is not to “reify” biological race in this pernicious sense. (ii) The term ‘reify’ is also used to convey the idea of taking biological race to be an immutable, fi xed, and invariant reality independent of human action and will. To say that populationist race is biologically real, however, is not to “reify” biological race in this pernicious sense.

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(iii) ‘Reify’ can be used in such a way that to reify something is to represent it as a human-agent-independent res. Populationist race is not a res of this kind. To say that populationist race is biologically real is not to “reify” it in this pernicious sense. (iv) The term ‘reify’ is sometimes used to express the idea of investing something with more biological significance than it deserves. Saying that populationist race is biologically real in a deflationary sense does not “reify” it in this pernicious sense. (v) The term ‘reify’ can in addition be used to express the false idea that biological race is a Millian Kind. To say that populationist race is biologically real is not to “reify” biological race in this pernicious sense. (vi) ‘Reify’ can also be used to insinuate that the thing ‘reified’ is not “really real.” When employed in this pejorative way, ‘reify’ functions like the pejorative acceptation of ‘rationalize.’ To “rationalize” something (an action, a policy, an institution) in the pernicious sense is to falsely represent it as rational. The objection that race is biologically real “reifies” race in this pernicious sense is question begging since it presupposes that populationist race is not biologically real in a deflationary sense, whereas I have argued that populationist race is likely to be biologically real in a deflationary sense. (vii) Philosophers sometimes use the word ‘reify’ in a nonpejorative way such that to “posit” something (anything) as real is to “reify” it. To ‘reify’ X in this sense is simply to treat X as a being or entity, as a res of some kind or other. This neutral use of the word does not insinuate the unreality of what is “reified.” If ‘reify’ is taken in this generic, nonpejorative way, then to say that populationist race is biologically real in a deflationary way is to “reify” it. But there is nothing inherently bad or untoward about such “reification.” The upshot: The claim that populationist race is biologically real in a deflationary sense does not “reify” it in a bad, pernicious sense. The sense in which it does “reify” it is okay and nonpernicious.

6.14 Is Populationist Race Illusory? It might be suggested that if populationist races exist, populationist race is illusory (and hence unreal) because populationist races appear to be racialist races, fundamental kinds, or Millian Kinds when in fact they are not. If populationist races exist, populationist race is illusory in racist societies in the sense that in such settings it will appear to be racialist race, or a fundamental kind, or a Millian Kind. But from the fact that it is illusory in this sense, it does not follow that it is unreal. Something real can be illusory in

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the sense of being something that appears to be what it is not. We can correctly characterize the appearance that populationist race is racialist race as an illusion. But this does not undercut the relatively superficial biological reality that populationist race enjoys, if populationist races exist. It is impor tant to recognize that populationist race is not inherently illusory. Something is “inherently illusory” if it misleads independently of social conditions. Heat-generated mirages of water are inherently illusory. The heat waves appear to be water in racist and nonracist social worlds alike. Populationist race will not appear to be racialist race, a fundamental kind, or a Millian Kind in nonracist social worlds. In such worlds it would appear to be what it is, namely, a deflationary biological reality.

6.15 Biological Race as the “Trope of Ultimate Difference” Henry Louis Gates Jr. has written that biological race is the “trope of ultimate difference.”11 I think this suggestion is best glossed as the idea that biological race functions as a trope (a figure) of “essential” (he says “irreducible”) differences between people and peoples. The message of the trope is that if two individuals I1 and I 2 are racially different, they are eo ipso “ultimately,” “irreducibly,” or “essentially” different—they are two different kinds of person or human being. The trope might be represented as the following identity claim: Racial difference = ultimate, irreducible, essential difference

Does biological race function as a trope of ultimate difference? It seems that it does, at least in racist societies such as ours. In racist societies, racial differences are seen as “ultimate,” “irreducible,” and “essential.” But the claim must be qualified. Biological race is not a trope of ultimate difference in itself. It does not function in that way independently of the society in which it is found. It would not function as a trope of ultimate difference in a nonracist social world. In such a world, racial differences would be easily seen to be differences that are relatively superficial. The reason they appear to be deep and fundamental in racist societies is that such societies are subject to the operation of racialist ideology. To suggest that biological race would continue to function as a trope of ultimate difference in a nonracist society is to “fetishize” it: to commit the error of investing it with magical powers it does not have.12 There is nothing in biological race itself—no power internal to it—that forces us to view

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individuals who belong to other races as being “ultimately” or “irreducibly” different. The idea that biological race itself has such magical powers is an illusion racist societies foster that we would do well to free ourselves of. Interestingly, Gates emphatically denies the real ity of biological race. He says, for example, that “race, as a meaningful criterion within the biological sciences, has long been recognized to be a fiction”13 and that “race . . . pretends to be an objective term of classification, when in fact it is a dangerous trope.”14 The idea seems to be that race is not a reality but rather a trope. This places Gates in the awkward position of denying the reality of the very item he has identified as the trope of ultimate difference. I suspect that he is driven to this extreme position by the mistaken thought that recognizing the reality of biological race must amount to recognizing the reality of racialist race. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of distinguishing the idea of biological race from the idea of racialist race. The deflationary conception of the biological reality of race makes it possible to recognize the reality of biological race without recognizing the reality of racialist race. It makes it possible to see through the trope. To do this is to see that one can accept the biological real ity of race without accepting the reality of the ultimate, irreducible, essential difference of people of different races. Deflationary realism makes it possible to see through the trope, thus making the idea of the biological reality of race more palatable.

CHAP TER

7

The Concept of Socialrace

I

n the preceding chapters we looked at race conceived of as a biological phenomenon. In this chapter we turn to a conception of race as a social phenomenon. None of the race concepts considered thus far—the racialist concept of race, the minimalist concept of race, and the populationist concept of race—make it possible to conceive of race as a social phenomenon because each of them purports to represent race as something biological. To conceive of race as a social phenomenon, a different kind of race concept is called for. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the kind of race concept needed for this task. I call the concept to be introduced the concept of socialrace (closed compound). The concept of socialrace (socialrace concept) is not new.1 It has been in circulation implicitly, if not explicitly, for more than thirty years.2 But although the phenomenon of socialrace has received extensive investigation, the concept socialrace has not. Section  7.1 articulates what the concept is. Section  7.2 discusses the idea of a “biological correlate” to socialrace. Section 7.3 specifies the kind of constructivism associated with the concept. Section 7.4 asks whether socialrace is really a race concept. Section  7.5 provides an interim summary of conclusions reached so far. Section  7.6 asks what word should be used to express the concept socialrace. Section 7.7 considers desiderata for an account of socialrace. Section 7.8 examines alternative accounts and near accounts of socialrace. Section  7.9 concludes the chapter.

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7.1 What the Concept Is The concept socialrace variously refers to (1) a social group that is taken to be a racialist race, (2) the social position occupied by a par ticular social group that is a socialrace, or (3) the system of social positions that are socialraces.3 Socialrace thus picks out three different but related social kinds— a kind of social group, position, and system.4 It is distinct from the ordinary concept of race, which purports to represent a biological kind of thing. To say that a socialrace is a social group is to say that it is a group that is social rather than biological. Social races are social groups because they are constituted by social relations and defined by social properties. They are not biological groups because they are not constituted by biological relations or defined by biological properties. Examples of social groups include a peer group, the working class, and the US Congress. I treat the notion of a group as intuitive.5 A socialrace is a social group that is taken or thought to be a biological group of a par ticu lar kind, namely a racialist race. Analogously, a socialwitch is a human being who is taken or thought to be endowed with supernatural powers. The idea of a racialist race is the idea of a group that satisfies the conditions of the racialist concept of race.6 This is the familiar essentialist and hierarchical race concept commonly misidentified as the concept of race discussed in Chapter 1. It posits a correlation between visible physical features such as skin color, eye shape, and hair type, and normatively important characteristics such as intelligence, sexuality, and fitness for selfgovernment. It is now generally recognized to be vacuous. The concept racialist race does not pick out a biological kind. It is not biologically respectable. Because of this, its status as a biological concept is sometimes denied. But there is sense in which it is a biological concept: namely, it purports to pick out a biological kind. Racialist race can be said to be a failed biological kind in just the sense that phlogiston can be said to be a failed chemical kind. To represent a group G as a racialist race is to falsely represent G as a biological group. Socialraces are by definition social groups that are falsely or wrongly taken to be racialist races. To understand what socialraces are (and to understand what the concept socialrace is), one must understand that socialraces are not racialist races and, indeed—to fully understand the phenomenon and concept— one must understand that there are no racialist races.7

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The “taking to be” that makes a social group a socialrace is fi rst of all a matter of belief. Socialraces are social groups that are generally believed to be racialist races. This belief may be implicit, need not be acknowledged, and may be disavowed.8 Members of a socialrace are thought to have features common and specific to their putative racialist race. Inasmuch as socialraces are social groups that are viewed as racialist races, the phenomenon of socialrace contains an essential intensional (with an s) element. Now the “taking” that makes a group a socialrace is not simply a matter of what transpires in people’s heads. It is also practical.9 It consists in racebased social practices that assign members of socialrace SR to specific race-related social positions and in society’s treating SR’s members in determinate ways specified by race-based social norms. Thus W. E. B. DuBois’s famous remark that “the black man is the person who must ride Jim Crow in Georgia.”10 The “must” is practical. The relevant norms and practices are “race based,” not in the sense that they are explained by features of racialist race, but in the sense that they are legitimated and stabilized by reference to characteristics associated with racialist race. Socialrace (the phenomenon) is social in something like the sense in which money and marital status are. Without the requisite social practices, there would be no money, no marriage, and no socialrace.11 Socialrace differs from these straightforwardly social institutions, however, in that its sociality is disguised. The concept socialrace represents socialraces as social groups whose sociality is hidden—not from the critical theorist already in possession of the concept socialrace, of course, but from the ordinary individual in society.12 Socialraces are social groups that appear to be biological. The fact that they are social races generally goes unseen. It is essential to keep the distinction between socialrace, the phenomenon, and socialrace, the concept, firmly in mind.13 The former is a social phenomenon (a set of social practices and relations); the latter is a concept (a thought content). The concept socialrace has the discursive function of unmasking the sociality of the phenomenon of socialrace that the institution of socialrace has the social function of hiding. The concept reveals the role that the concept racialist race plays in the constitution of socialraces. It shows that racialist race legitimates and stabilizes the social hierarchy of socialrace by representing its social arrangements as something given in nature and hence fi xed and inalterable by human will.14 In virtue of serving this revelatory function, socialrace counts as an emancipatory concept.15

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It is also essential to avoid confusing the concept socialrace with the concept racialist race. When the concepts are tagged by the labels ‘socialrace’ and ‘racialist race,’ such confusion is unlikely. But when, as sometimes happens, the two concepts are expressed using the same word, ‘race,’ they are easily mistaken for one another. Racialist race is the race concept that, in social theorists Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s words, “continues to play a fundamental role in structuring and representing the social world.”16 Socialrace has never played such a role. Structures of socialrace, on the other hand, do figure in the constitution of the social world. They are social realities. The circumstance in which structures of socialrace play a role in the organization of the social world can be called “institutional racism.”17 Institutional racism, thus understood, obtains when and where socialrace obtains. This sense of ‘institutional racism’ is distinct from the narrower sense of the term, the reference of which is restricted to “racial inferiorizing or antipathy perpetrated by specific social institutions such as schools, corporations, hospitals, or the criminal justice system as a totality.”18 Institutional racism in the sense of socialrace can pervade society as a whole.19 The institution of socialrace is by its nature hierarchical.20 Some socialraces (for example, whites) are dominant; others (for example, blacks) are subordinate. Members of dominant socialraces have the power to repress or enforce frustrations of some preferences of members of subordinate socialraces.21 Socialrace is inter alia a relation of power. The institution is also characterized by the unequal distribution of such social goods as liberty and opportunity, income and wealth, and the bases of self-respect. Socialrace is a system of advantages (purportedly) based on racialist race. Th is unequal distribution of goods is a function of the unequal distribution of power. Each par ticu lar socialrace has its own specific statistical profile with respect to such matters as marital status, housing, education, employment, criminal arrest and conviction, access to health care, and exposure to environmental hazards.22 Differences in socialrace are associated with significant differences in the life prospects of individuals. It is because of these differences that socialrace matters. Our specification of socialrace respects philosopher Bernard Boxill’s principle that “the belief that people are members of a biological race . . . is essential to the social construction of races.”23 Socialrace records the application of a biological concept—the racialist concept of race— in the societies in which socialraces are found. The fact that the biological

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concept racialist race is a discursive element of the content of a concept included in the content of socialrace does not, however, make the concept socialrace biological. Socialrace (the concept) captures the biological pretensions of socialrace (the phenomenon) without sharing them. Socialrace is strongly nonbiological. It is logically possible that socialraces could be found in a world in which the apparent differences in human skin color were actually the result of the nocturnal activity of race fairies, spray-painting hues of black, brown, yellow, red, and pink on the skin of sleeping souls in the dead of night. What makes a person a member of a socialrace are social practices (which include the local application of specific criteria for individual racial classifications), not the possession of biological features.24 The concept socialrace is free of any implication that there are even partially biological races.25 It does not represent socialrace as a “socialnatural” kind, representing it instead as a social kind that falsely purports to be a biological kind.26 Now, it is true and uncontroversial that socialraces—some of them, at least— exhibit visible physical differences that have a biological ground (for example, skin color). The structures of socialrace “conscript” (to use philosopher Lucius Outlaw Jr.’s felicitous term) these differences into ser vice as identifiers of racialist race. Socialrace does not, however, deny (or affi rm) the existence of real physical differences. Historian Matthew Frye Jacobson’s observation that the “whiteness” of the Irish, Jews, Poles, and Italians came to be regarded in the United States between 1840 and 1924 as “inconclusive,” “provisional,” or “probationary” suggests the possibility that merely imagined differences of visible physical difference might be sufficient.27 It should be clear that the concept of socialrace is consistent with biological racial eliminativism. Socialrace presupposes the nonexistence of racialist races and is agnostic on the question concerning the existence of nonracialist biological races. Socialraces are social groups that appear to be racialist races. That they have this appearance is essential for their maintenance and reproduction.28 This fact plays a critical role in legitimating and stabilizing them. Now, this appearance is an illusion. Racialist race (the existence of racialist races) is an illusion. There are no racialist races. Racialist race should not be seen, as Omi and Winant suggest, as “a dimension of human representation rather than an illusion” (my italics).29 Racialist race is a dimension of human representation that is an illusion. In contrast to racialist races, socialraces are real. Their reality is illustrated by

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the fact that socialrace can figure in veridical social explanations, for example, of why members of socialrace SR constitute a certain percentage of the total prison population.30 As Joshua Glasgow notes, one can “point to the role that race [that is, socialrace] plays in our lives—in marital status, housing, education . . . and so on—as evidence that race [that is, socialrace] is as socially real as any other social category, such as wife or student or journalist.”31 The concept socialrace facilitates recognition of this reality by giving it a name. The complicating factor is that, although real, socialrace depends for its existence on the illusion of racialist race. But real things (for example, economic bubbles) can depend on illusions. Still, socialrace’s dependence on illusion might be thought to constitute grounds for thinking it unreal. Socialrace is unreal in the sense that it depends for its existence on illusion. But this dependence in no way undercuts the causal power of its structures. Th is is the decisive point. As a structure with real causal powers—for example, to cause a person’s death—socialrace merits the status ‘real.’ Instead of making the phenomenon of socialrace unreal, the fact that socialrace depends on an illusion shows its ideological nature: its dependence on ‘false consciousness’ (the false belief that racialist races exist).32 One might object to calling socialrace ‘real’ on the grounds that this amounts to reifying it. But to call socialrace ‘real’ (in the intended, causal sense of ‘real’) is not to ‘reify’ it (in the pernicious sense): one does not thereby represent it as a human-agency-independent res.33 To represent socialrace as socialrace is, on the contrary, precisely to represent it as a real ity that is the product of human agency.

7.2 Biological Correlate We have seen that the concept socialrace is agnostic on the question concerning the existence of nonracialist biological races. The concept is framed in this way for purposes of analytical clarity. We have also seen that the concept’s agnosticism on the question concerning the existence of nonracialist biological races should make it acceptable to eliminativists about biological race. But if the concept socialrace is agnostic on nonracialist biological races, I am not. My position is that nonracialist human biological races exist, namely minimalist races, and I have proposed the hypothesis that they can be understood as populationist races. My view is that socialrace

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has a biological correlate and that this biological correlate is minimalist race.34 This claim requires immediate qualification. To say that minimalist race is the biological correlate of socialrace is not to say that for every socialrace there is a corresponding minimalist race. Latinos, to the extent that they are racialized (taken to be a racialist race), constitute a socialrace, but Latinos are not a minimalist race.35 Nor does any other minimalist race play the role of biological correlate to the socialrace Latino. There is no single minimalist race that functions as the biological correlate to this group. The Irish were a socialrace at one point but are probably not a minimalist race. We can say that Jews have been a socialrace without committing ourselves to the claim that they are a minimalist race. In speaking of minimalist race as the biological correlate of socialrace, I mean, first of all, that minimalist race supplies the real visible physical differences (in skin color, hair, eye shape, and so on), such as they are, that socialrace conscripts. I also mean that there is a very rough and very imperfect correlation between socialraces and minimalist races such that for many socialraces there will be a corresponding minimalist race. The word ‘very’ should be underscored. On the other hand, it is not at all clear that the logical possibility of socialrace without minimalist race is a real possibility. Some of the alleged visible physical differences that divide socialraces may be imaginary. Here one thinks of Benjamin Franklin’s doubts about the whiteness of Germans. But not all of them are. For there to be socialraces, it seems likely that there must be real patterns of visible physical differences between groups that the structures of socialrace can conscript. Minimalist race appears to be a necessary condition for socialrace.

7.3 Constructivisms Our account of the concept of socialrace is constructivist about socialrace. It represents socialrace as the concept of something that is both socially constructed and real. ‘Constructivism’ is often used in such a way that to say that X is socially constructed is to say that X is unreal. As I use the term, ‘constructivism’ carries no such implication. The constructivism associated with socialrace differs from more familiar constructivist accounts in that it is not a social constructivism about race. The moderate constructivism I endorse is not an account of the ordinary concept of race (or of the putative subject matter of this concept). It does not

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represent the putative subject matter of the ordinary concept of race as a social construction or social kind. ‘Socialrace’ is a term of art expressing a concept distinct from the ordinary concept of race. The social kind it picks out must be sharply distinguished from the biological kind the ordinary concept of race purports to pick out. About the ordinary concept of race, there is much that is controversial. One thing that ought not to be controversial is that it purports to represent race as a biological grouping. I take it to be equally evident that it does not purport to be about things social. If this is correct, then the ordinary concept of race cannot represent the phenomenon of socialrace as a social phenomenon. Its identity as a concept—I assume a traditional view of concepts— precludes this. A concept’s representational scope is limited by its specific representational function.36 Were the ordinary concept of race to represent a social subject matter as social, it would not be the concept that it is. The idea that socialrace is distinct from the ordinary concept of race can be buttressed by the following reflection: the specification of the socialrace entails that, if a social group that has been taken to be a racialist race should cease to be taken as such, it will cease to be a socialrace.37 But the idea that a race would (or could) lose its standing as a race in the ordinary sense because of changes in what people believe or in the way in which they behave is absurd. The ordinary concept of race takes racehood to be independent of what people believe and do. So the two concepts cannot be the same. This last point may be obscured by the possibility of using the ordinary English word ‘race’ to refer to socialrace.38 Our current linguistic practices allow for this usage. One can say that race is a social phenomenon and convey a truth without impropriety. Philosopher Ronald Sundstrom writes, Race has presence and impact in the USA and at many other sites in the world. It is present as a socially produced category and identity. Race, as is the case with other social categories, is the product of institutional actions and individual intentions, as well as the normative forces that result from the dialectic between the two. Its impacts are numerous and various. It affects personal and communal experience, and the formation and experience of other social categories, such as gender, class, and sexuality. Furthermore, it impacts the continuing formation and expressions of the basic institutions— culture, economics, politics—of society that participate in its own formation. The presence and impact of race allow us to conclude that race, at our site at the present moment and since its inception as a category and into the foreseeable future, is real.39

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He is skillfully deploying the word ‘race’ to express something like the concept I am calling ‘socialrace.’ Although potentially misleading, this use is not illicit. The word ‘race’ has acquired or is acquiring a secondary sense that does not correspond to the ordinary concept. This secondary sense is perhaps best thought of as an incipient expansion of the word’s original meaning. Should it persist and become sufficiently widespread and entrenched, it may come to deserve its own separate lexical entry in the dictionary under the heading ‘race.’ Some would argue that it already does. It is possible the (ordinary) word ‘race’ is becoming ambiguous as between a (putative) division within the species Homo sapiens and a complex social structure.40 The concept socialrace piggybacks on the concept racialist race. Socialrace (the phenomenon) is defined in terms of the application of the racialist concept of race. The racialist race concept piggybacks on the minimalist concept of race. The discursive elements that constitute the minimalist race concept figure in its specification—to count as a racialist race, a group must be taken to exhibit the properties specified by the logical core: differences in visible physical features corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry. Constructivism about socialrace resembles constructivism about race in that it couples the affirmation of the reality of socialrace with the denial of the reality of racialist race. The former sort of constructivism, moderate social constructivism, however, breaks with standard forms of constructivism in that it does not deny that race as specified by the ordinary concept of race picks out a biological kind or the possibility of a valid scientific concept of biological race. With respect to these questions, the concept socialrace is silent.

7.4 Is socialrace a Race Concept? The occurrence of the word ‘race’ in ‘socialrace’ suggests it is. So too the fact that this concept has a place in this book. But there are reasons to question whether socialrace is indeed a race concept. We can say that to count as a race concept proper, a concept must include all three elements of the minimalist concept of race in a committal way. But although these elements figure in socialrace, they do not do so in a committal way. Logically speaking, there could be socialraces even if no groups exhibited visible physical features that corresponded to differences in geographical ancestry.

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A social group does not have to exhibit such features to count as a socialrace. It suffices that it be taken to have such a pattern. So socialrace is not a race concept proper. But saying flat out that it isn’t a race concept seems wrong. The three elements of the minimalist concept of race do figure in its content, even if in a noncommittal way. And the concept corresponds to one way in which the word ‘race’ can be used. Moreover, one could not provide a complete account of what race is without reference to socialrace. So let’s say—vaguely—that socialrace can be thought of as a race concept in an extended sense. We can express this idea by saying that socialrace is a distinctive “race” concept.

7.5 Interim Summary So far I hope to have made good on two claims: (1) The concept socialrace is a distinctive “race” concept. (2) The concept socialrace satisfies a genuine representational need. Socialrace counts as a distinctive “race” concept for the reasons we have seen. It counts as a genuine concept because it provides a unified way of thinking about (a) social groups that are taken to be races, (b) the social positions those social groups occupy, and (c) the system of social structures of which those positions are parts—a way of thinking of these items as a unity. Full possession of the concept requires grasping these elements as a unity—the unity articulated in the preceding exhibition of the concept. One can have the thought of a social group that is taken to be a race and have the thought of the social position those groups occupy and have the thought of these social positions as forming a position and yet lack the concept socialrace if these elements are not grasped together in the requisite unified way. Now, I take it to be obvious that writers who have discussed the phenomenon of socialrace must have possessed—at least implicitly—the concept socialrace or something much like it.41 How else could they have grasped the phenomenon of socialrace? Thus, for example, Omi and Winant, who clearly see the need for a concept like the concept of socialrace and, furthermore, think that such a concept has been found, write, “It has taken scholars more than a century to reject biologistic notions of race in favor of an approach which regards race as a social concept.” 42 The force of the first part of this statement is that it

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has taken scholars more than a century to reject racialist conceptions of race. The force of its second part is that it has taken scholars more than a century to arrive at an approach that regards race as a social phenomenon—an approach that deploys a social concept of race. The idea of a social system based on racialist conceptions of race is the idea of socialrace (the phenomenon). And the idea of a concept that represents social systems based on racialist conceptions of race as such is the idea of the concept of socialrace. So Omi and Winant have the idea of both the phenomenon and the concept of socialrace.43 Regarding (2), the need for the concept socialrace: If the phenomenon of socialrace exists, the concept socialrace (or some such concept) is needed to represent it. Such a concept is needed both for epistemic reasons (to grasp reality) and for normative or political reasons (to address the harms wrought by socialrace).

7.6 What Word Should Be Used to Express the Concept socialrace? It is one thing to say that a concept like socialrace is needed, another to determine the linguistic vehicle best suited to its expression. It is worth considering why I opt for the neologism ‘socialrace.’ Omi and Winant use the word ‘race’ to express a socialrace-like concept. Th is choice avoids the ugliness of neologism and takes advantage of a semantic development already under way. The problem is that the word ‘race’ continues to express the racialist concept of race (and the ordinary concept of race). As things stand, socialrace-expressing uses of ‘race’ are bound to butt heads with both ordinary and racialist race– expressing uses of ‘race,’ especially the latter— and this will inevitably result in confusion. A number of other writers also use the word ‘race’ to express the concept socialrace. The social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger is one. She says, for example, that “race” is a social construct, “forged by oppressive systems of race relations, justified by ideology, in which one group benefits from dominating other groups, and defines itself and others through this domination and the possession of selective and arbitrary physical characteristics (for example, skin colour).” 44 Socialrace is a social construct, “forged by oppressive systems of race relations” et cetera, but “race” understood as minimalist race is, we have argued, a biological reality, a “biological” rather than a social

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construct. The term ‘socialrace’ would provide her with a nonmisleading way of conveying her point. Philosopher of science Michael Root is another writer who uses ‘race’ to express the concept socialrace. When he writes that “race is like marital status; no one would be married or single had we not invented matrimony; however, given that we did, we now divide ourselves along discernible boundaries, into categories like ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ or ‘single’ and ‘divorced’ and treat each other differently depending on which of these categories we belong to,” it is evident that he is talking about what I call ‘socialrace.’ 45 Socialrace is like marital status. Minimalist race is not. It is not true that no one would be a member of this or that minimalist race had we not invented minimalist race. No one invented minimalist race. Nor did minimalist race come into being as the result of the deployment of a social category. The claim that race is like marital status is ambiguous. Understood as a claim about minimalist race or racialist race, it is false. Understood as a claim about socialrace, it is true. One could use the open compound ‘social race’ to express the concept socialrace. This has the advantage of avoiding neologism. A disadvantage is that some writers use this expression to refer to putative racialist races, while others use it to express something like the concept socialrace, and still others confuse the two uses. The word ‘socialrace’ provides a term that avoids this confusion. The peculiar orthography of ‘socialrace’ flags the term’s special character. Being manifestly distinct from the word form ‘race,’ ‘socialrace’ does not appear to express the ordinary or racialist concept of race. The word wears its sociality on its sleeve. Unlike ‘shmace,’ it has the look and sound of a real word. ‘Socialrace’ is a clarifying term that could catch on.

7.7 Desiderata for an Account of a socialrace-Like Concept I would like to step back to present some desiderata for an account of a socialrace-like concept to provide a perspective on the account just laid out and set the stage for the forthcoming discussion of alternative conceptions or near conceptions of socialrace. 1. The first desideratum is subject specificity. An account of a concept such as socialrace should be an account of a socialrace-like concept and not something else. It follows immediately that it should not be an account of some other, non-socialrace-like concept, such as the ordinary or

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racialist concepts of race. It also follows that it should not be an account of ethnicity. Socialrace is not ethnicity. Ethnicity is generally taken to have to do with such matters as culture, nationality, language, and religion. Socialrace is not a cultural concept. Two members of the same socialrace, for example, an Afro-Cuban and a West Indian (members of the socialrace black), may belong to different ethnic groups. An individual member of socialrace SR may not share in the culture associated with SR. The extensions of socialrace and ethnicity can overlap. An ethnicity can be ‘racialized’—that is, treated as a racialist race and thus become a socialrace.46 But the concepts are distinct. Ethnicity also differs from socialrace in making no essential reference to differences in visible physical appearance. An account of the concept socialrace should not be an account of the concept ethnorace. The two concepts are distinct. Ethnorace, the suggestive concept introduced by philosopher David Goldberg, is helpfully characterized by philosopher Sally Haslanger as the concept “of a group of people who have been ‘marked’ as of the same race, who share some common cultural elements and are collectively involved in the constitution of their shared identity.” 47 Socialrace does not require shared cultural elements, self-constitution, or a shared, subjectively embraced identity. It is intended to be an analytical notion that abstracts from (does not mention, require, or deny) commonalities of culture and purpose. It picks out a social kind, and identifies an existing system of social positions without regard to whether the grouping formed within those social positions can serve as an object of solidarity or grounds for positive self-affirmation. Unlike socialrace, ethnorace aspires to represent “race” as a sociocultural kind. It is intended to capture the possible commonalities of culture and purpose associated with socialrace, to represent the groupings formed under regimes of socialrace as possible objects of solidarity, and to present membership in these groupings as possible grounds for self-affirmation and possible bases for identity formation. Unlike socialrace, it is introduced to be a tool that facilitates solidarity, group self-affirmation, and collective identity formation. It helpfully points to the fact that racialized individuals and groups need not be mere passive recipients of externally imposed identities but can take existing racialist categories, reinterpret their meaning, and take the now differently understood groupings as objects of solidarity, grounds for collective self-affirmation, and bases for affirmative social iden-

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tities. The fact that socialrace does not emphasize this point does not render it defective. The concept serves a different function. A critical question concerning ethnorace’s value is how (that is, whether) it can accommodate the fact that a single socialrace can include different ethnicities. It is clear how Afro-Cubans, West Indians, and AfroBrazilians can be counted as members of the same socialrace, black. The fact that this racial grouping may, in Linda Martín Alcoff ’s words, counter their “own sense of identity or primary group alliances” puts no pressure on the idea that they belong to one and the same socialrace.48 But do AfroCubans, West Indians, and Afro-Brazilians belong to one and the same ethnorace? Presumably not. They are culturally distinct. Do they count as three distinct ethnoraces? Well, maybe. The concept ethnorace has not been specified with sufficient determinacy to provide a clear answer to questions of this sort. That’s a difficulty. A more fundamental difficulty is that it is not clear that ethnicity and socialrace generally combine into the type of integral sociocultural unity the term suggests. An account of the concept socialrace should not be an account of the concept racial identity. The two concepts are distinct. Whether a group is a socialrace is a matter of how its members are treated by the larger society.49 Members of a given socialrace may go on to adopt their group membership as a subjectively recognized identity or they may not.50 Racial identity as understood by Kwame Anthony Appiah involves (1) the ascription of a race membership (for example, black, white, or Asian) through the application of a ‘race label’ (‘black,’ ‘white,’ ‘Asian’) and the correlative imposition of a set of expectations (or ‘scripts’) concerning how a bearer of the label ought to speak, act, and look, and (2) identification of an individual who has been assigned to a racialist race with the racialist race to which he or she has been assigned, where ‘identification’ involves (a) acceptance of the label as a significant self-designation and (b) a disposition to act in accordance with the behavioral expectations (or script) associated with the race label that has been imposed.51 Membership in a socialrace (ascriptive socialrace identity) is not contingent on subjective identification with the racialist race to which one is assigned or acting in accordance with the behavioral norms associated with that putative race (subjective socialrace identity). One is “properly” counted a member of a socialrace SR if one in fact satisfies the socially accepted criteria for membership in the correlative putative racialist race R. Thus, for example, a person belongs to the socialrace black (in the United States) if he

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or she has any identifiable sub-Saharan ancestry because he or she then satisfies the accepted US criteria for being a member of the racialist race black. To “pass” (for example, for white) in a system of socialrace is to be taken to be white (to satisfy the socially accepted criteria for whiteness) despite the fact that one does not satisfy those criteria (for example, by virtue of possession of “one drop” of “black blood”).52 The possibility of “passing” (in a given society) points to an impor tant variable in the practical significance of socialrace membership. An individual counts as a member of a socialrace simply by virtue of satisfying the socially accepted criteria for membership in the corresponding racialist race. Socialrace membership is itself a real social status with real social consequences. In the case of the socialrace black, being black makes one a “logically apt” target of antiblack racism such that subjection to antiblack racism is a standing possibility. But the actual practical significance of membership in a socialrace will vary with the degree to which the individual is subject to the norms associated with the racialist race to which the individual is taken to belong. 53 The concept of socialrace does not purport to explain what it is like to be a member of a socialrace. But the account recognizes that membership in a particular socialrace will normally have profound effects on individual identity and subjectivity. To be a member of a socialrace is to be subject to the norms for behav ior associated with ascribed membership in the associated racialist race. 54 The effects of socialrace membership on overall life prospects—with respect to such matters as marital status, housing, education, employment, criminal arrest and conviction, access to health care, and exposure to environmental hazards—are likely to be profound. The concept of socialrace is free of any tendency to “go imperial.”55 There is nothing in its content that would lead someone to think of socialrace as a cultural identity, to feel bound by the excessively tight script of a par ticu lar racial identity associated with that socialrace, or to let the norms associated with her or his socialrace dominate the whole of her or his life. One advantage of the concept is that it encourages a certain detachment from the norms associated with socialrace by bringing their association with the concept of racialist race into clear view. Recognition of one’s socialrace carries none of the baggage—“of false homogeneity, exaggerated differentness among races, inherency and unchangeability of characteristics, and the like”—Lawrence Blum thinks inevitably accompanies Appian racial identities.56

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2. A second desideratum of an account of a socialrace-like concept is explicitness. It is to be desired that an account explicitly recognizes such a concept as the concept it is. Th is involves inter alia explicitly distinguishing socialrace from the ordinary and racialist concepts of race. Our account of socialrace satisfies this desideratum. 3. A third desideratum of an account of a socialrace-like concept is that it makes the concept critical. Our account of socialrace satisfies this desideratum.

7.8 Alternative Accounts and Near Accounts of the Concept socialrace I am not aware of another account that explicitly represents the concept of socialrace as such. Nonetheless there are clearly any number of conceptions that belong in the same discursive ballpark. It may be illuminating to consider a few. We have already examined Omi and Winant’s idea of a social concept of race. They have the idea of a social concept of race but do not tell us what the concept is. Glasgow’s proposal for reconstructing our racial discourse can be read as a recommendation to introduce a race concept that could quite naturally be regarded as a concept of socialrace. His proposal is to attach “new meanings to existing words and practices” such that “by ‘race’ we will, postreconstruction, intend only to refer to social kinds, and we will get rid of any conceptual implication that there are even partially biological races.”57 Since races* (the entities referred by the reconstructed word ‘race’) are social kinds, the concept race* is (broadly speaking) a concept of socialrace. It is not part of the concept race* that races* are social groups masquerading as biological groups. There is nothing inherently hierarchical about race*, nor is race* by its nature a relation of domination. The concept fails to capture the hierarchical aspects of real, existing socialrace and the fact that socialrace is by its nature an unequal power relation. In sum, the concept race* is uncritical. Curiously Glasgow regards race*’s lack of a critical dimension as a plus.58 Speaking of Blum’s concept of a racialized group, he suggests that it is a defect of that concept that it has the consequence that the racial identities of members of an existing socialrace “are in some sense fraudulent.”59 But existing socialrace identities are in some sense fraudulent. They are based on the false idea that members of a socialrace are members of racialist races.

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This is not to deny the possibility or desirability of constructing a genuinely affirmative conception of racial identity that does not rest on false ideas. Nor is it to deny that socialrace provides materials for the construction of a legitimate racial identity. But it is to say that socialrace identities as they present themselves in society (under the auspices of the dominant socialraces) are not yet legitimate identities. To be a member of a socialrace is to have been erroneously classified as a member of a racialist race. Authenticity requires that this circumstance be acknowledged. In contrast to Glasgow’s concept, Blum’s concept racialized group has a critical edge. He defines a racialized group as a group that is treated by the larger society as if there were inherent and immutable differences between them; as if certain somatic characteristics marked the presence of significant characteristics of mind, emotion, and character; and as if some were of greater worth than others.60 The “as if ” gives the concept critical bite. Blum has in effect defined a racialized group as a group that is falsely taken to be a racialist race. Inasmuch as this characterization could be offered as a specification of what it is to be a socialrace, it would be churlish to deny Blum possession of the concept socialrace. Nonetheless, the concept racialized race is not identical to the concept socialrace. To say that a social group is a socialrace is to say more than that it is taken to be a racialist race. It is to say that it is constituted as a par ticular kind of social reality by virtue of its members being treated as if they were members of a racialist race. It is to say that it is a social position in the structure of the society and that there is a hierarchical network of interrelated social positions in that society within which it is located. The idea of socialrace as a social reality seems to be an idea Blum neither has nor wants. His story ends by noting the illusory character of socialraces without going on to recognize the social reality constituted by those illusions. One reason Blum finds it difficult to recognize the reality of socialrace is that he lacks a distinctive term for referring to it. ‘Race’ cannot do the job because, as he understands it, the word inevitably expresses the racialist concept of race.61 ‘Racialized group’ cannot serve this purpose because, as he has defined it, it is not a race term at all. Blum seems to be opposed in principle to the idea of recognizing the reality of anything that could be appropriately designated by any use of ‘race.’ He contends that “at this point in our history, I think any conferring of reality on ‘race’ is likely to carry [the] false and invidious associations [of racialist race]” (original emphasis).62 However, the idea that ‘socialrace’ is likely to carry such false and invidious

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associations seems incorrect. To understand the word is to understand that a socialrace is a social group that is erroneously taken to be a racialist race. Haslanger does not use the term ‘socialrace’ or tag the concept socialrace with a distinctive term, but she possesses the concept socialrace. She expresses it using the word ‘race’ in what she recognizes is a nonstandard way. A group is racialized (in context C) if and only if its members are socially positioned as subordinate or privileged along some dimension (economic, legal, social, and so on) (in C), and the group is ‘marked’ as a target for this treatment by observed or imagined bodily features presumed to be evidence of ancestral links to a certain geographical region.63 This definition of a racialized group could, with the substitution of ‘socialrace’ for ‘racialized group,’ serve equally as a definition of a socialrace. A more elaborate version of the definition makes clear that racialized groups stand in hierarchical relations.64 It also brings the idea of racialist race into view. A racialized group is said to be such that its members have or are taken to have bodily features presumed in C to be evidence of ancestral links to a certain region (or regions) that “mark them within the context of the background ideology in C as appropriately occupying certain kinds of social positions that are in fact either subordinate or privileged (and so motivates and justifies their occupying such a position).”65 The “background ideology” is presumably the ideology of racialist race. Haslanger escapes the trap of presenting her technical concept ‘race’ as a representation of the ordinary concept of race and makes it clear that her concern is with “how we might usefully revise what we mean for certain theoretical and political purposes.”66 Given this, I have no substantive objection to Haslanger’s account of socialrace. I do, however, think her use of the word ‘race’ as the tag for this concept is unfortunate for reasons outlined previously. Philosopher Paul Taylor has the concept socialrace and uses the word ‘race’ to express it. He believes that the meaning of ‘race’ has already been redefined to correspond or be identical to the concept socialrace.67 He implicitly defines socialraces as “probabilistically defined populations that result from the white supremacist determination to link appearance and ancestry to social location and life chances.”68 The idea is that socialraces (his ‘races’) come into being when there are social mechanisms or forces that assign probabilities to the likelihood that individual members of populations characterized by visible physical appearance (body) and ancestry (bloodlines) will occupy certain stratified social positions and have certain life

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prospects.69 These probabilities constitute the ‘social meaning’ of having a certain kind of body and being of a certain bloodline. Although Taylor’s talk of “white supremacist determination” carries the unfortunate suggestion of a conscious conspiracy, his considered view does not require the postulation of such. Taylor has a clear sense of the phenomenon of socialrace as a social phenomenon. What seems to be lacking in his discussion is a crisp sense of socialrace as a distinctive ‘race’ concept. Socialrace is not (as he suggests) a successor to the ordinary concept of race but rather a contrasting concept with a different extension and a different function. Recognition of the concept socialrace does not obviate the discursive need for the ordinary concept of race; it satisfies our interest in having a race concept that can refer to the social phenomenon of race as such while leaving the ordinary use of the word ‘race’ intact. Outlaw, following DuBois, proposes the formation of a notion that might be thought of as a concept of socialrace. He calls for the formulation of a cogent and viable concept of race that will be of ser vice to the noninvidious conservation of racial and ethnic groups— a formulation, and the politics it facilitates, that also avoids the quagmire of chauvinism.70 The concept whose construction he envisions contains significant constructivist elements. It will not represent race as a natural kind, nor will it represent the social and cultural aspects of race as being causally determined by the biological components of race.71 Outlaw assumes—problematically, I think— that “racial and ethnic differences are fundamentally constitutive of human beings and each member of a particular race and / or ethnie shares the group’s defining characteristics, more or less, and is substantially identified (and identifiable) by these characteristics.”72 Human beings, he maintains, generally need par ticular communities of race and ethnicity to thrive as human beings. The “conservation of race” is thus, on his view, an indispensable condition of human flourishing. In the case of “people who suffer invidious discrimination leading to diminished life-chances and quality of life because of practices rationalized by reference to their race and / or ethnicity,” the need for racial or ethnic community is especially pressing.73 Yet this need is not purely strategic. Outlaw contends that even if “racism and invidious ethnocentrism in every form and manifestation were to disappear forever,” the “continued existence of discernable racial / ethnic communities of meaning” would still be “desirable.”74 He holds that the attainment of such a community on the part of “people who have suffered oppression at

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the hands of persons of various ethnies of a particular race” requires the articulation of a concept of race free of ethnocentrism and chauvinism that will allow for a positive valorization of their racial identities and support their struggles against racialized subordination.75 Inasmuch as the concept Outlaw wants would be the concept of a socially constructed racial identity, it could be called a ‘concept of socialrace.’ But it would be a different kind of concept from the notion I am calling socialrace and belong to a different kind of project. An essential feature of Outlaw’s “anticipated rethinking of race” is that it depicts the kind race as containing an essential biological component. His concept represents the visible physical differences associated with differences of geographical ancestry as racial in order to enable people to affirm the pattern of visible physical features associated with their race as features of their race. The concept of socialrace is not biological in this way. Its point is to represent the phenomenon of socialrace as it is, not to facilitate the affi rmation of racial identity. The latter is a legitimate project but is not one of the functions the concept of socialrace is meant to fulfi ll.

7.9 Conclusion At some point over the course of this discussion, the reader might have felt the wish to say, “Why, the concept of socialrace is just obvious!” Indeed. The concept socialrace is obvious—or in any case becomes obvious once it is presented clearly as the specific concept that it is. The idea of the phenomenon of socialrace is not new. What is new is the reflective apprehension of socialrace as a concept that is distinct from the ordinary and racialist concept of race. Even when it has been used implicitly, the special character of socialrace has largely gone unnoticed. My contention is that the concept I have reflectively uncovered is already in general circulation without being fully recognized as the concept that it is. I have endeavored to make it possible to get a proper hold on the concept and to secure an adequate reflective understanding of its content. If the reader thinks that my account of the concept socialrace captures a notion she or he has already been using, so much the better. I hope to have clarified that concept. As for the word ‘socialrace,’ my hope is that it catches on, that its dissemination promotes understanding of the phenomenon of socialrace, and that this in turn contributes to the dismantling of the latter’s existence.

CHAP TER

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he purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the ecumenicalism about social and biological race advanced in this book by showing how the conceptual distinctions drawn in it can illuminate the debate over the use of race concepts in medical research. At issue is what race concepts, if any, are suitable for deployment in such inquiry. Some theorists say no race concept is suitable.1 Others say there is a place for a social concept of race but that no biological concept ought to be used.2 Still others maintain that a biological concept of race has a place but take no stand on the need for a social concept of race.3 A fourth position is that social and biological concepts of race both have a place. Call the view that there is no place in medical research for any race concept eliminativism about race in medical research, the view that there is no place for a biological concept of race exclusionism about biological race in medical research, and the view that there is no place for a social concept of race exclusionism about social race in medical research. Call the view that there is a place for a social concept of race inclusionism about social race in medical research, the view that there is a place for a biological concept of race inclusionism about biological race in medical research, the view that there is a place for a social concept of race inclusionism about social race in medical research, and the view that there is a place for both a social and a biological concept of race in medical research compatibilism about race in medical research. I will defend compatibilism. Section 8.1 identifies the race concept that ought never be used in medical research. Section 8.2 presents two medical research contexts in which race concepts have a place. Section 8.2.1 introduces the program of studying racism as a social determinant of health. Section  8.2.2 introduces the 150

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project of studying medically relevant, race-related genetic differences. Section 8.3 distinguishes between the race concepts that are most suitable for deployment in the study of the health effects of racism and the race concepts that are most suited to the study of race-related, medically relevant genetic differences. Section 8.3.1 argues that the study of the health effects of racism calls for a specifically social concept of race. Section 8.3.2 argues that the study of medically relevant genetic differences among races calls for a specifically biological concept of race. Section 8.4 argues for the compatibility of socialrace and biological race. Section 8.5 argues for the compatibility of the idea that racism is a source of racial health disparities and the idea that there are differences in health outcomes that are due to genetic differences among biological races. Section 8.6 argues for the compatibility of the project of investigating the health effects of racism and the project of investigating genetic differences among races. Section 8.7 distinguishes two approaches to remedying race-related health inequalities. Section 8.8 concludes the chapter.

8.1 The Race Concept T hat Ought Never Be Used in Medical Research There is a race concept that ought never to be used in medical research—or any context. It is the racialist concept of race. This is the familiar race concept discussed in Chapter 1 that (1) holds that each member of each race exhibits a fi xed set of fundamental “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 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 (4) demands that it be rankable on the basis of its constellation of moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics. The central epistemic fact about this concept is that it is vacuous. There are no racialist races. The central normative fact about the concept is that it is pernicious. It is historically associated with racism, slavery, and genocide, and serves to stabilize and legitimate racial oppression. Racialist race is not a legitimate scientific variable. Nonetheless, medical research cannot simply ignore or forget this concept since people are treated differently as a result of being taken to be

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members of racialist races and have different health outcomes as a result. Medical research needs to be able to mention the racialist concept of race to account for the health disparities among socialraces.4 It also needs to guard against making use of this concept. Many critics of the use of race as a variable in medical research fear that it will reinforce the racialist concept of race. When they speak of race as concept “that is not only without biological merit but full of evil import,” racialist race is the concept they have in mind.5 Racialist race is the concept they are thinking of when they say ‘race’ conveys the false idea that race is “biologically meaningful.”6 Racialist race is what they mean when they say that race conceptualizes populations as having “inherent, immutable biological differences.”7 When they say the use of ‘race’ supports the false idea that “race is biologic verity,” the race they are thinking of is racialist race.8 When they say the use of the race concept promotes the “atavistic belief that human populations are not just organized, but ordered,” racialist race is again what they have in mind.9 Obviously these outcomes are bad. It would be most unfortunate were the view that human populations can be divided into racialist races to gain wider acceptance. It would be deeply regrettable if the idea that racialist race is biologically real came to be seen as having empirical support. But the evil of these outcomes does not make them likely—still less does it imply that they are unavoidable. The notion that the deployment of race as a research variable is bound to have catastrophic results presupposes a fi xed background racialist understanding of race. The bad outcomes could be avoided through the deployment of nonracialist concepts of race. Just as many of the worries about the use of the race concept in medical research are really worries about the use of the racialist concept of race, so many of the objections to the use of the race concept in medical research are really objections to the use of this same concept. It is said that the concept of race is “biologically meaningless.” 10 Th is is true of the racialist concept of race. It is said that use of the race concept will reinforce “ideas of racial inferiority and superiority.”11 This too is true of the racialist concept of race. It is said that the race concept will foster the idea that there are “essential differences” between racial groups, and it is said that use of the race concept will “naturalize” social inequalities between racial groups.12 Use of the racialist concept of race would have these effects. It is said that use of the concept of race will necessarily promote racist thinking. This too is true of the racialist concept of race. But these features, objectionable though they

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are, are not features of the concept of race as such. There are other bona fide nonracialist race concepts that do not embody them. The concepts of socialrace (Chapter  7), minimalist race (Chapter  2), and populationist race (Chapter 5) are free of them. The case for eliminativism about race in medicine fails. It must be conceded that use of deflationary biological concepts of race such as the minimalist and populationist concepts of race in medical research is likely to provide support for the idea that “race is biological.” But the notion that this result is necessarily bad rests on the false supposition that it must amount to the idea that racialist race is “biological” (where ‘is biological’ means something like “is biologically real”). It fails to recognize that there are different ways of conceiving what it is for race to be biological. Use of the minimalist and populationist race concepts in medical research is also likely to support the idea that “race is biologically meaningful,” but the notion that this result is necessarily bad rests on the false supposition that the idea must be understood as the claim that racialist race is biologically meaningful. If it is vital to grasp that the racialist race concept has no place in medical research, it is no less urgent to register the possibility that other nonracialist race concepts might have a place.

8.2 Two Medical Research Contexts in Which a Race Concept Has a Place There are at least two medical research contexts in which a race concept has a place. The first is the investigation of the health consequences of racism and racial discrimination. The second is the investigation of medically relevant race-related genetic differences. I will consider each in turn.

8.2.1 Studying Racism as a Social Determinant of Health The sense of ‘racism’ pertinent to medical research is a broad one that includes race-targeted hostility, derogation and indifference, unconscious racial bias, unfair differential treatment, and racially oppressive practices and institutions. Racism in this broad sense may be overt or covert, legally sanctioned or customary, intentional or unintentional, conscious or unconscious, interpersonal or institutional.13 “Pure individual racism”—for example, isolated racist acts on the part of individuals apart from a broader context in which racism has become systemic—is a conceptual possibility, but the

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situation relevant to medical research is one in which racist practices (taking ‘racism’ in this broad sense) are widespread. Research into racism as a social determinant of population health is initiated by (i) the observation that substantial racial disparities in health exist,14 (ii) the supposition that, because of the significant genetic variation found within populations, it is unlikely that the genetic differences between races account for a substantial portion of these disparities, and (iii) the observation that racism in the broad sense is a pervasive feature of social life in the United States. The program of studying racism as a social determinant of health is guided by the idea that, like other dimensions of inequality and discrimination (including gender, sexual orientation, disability, age, and class), racism (past and present) can adversely affect health. Social epidemiologist Nancy Krieger’s notion of embodiment provides one general answer to the question, how?15 Human beings biologically embody the lived experience of racism in forms of disease and ill health. ‘Em-bodiment’ refers to the literal incorporation (placing in the body) of the effects of discrimination. Embodiment is to be understood as a biological expression of social inequality. Krieger helpfully distinguishes five distinct pathways of embodiment—five causal routes through which the effects of racism come to be embodied in ill health. Racism results in 1. economic and social deprivation, 2. distributions of “toxic substances and hazardous conditions (pertaining to physical, chemical, and biological agents),” 3. socially infl icted trauma (mental, physical, or sexual, ranging from verbal to violent), 4. “targeted marketing of harmful commodities (alcohol, tobacco, other drugs) and other commodities (e.g., junk food),” and 5. “inadequate health care, by health care facilities and by specific providers (including access to care, diagnosis, and treatment)” —each of which has adverse health effects.16 This understanding of the health effects of racism includes what is sometimes referred to as the “direct effects of racism,” for example, the effects of

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the socially infl icted trauma of acts of racial discrimination and expressions of racial hostility, and what is sometimes referred to as the “indirect effects of racism,” for example, the social and economic deprivation that are “downstream” effects of racism. Krieger illustrates the nature of these pathways by providing a series of hypotheses concerning the relation between racial discrimination and population distributions of blood pressure among black and white Americans. Pathway 1: Residential and occupational segregation lead to greater economic deprivation among African Americans and increased likelihood of living in neighborhoods without good supermarkets, thereby reducing access to affordable nutritious diets; risk of hypertension is elevated by nutritional pathways involving high fat, high salt, and low vegetable diets. Pathway 2: Residential segregation increases risk of exposure to lead among African Americans via contaminated soil (related to proximity of neighborhoods to freeways) and lead paint (related to decreased resources for removing and replacing lead paint); lead elevates risk of hypertension by damaging renal physiology. Pathway 3: Perceiving or anticipating racial discrimination provokes fear and anger; the physiology of fear (“fl ight-or-fight” response) mobilizes lipids and glucose to increase energy supplies and sensory vigilance and also produces transient elevations in blood pressure; chronic triggering of these physiological pathways leads to sustained hypertension. Pathway 4: Targeted marketing of high-alcohol beverages to African American communities increases likelihood of harmful use of alcohol to reduce feelings of distress; excess alcohol consumption elevates risk of high blood pressure. Pathway 5: Poorer detection and clinical management of hypertension among African Americans increases risk of uncontrolled hypertension, due to insufficient or inappropriate medical care.17

As philosopher Shannon Sullivan explains, another way in which racism may be shown to influence health is by causing epigenetic changes—heritable changes in gene expression that do not involve changes in the genotype.18 It is known that such changes can have durable and even transgenerational effects on health, passing from parents to their children and their children’s children. This suggests that the biological dimensions of racism can replicate themselves across more than one generation through epigenetic mechanisms. Epigenetics, the scientific study of such changes, explains how the

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process of transgenerational biological replication of ill health can occur without changes in the underlying DNA sequence.

8.2.2 Studying Race-Related, Medically Relevant Genetic Differences The contemporary scientific idea that there are race-related, medically relevant genetic differences must be understood as the idea that there are differences among races in the frequency of the occurrence of alleles responsible for disease susceptibility and outcomes, for responsiveness to drugs (including drug toxicity), and for histocompatibility. It is essential to distinguish this potentially viable contemporary idea from the debunked older notion that members of different races have different “types of bodies.”19 It should also be distinguished from the discredited notion that genetic differences within races are greater than the genetic differences among them. It is compatible with the finding that genetic differences within races are greater than the genetic differences among them, that the genetic differences among races are small, and that the genetic differences within races are large. The contemporary idea is the modest thought that some of the very narrow range of genetic differences that obtain among some races are medically relevant. The project of studying race-related, medically relevant genetic differences is initiated by (a) the observation that such differences appear to exist, and (b) the thought that more such differences might obtain. Apparent examples of race-related, medically relevant genetic differences include simple Mendelian (single-gene) disorders that are “race specific in the limited sense,” that is, race specific in the sense of being most prevalent within single continental-level racial groups. Cystic fibrosis, caused by mutations in the CFTR gene, is present at high frequency among Caucasians, less common among African Americans, and less common still among Asian Americans.20 Tay-Sachs disease, which results from mutations on the HEXA gene, is common among subgroups of Caucasians (Ashkenazi Jews, Cajuns, and French Canadians) and uncommon among non-Caucasians.21 Some complex genetic disorders appear to be associated with race, too. There is, for example, an association between venous thromboembolic disease and the genetic factor V Leiden, the latter of which is present in about 5  percent of whites and quite rare in East Asians and Africans.22 Racial

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genetic variation also appears to plays a role in susceptibility to HIV. Most strains of HIV-1 gain entry to cells by binding to the CCR5 receptor. A polymorphism in the CCR5 receptor gene, the CCR5-delta 32 deletion mutation, obliterates the CCR5 receptor and for this reason is protective against HIV infection and progression. Th is salubrious polymorphism is found in groups from northeastern Eu rope and virtually absent in other groups.23 APOEε4, an insalubrious variant of the common gene APOE, occurs in all racial groups at different frequencies and increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by factors that vary by race.24 Homozygosity for the ε4 allele increases the risk by a factor of 33.0 in Japanese populations, by a factor of 15.0 in white populations, and by a factor of 6.0 in black American populations. Heterozygosity for the same allele increases the risk by a factor of 5.6 in Japanese populations, a factor of 3.0 in white populations, and a factor of 1.1 in black American populations. Genetically based racial differences in drug responsiveness appear to exist. Carbamazepine (Tegretol, Equetro), an anticonvulsant and mood-stabilizing drug used primarily in the treatment of epilepsy and bipolar disorder, has two possible results: Stevens–Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis.25 These horrific side effects are significantly more common in patients with HLA-B*1502, a par ticu lar human leukocyte antigen (HLA) allele that occurs almost exclusively in patients with ancestry across broad areas of Asia.26 The metabolism of the colon-cancer drug Irinotecan (Camptosar, Campto) is controlled by the gene UGT1A1. Individuals who lack functional alleles of this gene are at risk for serious complications if given standard doses of the medication and consequently are normally tested to determine whether they carry the nonfunctional allele UGT1A1 allele called *28. However, only 1 percent of Asians have two copies of the *28 allele, whereas 2.5 percent of them have another nonfunctional version called *6. This version, which does not occur in blacks or whites, is not detected by the standard test.27 The uneven distribution of HLA alleles across racial groups is medically relevant because it has consequences for histocompatibility (tissue compatibility). One source of the difficulty of finding suitable donors for bone marrow transplants for African American patients lies in differences in the HLA alleles of whites and blacks.28 Ian Hacking informs us that “an African American with leukemia has a far worse chance of finding a match in time than members of other populations have. That is a social fact, but there

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is also a biological fact: there is far greater heterogeneity in the human leukemia antigen in persons of African origins than in other populations. (This fact fits well with the hypothesis that all races are descendants of only one of many African populations that existed at the time that human emigration began out of Africa—populations whose characteristics have continued to be distributed among Africans today.)”29 There is no question about the medical relevance of the gene variants just mentioned. Bearing on susceptibility to disease, drug responsiveness, and histocompatibility as they do, these traits are plainly important for health. Since the groups among which these variants are found are races or racial subgroups, there appear to be medically relevant genetic differences among races. Three points of clarification: First, I do not think the data provided here suffice to defi nitively establish the existence of medically relevant genetic differences among races. They leave room for skepticism. But, taken together, the data are very suggestive. They suggest that it is very likely that there are some medically relevant genetic differences among some racial groups. Second, the examples do not show that there are a lot of populationlevel medically relevant genetic differences among races. They show at most that there are some medically relevant genetic differences between some races. Third, none of the apparently race-related disease-susceptibility alleles that figure in the examples are race specific in the sense of being exclusive to a single race. There are few if any such alleles. No disease is diagnostic of race and no race is diagnostic of a disease. If there are medically relevant genetic differences among races, they are likely to be subtle. One source of resistance to the idea of race-related, medically relevant genetic differences is opposition to the idea that biological races exist.30 I have tried to indicate in this book that this opposition is mistaken. It often rests on the erroneous idea that biological race must be understood as racialist race. Other times it rests on the erroneous notion that for there to be biological races, genetic differences among racial groups must be greater than genetic differences within them or that biological race must be understood to be such that there are sharp boundaries between races. We have seen that biological race need not be understood as racialist race and that it is possible to conceive of race as biological without invoking the idea that genetic differences among biological races are greater than genetic differences within them or that biological race must be understood to be such that there are sharp boundaries. We have also seen that it is plausible that

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Caucasians, sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Native Americans count as minimalist races, and that it is not implausible that these populations are populationist races. Another source of resistance to the idea that there are race-related, medically relevant genetic differences is discomfort with the idea that race is more than “skin deep.” Some theorists are troubled by the notion that there might be genetic differences among races, more specifically, by the idea that there might be genetic differences among races other than in the genes that determine skin color, facial shape, hair type, and the like. But the results of Noah A. Rosenberg and colleagues’ 2002 study clearly show that, if Caucasians, Africans, East Asians, Pacific Islanders, and Americans are minimalist races, there are among-race genetic differences other than those found in the genes that determine visible physical features, namely, differences in noncoding, nonfunctional microsatellites. Moreover, the estimate of the percentage of among-population genetic differences that Rosenberg and colleagues provide (3–5  percent) suggests that there are also a small number of on-average differences among races in functional, coding alleles other than those responsible for visible physical features.31 This circumstance might give one pause, but provides no support for the idea that there are racially linked differences in intelligence, moral character, or tendency to criminality.

8.3 The Race Concepts Best Suited for Deployment in the Study of the Health Effects of Racism Are Different from the Race Concepts Best Suited to the Study of Race-Related, Medically Relevant Genetic Differences 8.3.1 The Study of the Health Effects of Racism Calls for a Social Concept of Race The study of the health effects of racism calls for a specifically social concept of race. When studying these effects, the groups we wish to study are groups that are socially recognized as races. These are groups that are (or are not) the objects of racist attitudes, acts, and practices. For the purpose of inquiry into the health effects of racism, it is irrelevant whether the groups that are taken to be races are in fact biological races. What matters is precisely that they are taken to be races.32 Differences in health outcomes due to racism (for example, the fact that one social group is and another group is not subject to

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racial discrimination) are not due to differences in medically relevant alleles; they are the result of the different ways in which the members of these groups are socially treated. What is needed to capture this fact is a race concept that picks out groups that are taken to be races: a concept like socialrace. Socialrace is a medically relevant social category because socialrace membership correlates with and is statistically predictive of medically significant biological differences. It is also medically relevant because the phenomenon of socialrace is itself a structural determinant of health. It is by virtue of occupying the social position member of a subordinate (denigrated) socialrace (for example, black) that individuals are subject to systematic racism and the adverse health effects thereof. It is by virtue of occupying the social position member of a dominant (nondenigrated) socialrace (for example, white) that individuals are not subject to systematic racism and the health effects thereof. Socialrace is a legitimate scientific variable. It has this status because socialrace membership correlates with differences in health outcomes, because socialrace is a structural cause of ill health, and because the concept of socialrace can be clearly understood. If, as seems plausible, the concept class correlates with differences in health outcomes, it is another example of a social concept that can function as a legitimate scientific variable in medicine. As race is sometimes taken as a proxy for other causal variables such as geography, education, access to health care, social marginalization, discrimination, and so forth, it is worth pointing out that socialrace sometimes functions as a genuine causal variable in its own right. It is a factor that explains racial differences in geography, education, access to health care, social marginalization, and discrimination (which in turn explain race-related differences in health). People are treated adversely because they are members of subordinate socialraces and, because they are treated adversely, they become sick. Understanding how socialrace can be a legitimate scientific variable makes it possible to see how conventional racial categories can function as legitimate scientific variables although they are unscientific. These categories name socialraces—social groups that are of theoretical interest to medical researchers. The familiar term ‘race’ can be used to mark the variable socialrace. But, as this use may suggest that the variable in question is biological race, it is potentially misleading. When the word ‘socialrace’ is used, it is clear that social (as opposed to biological) race is the variable in question, and there is no suggestion that a genetic reason explains differences in medical conditions.

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If, as seems to be the case, the study of health effects of racism is a legitimate research project, then exclusionism about social race—the view that there is no place in medical research for a social concept of race—is wrong and inclusionism about social race—the view that there is a place in medical research for a social concept of race—is correct. The concept of socialrace finds its place in medical research in the study of the health effects of racism. This implies that eliminativism about the use of all race concepts in medical research is unacceptable. It would rule out the use of the concept of socialrace and preclude the study of health consequences of racism.

8.3.2 The Utility of a Biological Concept of Race in the Study of Medically Relevant Genetic Differences among Races The study of medically relevant genetic differences among races calls for a biological concept of race. To be sure, one can ask of any two socialraces whether there are medically relevant genetic differences between them. For that matter, one can ask what medically relevant genetic differences, if any, divide any two randomly chosen human groups (for example, the inhabitants of Miami and the individuals currently riding the New York subway). But serious inquiry into the medically relevant genetic differences between groups presupposes that there is reason to think there might be such differences. When races are conceived of biologically as morphologically marked biogeographical groups, there is reason to think that medically relevant genetic differences might obtain. Race R 1 may have been exposed to a disease in the distant past that another race R 2 was not exposed to and, consequently, may have undergone selection for alleles that are protective against it, whereas race R 2 may not have been exposed to the disease and not undergone selection for alleles that are protective against it. If certain socialraces happen to exhibit medically relevant genetic differences, it is likely that the socialraces in question correspond to (or are) biological races. The “races” that are of fundamental interest from the standpoint of inquiry into race-related, medically relevant genetic differences are not social groups that are taken to be racialist races but actual biological races (morphologically marked ancestry groups). Medical researchers have a legitimate interest in biological race because biological race appears to be one possible determinant of on-average differences in medically relevant alleles. If, as seems to be the case, the study of medically relevant genetic variants among races is a legitimate project, then exclusionism about biological

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race in medical research—the view that there is no place for a biological concept of race in medical research—is false. There is a place for a biological concept of race in the study of medically relevant genetic variants among races. Inclusionism about biological race in medical research is true. The case for the legitimacy of biological race as a scientific variable does not rest on the (putative) fact that there are differences in health outcomes that correspond to membership in biological races but rather on the fact that there may be differences in health outcomes that correspond to membership in biological races. It also rests on the fact that the notion of biological race can be well understood. The accounts we have provided of the minimalist (Chapter 2) and populationist race concepts (Chapter 5) show that nonracialist biological concepts of race can be well defi ned. Now, it must be conceded that the concept geographical ancestry or the concept ancestry group, the concepts population geneticist Marcus W. Feldman recommends, can be substituted for the concept biological race in the study of medically relevant genetic differences among races.33 This substitution is made possible by the fact that biological race is morphologically marked geographical ancestry. But, make no mistake, if the ancestry groups that medical researchers study are morphologically marked ancestry groups, then the ancestry groups that the researchers are studying are races—biological races. This follows from the definition of ‘minimalist race.’ If the ancestry groups that medical researchers study are morphologically marked ancestry groups, then race is a medically relevant variable—whether or not the word ‘race’ is used to name the variable. It is not obvious that use of transparent euphemisms for race (such as ‘geographical ancestry’ and ‘ancestry group’) is preferable to the deployment of nonracialist biological race concepts. Being nonracialist, minimalist and populationist race require no euphemism. They are not offensive concepts. The upshot of these reflections is that research into the medical significance of “race” calls for two variables, not one: socialrace and biological race. Use of a single “biosocial” variable to represent socialrace and biological race would conflate two distinct causal variables and blur the distinction between the biological and social phenomena of race. 34

8.4 The Compatibility of Socialrace and Biological Race There is no tension between conceiving of race as socialrace and conceiving of it as biological race (minimalist or populationist race). Race is not a single “thing” that is exclusively biological or social. Nor is it a single thing that is

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both biological and social. ‘Race’ as currently used today picks out two distinct actual phenomena, a social phenomenon and a biological phenomenon, each of which can be called “race.” Being biological, the ordinary concept of race captures the biological phenomenon.35 It does not capture the social phenomenon. The concept of socialrace provides a conceptualization of the social phenomenon of race. The minimalist and populationist concepts of race provide conceptualizations of the biological phenomenon of race. The duality between race as social race and race as biological race is mirrored in an ambiguity in the expression “the biology of race.” The ambiguity is between (a) the biomedical effects of racism and socialrace and (b) the biomedical effects of genetic differences among races. This ambiguity conceals no contradiction. One can consistently maintain that racism has real biomedical effects on socialraces and maintain that there are biomedical differences among biological races owing to underlying genetic differences. The fact that socialrace has its own biology, so to speak, consisting of the biomedical effects of racism indicates that, although socialrace is a social concept, the phenomenon of socialrace has a biological dimension. Recognition that there is a biological phenomenon of race need not lead to the view that race is biological “in its essence.” One can consistently hold that there is a biological phenomenon of race and a distinct social phenomenon of race. Genuinely scientific (that is, nonracialist) ideas of genetic distinctions between races do not “serv[e] to build a profound conceptual barrier to a deeper analy sis of how the social environment influences human biology and the human experience with disease” (my emphasis).36 The real conceptual barrier consists in the thought that there is a fundamental opposition between the idea that there are genetic distinctions among races and the idea that the social environment influences human biology and the human experience with disease.

8.5 The Compatibility of the Idea That Racism Is a Source of Racial Health Disparities and the Idea That There Are Differences in Health Outcomes That Are Due to Genetic Differences among Biological Races There is no contradiction between the idea that racism is a source of racial health disparities and the idea that some differences in health outcomes are due to genetic differences among races. Since the notions of “racial health disparities” and “racial health differences” can be understood in different ways, this idea requires clarification.

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On one acceptation, the expressions of “racial health disparities” and “racial health differences” are interchangeable. Health disparities, broadly understood, include any and all race-related health differences (including those that are due to genetic differences among races, if there are such) that are alarming. When the expressions are used in this way, there is no contradiction between the idea that racism is a source of racial health disparities and the idea that some differences in health outcomes are due to genetic differences among races. One can consistently maintain that racism is one source of “racial health disparities or differences” and that genetic differences are another source of “racial health disparities or differences.” Sometimes, however, the terms ‘racial health disparities’ and ‘racial health differences’ are used to tag different notions. ‘Disparity’ (singular) refers to inequality, difference, or dissimilarity of some kind. Disparities (plural) are instances of disparity. Health disparities are disparities among groups. Racial health disparities are health disparities among groups that are “races.” These disparities include differences in morbidity (disease incidence, severity, or outcome) and mortality (frequency of death), inequalities in access to health care, differential use of health care (medical procedures, treatments, and technologies), and differences in quality of health care. The notion of health disparities contains an evaluative element. Disparities in health care are group inequalities in health care that violate standards of just health care. They are inequalities that can be traced back to human agency (especially social arrangements) that ought not to exist and call for remedy. There is a broad sense of ‘health differences’ that includes health disparities as a species. All health disparities are instances of health differences but not all instances of health differences are health disparities. Th is broad sense of ‘difference’ contrasts with the notion of health disparities in being evaluatively neutral. Health differences as such may not be unjust; they may or may not result from social arrangements, and they may or may not call for or allow of remedies.37 There is also a narrower sense of ‘health differences’ that is limited to health differences that are not disparities. There is an obvious affi nity between the notions of racism and racial health disparities, on the one hand, and there is an affi nity between the notions of racial health differences (in the narrower sense) and genetic differences, on the other. Racism is one possible source of health disparities. Health differences that are due to racism count as disparities. Health differences that are due to genetic differences count as differences in the narrow

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sense. Such differences may be alarming and call for remedies— even if they are not unjust. There is no incompatibility between the idea that some racial health disparities are due to racism and the idea that racial differences in health (in the narrow sense) may have a genetic source, for then the claim that racism is a source of health disparities associates racism with one thing (disparities) and the claim that some racial health differences are associated with genetic difference among races associates genetic differences among races with another thing (differences).

8.6 The Projects of Investigating the Health Effects of Racism and Investigating Genetic Differences among Biological Races Are Not Incompatible The project of investigating the health effects of racism and the project of investigating genetic differences among races should not be thought of as being in confl ict. The medical community can in principle pursue both lines of research. To forgo either project altogether would be to forgo inquiry into a potential source of race-related health differences.38 Critics of the project of studying medically relevant, race-related genetic differences who suggest that such differences are unlikely to account for a substantial proportion of race-related health differences may well be right. The fact that within-race genetic variation is greater than among-race genetic variation and that the amount of among-race genetic variation is small entails that there are few genetic differences among races, which in turn suggests that there will be few medically relevant genetic differences among them. It seems unlikely that many differences in genetic susceptibility to common (as opposed to rare) diseases are racially distributed. Few alleles for susceptibility to common diseases or drug responsiveness have been identified; fewer have been shown to be correlated with race. The Mendelian diseases, which have been found to exhibit race specificity, are relatively rare. The associations between race and disease that have been found to obtain are complex and subtle, not the simple one-to-one correspondence that casual talk of race and disease associations might suggest. For these and other reasons, it is most unlikely that biological race will turn out to be a “master concept” in medicine—a concept that explains a broad swath of medical differences. Critics are also right to point out that, since genetic differences among races are unlikely to account for a substantial proportion of race-related

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health differences, it is doubtful that “the best way to eliminate health disparities is by the successful wedding of genomics to epidemiology.”39 But, when critics suggest that medically relevant genetic differences ought not to be studied at all, they are wrong. The possibility of even a few race-related, genetically based health differences suffices to make the study of such differences worthwhile. Consider breast cancer. Black women in the United States are more likely to die from this disease than white women, and racism appears to be a major explanatory factor.40 There is evidence that the American health care system discriminates against black women. Black women have less access to screening, receive lower-quality screening, have less access to treatment, receive delays in diagnosis, and receive lower-quality treatment than their white counterparts. It is unlikely that conscious racial hostility, contempt, or indifference on the part of individual health care providers is the primary explanatory factor, but implicit racial bias and institutional racism probably play an important role in the explanation of this differential treatment. It is also possible that at least a small portion of these discrepancies are explained by genetic factors. A particularly aggressive form of breast cancer that strikes younger women, known as “triple-negative breast cancer” (because it does not express the genes for (i) estrogen receptor, (ii) progesterone receptor, and (iii) HER2 / neu), is more prevalent among black women than white women.41 Th is difference may be an instance of a medically relevant, race-related genetic difference. It is most unlikely that the prevalence of this form of breast cancer among black women is a major contributing factor to the general fact that black women die from breast cancer at higher rates than white women. It certainly does not explain why the gap between black and white deaths has increased dramatically over the last twenty years. Nonetheless, more young black women are dying from this awful disease than their white counterparts, and the reason for this may lie in part in genetic differences. Surely this possibility deserves study, despite the unlikelihood that it constitutes a major component of the larger racial health disparity in breast cancer between black and white women. Just to be perfectly clear: I am not presenting triple-negative breast cancer as an example of an actual genetic difference between races—it may yet turn out that there are no genetic differences between black and white women vis-à-vis this disease—but am rather presenting it as an example of a medical difference between races that may be found to have a genetic basis and using this example to make the point

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that we do not want to exclude consideration of the possibility that there may be medically relevant genetic differences between races a priori. We are not in a position at the present time to say that there are no medically relevant genetic differences between races.42 An oft-voiced worry is that the discovery of genetic differences between races in susceptibility to diseases will lead to stigmatization.43 Since racial groups have been stigmatized on medical grounds in the past (for example, Tuskegee), this fear is not unreasonable. On the other hand, it is not obvious that such discoveries must have this result. It is not clear, for example, that the recent discovery that the mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that place women at risk of breast and ovarian cancer occur more frequently in Ashkenazi Jews than in the general population has in fact resulted in or increased the stigmatization of this group. Nor should we assume that a background racialist understanding of race is a fi xed feature of the situation. Changing our understanding of what race is—rethinking race—will decrease the likelihood of stigmatization. Rather than forgoing a potentially beneficial line of inquiry because it might lead to the stigmatization of racial groups, we should be prepared to combat attempts to stigmatize racial groups when and where they arise.

8.7 Two Approaches to Remedying Race-Related Health Inequalities The projects of studying the health effects of racism and studying race-related, medically relevant genetic differences point to two different approaches to remedying race-related health inequalities. Remedying race-related health inequalities that result from racism calls for the elimination of racism and racial inequality.44 Addressing this class of medical problems requires social and political change. This is not to say that doctors ought not to use standard medical modalities to address the health effects of racism. They cannot sit back and wait for social and political transformation. But it does imply that an approach restricted to a narrowly biomedical perspective, that is, one that does not consider the larger social and political context, is bound to be too narrow. And it is pretty much doomed to fail to make any dent at all in the population-level disparities, which are part of what we care about.45 Might remedying race-related health inequalities that result from genetic differences require “race-targeted” pharmacotherapy? A novel pharmacological treatment for triple-negative breast cancer might be introduced and

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advertised as a response to a condition that is more prevalent among black women than white, and so counted as “race targeted.” But the real “target” would be would be women who suffer from triple-negative breast cancer (white as well as black) rather than black women (who suffer disproportionately from this disease). What alleviating race-related health inequalities that result from genetic differences really calls for is targeting conditions that are found disproportionately in par ticular racial groups. The crucial race-related point is that genetically based conditions should not be “orphaned” (ignored by pharmacology) because they are found disproportionately in minority racial communities.

8.8 Conclusion The race concepts articulated in this book make it possible to distinguish the race concept that ought not to be used in medical research, the race concept that ought to be used in the study of the medical effects of racism, and the race concepts that can be used in the study of medically relevant, racerelated genetic differences. The racialist concept of race ought not to be used in medical research. Socialrace is the race concept that ought to be used in the study of the medical effects of racism. Minimalist race and populationist race are the race concepts that ought to be used in the study of medically relevant, race-related genetic differences. The distinctions drawn between these four concepts make it easy to see that the study of the medical effects of racism and the study of the medically relevant, race-related genetic differences are complementary projects. These distinctions support compatibilism about race in medical research, the view that there is a place for both social and biological concepts of race in medical research.

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would like to conclude by summarizing some lessons we have learned and remarking some morals to be drawn. 1. We have learned that there are no racialist races. No human group is properly identified as a racialist race. No one “has” a racialist race. No one is a member of a racialist race. The concept racialist race is empty. We have seen that the nonexistence of racialist races has been definitively established by science. Racialist race is a scientifically refuted concept. Consequently, one need not fear that acknowledging the existence of minimalist races will open the door to the scientific reintroduction of racialist race. It is time to recognize that that door has been permanently shut. Paradoxically, it is also essential to acknowledge that the racialist concept of race “lives on” (after a fashion) in racial stereotypes and stigmas. It is the race concept hidden behind Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson’s subjective perception of Michael Brown as a “demon” and Wilson’s feeling “like a five-year-old holding Hulk Hogan” when holding Brown.1 A denizen of the unconscious realm of implicit bias, the racialist concept of race resists extirpation. So long as racial stereotypes and stigma persist, the concept will be there, lurking in the background, haunting our thoughts. This makes it all the more impor tant to repeat the truth that there are no racialist races over and over. The racialist concept of race should not be used. It is, as the eliminativists have taught us, false and pernicious. But, because it remains in use, we must be able to mention it.2 We should preserve it in our Archive of Refuted Pernicious Concepts so as to be able to criticize its use. It is also needed for the conceptualization of socialrace, socialraces being social groups that are taken to be racialist races. It is necessary at the same time to maintain our 169

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cognitive distance from the concept. Tagging it with the label ‘racialist’ serves this end. The adjective’s slight pejorative flavor marks the concept as one we should not accept. Inasmuch as the concept racialist race is but one race concept among others, it should not be identified as the concept of race. We have learned that groups can be conceived of as races without being thought of as having essences or being characterized by normatively important traits such as intelligence and moral character. We have learned that race ≠ racialist race.

Not being a scientific concept and lacking biological respectability, racialist race should not be identified as the biological concept of race. It represents an outmoded way of conceiving of biological race best left behind. There are other, biologically respectable race concepts, such as minimalist race and populationist race, that deserve the honorific. 2. Minimalist races exist. Th is can be established by observing that there are human groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical differences that correspond to differences in geographical ancestry. Caucasians, sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, and Amerindians are examples. The existence of minimalist races is evident. The minimalist biological phenomenon of race is there to be seen. That there are differences in patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry in human beings is manifest. And it is obvious that these patterns are exhibited by groups. The minimalist concept of race makes it possible to identify these groups as minimalist (rather than racialist) races. It provides an alternative, nonracialist way of understanding minimalist race, the phenomena racialist race purports to capture. What makes the conceptualization of minimalist race urgent is not the bare fact that minimalist races exist (that they are there in nature, waiting to be conceptualized) but rather the fact that they figure importantly in our social lives as (a) the biological correlates of socialraces and (b) the biological reality that racism tracks. In characterizing minimalist race as the “biological correlate of socialrace,” I mean that minimalist race supplies the visible physical features that are the biological correlate of socialrace. I do not mean to suggest that for every socialrace there is a corresponding minimalist race. The Irish once represented a socialrace that may have lacked a biological correlate. It is unlikely that they are a minimalist race. To say that there is a biological

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reality that racism tracks is not to say that racialist race is biologically real. It is to say that racism tracks a few (superficial) biological differences that are real. It must be added that racism also tracks various biological differences (superficial and deep) that are merely imagined. The minimalist concept of race provides a commonsense understanding of the biological correlate of socialrace. It makes it possible to see this correlate as morphologically marked geographical ancestry. It also makes it possible to use the word ‘race’ in good conscience without scare quotes. The minimalist concept of race is nonmalefic. There is nothing in its content that should lead us to distance ourselves from it. There is nothing in the visible physical features of race themselves that the minimalist race concept identifies and nothing in their correlation with differences of geographic ancestry that would lead people to associate them with normatively important differences. The idea that there is something in the visible physical features of race (or their correlation with differences of geographic ancestry) that would lead people to associate them with normatively important features is itself a racist idea from which we would do well to distance ourselves. The concept’s availability does not, however, make the word ‘race’ safe to use without circumspection. There is a need to guard against being taken to express the racialist race concept or (worse still) slipping back (or into) using the objectionable concept oneself. The modifier ‘minimalist’ helps but does not obviate the need for caution. The admission of the existence of minimalist races comes at a cost. It means forgoing a rhetorical mainstay of antiracism: the slogan there are no races. Now, this is less of a loss than one might think because the slogan is false. Minimalist races exist. Since they exist, races exist. The slogan also suffers the fault of unbelievability. The evident existence of minimalist races makes the proposition that there are no races unbelievable. Antiracists would do well to take as their adage the truth that slogan contains: namely, there are no racialist races. If the original slogan is false and its claim unbelievable, it can’t do the work it is meant to do. It comes across as “politically correct” but ridiculous. Of course, in some sense races do exist. People can see differences of visible physical features that correspond to differences of geographical ancestry, and these differences have a history of being recognized (and tied to all kinds of pernicious things). It is crucial to make clear that antiracism doesn’t require an obviously false claim to do its work. Therefore antiracists would do well to take deflationary realism about race on board.

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3. One cannot recognize the existence of minimalist races and stop there. Once the existence of these races is granted, the question how they are to be understood from a scientific point of view becomes unavoidable. This is why a specifically scientific concept of biological race is needed. The populationist concept of race is a candidate scientific counterpart to the ordinary minimalist concept of race. It presents the idea that minimalist races are populations that exhibit distinctive patterns of genetically transmitted phenotypic characters that correspond to the groups’ geographical ancestry and belong to biological lines of descent initiated by a geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding populations. It supports the claim that minimalist race has a biological basis. It clarifies the place of the kind minimalist race in biology and helps to secure the legitimacy of the concept minimalist race. 4. The phenomenon of socialrace is unfortunately an important feature of our social world. It is no great exaggeration to say that it is the phenomenon of race that matters. The concept socialrace makes it possible to grasp the phenomenon of socialrace as the thoroughgoingly social phenomenon it is. It enables us to see socialrace as something that is real and illusory. It shows us that socialrace is something real inasmuch as it is constituted by real social relations and has real causal powers (for example, causing people’s death) and that it is illusory insofar as it falsely appears to be racialist race. The concept socialrace differs from the other race concepts we have considered in that it does not represent its subject matter as something biological. Its name flags its subject matter’s sociality. The word ‘socialrace’ constitutes a useful addition to our lexicon. It makes it easy to distinguish socialraces (real social groups that are taken to be racialist races) from racialist races (the illusory groups that socialraces are taken to be) and to distinguish the race concept that captures socialraces (socialrace) from the race concept that captures racialist races (racialist race). The two concepts are other wise easily confused. Yet they are very different. Racialist race is an ideological concept. It is a source of false consciousness. Socialrace is a critical and emancipatory concept. It undercuts socialrace’s claim to be a biological entity and emancipates us from the illusion that socialraces are racialist races and that racialist race is real. 5. Recognizing biological race—a relatively superficial biological reality—as the trope of ultimate, irreducible, essential difference makes it possible to see through the trope and thus to free ourselves from its grip.3 Recognizing the role this trope plays in our thinking makes it possible to see

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why the prospect of recognizing the biological real ity of race seems so frightening. In seeing through the trope, we recognize that we are not condemned to viewing racial differences as ultimate or essential. When the trope is seen through, minimalist race presents itself as nothing more than minimalist race. Th is makes the prospect of recognizing the (relatively superficial) biological reality of race less frightening. 6. Perhaps the most general metaphysical lesson to be taken away from the book is that race is not one thing. Deflationary realism is a kind of pluralism. There is no concept that is the concept of race—no one “thing,” no one item, no one reality or unreality that is race. The race-that-correspondsto-racialist-race is a biological illusion that appears to be a biological reality. The race-that-corresponds-to-minimalist-race is a relatively superficial biological reality. It is likely that this same biological real ity can be understood as populationist race. The race-that-corresponds-to-socialrace is a nonbiological social reality that must be taken into account if we wish to understand the social world. No one of these meanings is master. In its broadest acceptation, then, the word ‘race’ thus encompasses three items: an item that does not exist, an item that exists and is biological, and an item that exists and is social. Grasping race “as whole” requires recognizing the disunity of race. The disunity of race does render the idea of race superfluous. We need the idea to recognize the nonreality of the race-that-is-racialist-race, the reality of the race-that-is-minimalist-race, the reality of the race-that-is-socialrace, and the possible reality of the race-that-is-populationist-race. Nor does the disunity of race entail that the idea of race is so unstable that it is not possible to provide a clear philosophical articulation of what race is.4 We can say that race understood one way is racialist race, that race understood another way is minimalist race, that race understood still another way is populationist race, and that race understood yet another way is socialrace. We can say that race must be understood in all these ways to be understood. Our account makes race complex but tractable. 7. No single form of thinking is properly counted as “racial thinking.” There is racialist racial thinking (racial thinking deploying the racialist concept of race), minimalist racial thinking (racial thinking deploying the minimalist concept of race), populationist racial thinking (racial thinking deploying the populationist concept of race), and socio-racial thinking (racial thinking deploying the concept of socialrace). Accordingly, discussion of the legitimacy and value of racial thinking (singular) is inherently misguided. One can ask

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Rethinking Race

about the legitimacy and value of the various kinds of racial thinking— racialist racial thinking, minimalist racial thinking, and so on. Racialist racial thinking is illegitimate and valueless. Minimalist, populationist, and socio-racial thinking are potentially legitimate and valuable forms of racial thinking. Racialist racial thinking should be eliminated. Minimalist, populationist, and socio-racial racial thinking should not. 8. More than fi fty years ago, in a well-known essay, Ashley Montagu approvingly cited the biologist George Gaylord Simpson’s dictum that “there . . . is a sort of Gresham’s Law for words; redefine them as we will, their worst or most extreme meaning is almost certain to remain current and to tend to drive out the meaning we prefer.”5 Montagu took this to be an argument for the elimination of the word ‘race.’ But it is by no means clear that Simpson’s dictum is true. The fact that bad money drives good money out does not entail that bad meanings drive out good meanings.6 The economy of ideas is different from the economy of money. It is certainly to be hoped that Simpson’s dictum is false. If we cannot get beyond the worst or most extreme meanings of our words, our prospects for improving our understanding are bleak indeed. And, when it comes to race, we don’t need fewer words. We need more. ‘Racialist race’ gives us a needed term for the race-that-is-illusory. ‘Minimalist race’ and ‘populationist race’ give us needed terms for the race-that-isbiological. ‘Socialrace’ gives us a needed term for the race-that-is-social. We need all these terms because race is all these things. Taken together, the four race terms elucidated in this book provide a language that makes it possible to think and talk clearly about race. Without them, we remain muddled, failing to distinguish what needs distinguishing. 9. One disadvantage of eliminativism is that it makes it impossible to say that race is biologically unimportant.7 Once the word ‘race’ has been jettisoned, we can’t say that race is biologically unimportant. Eliminativism eliminates the term best suited to express the biological unimportance of race. But surely one thing we want to say about biological race—and one thing that is true about it—is that it is biologically unimportant. We need to be careful here. We should not say that race has no biological significance whatsoever. Biological race (minimalist race and possibly populationist race) is ecologically impor tant;8 has explanatory value in biology;9 is discernable\ “at the level of the gene;”10 is biologically grounded in something of fundamental importance to biology (sexual reproduction);11 may be associated with (some) genetic differences in morbidity, drug responsiveness,

Conclusion

175

and histocompatibility;12 and certainly enjoys intrinsic biological interest (at least to us human beings).13 Race is biologically real.14 The sense in which race is biologically unimportant is rather that there is no purely biological link between differences in visible physical differences and normatively impor tant differences, for example, differences in intelligence and moral character. This is a contingent empirical fact of tremendous human significance. Recognizing that race is biologically unimportant (in the sense we have specified) makes it possible for us to say that the claim that race is biologically important—the linchpin of many forms of racism—is false. 10. The account of biological race (minimalist and populationist race) provided in this book is valuable because it puts us in a position to better articulate the ideal of a world without racism. It makes it possible to see that racism will not have been fully overcome until it is possible to recognize the existence of human racial differences—understood as differences in color and shape corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry—without associating them with differences in normatively impor tant traits. That differences in color and shape corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry exist is irrefragable. They are readily recognized. It is also clear that they are racial.15 They may be on their way out, but they are not going to disappear anytime soon.16 We can’t wait for race to go out of business. Our task is to overcome racism in a world in which racial differences exist. The account of race presented in this book contributes to this end by making it possible to see differences in shape and color corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry as racial without associating them with normatively important differences. It shows us that the idea of a necessary association between differences in shape and color and normatively important differences is built into the racialist concept of race, not the concept of race itself. It shows us that we can distance ourselves from this idea and see differences in shape and color corresponding to differences in geographical ancestry as racial without associating them with differences of normative importance by deploying the minimalist concept of race. The book’s account of race makes it possible to see differences of shape and color corresponding to differences in geographic ancestry—which is to say, racial differences—as mere differences, differences of no intrinsic normative significance.17 In facilitating this cognitive achievement, the book brings us one small step closer to the actualization of a world without racism.

Appendix

Is “race” real?

Do you mean racialist race?

Do you mean minimalist race?

Do you mean populationist race?

Do you mean socialrace?

No

Yes

Maybe

Yes

Racialist race is a biological illusion

Minimal races exist. Minimalist race is a relatively superficial biological reality

Anti-realism about racialist race

Populationist races Socialraces exist. Socialrace is a may exist. If they significant exist, populationist social reality. race is a relatively superficial biological reality

Deflationary realism about biological race

Constructivism about socialrace

177

Notes

Introduction 1. The question, What is race? is not the property of any one discipline but is clearly of concern to biologists, social theorists, ordinary people . . . and philosophers. The issues the book raises are intrinsically interdisciplinary and heterogeneous. I approach them as a phi losopher because that is the field in which I am trained. Others trained in other areas can and should approach the question using their own expertise. To arrive at an answer, I will have to venture outside my field of philosophy and look to biology, population genetics in par ticu lar, and to social theory, including the theory of ideology. Population genetics is relevant to the question of the biological reality of the kind race. Social theory is relevant to the issue of the existence of races in a social sense. The ultimate goal of the inquiry is to reach an answer that can be the object of interdisciplinary agreement, however difficult that might be to achieve. 2. Confusingly, the term ‘racialism’ is used in different ways by different authors. As I use it, racialism is roughly (minimalist) race + essentialism + hierarchy. Th is usage is distinct from Kwame Anthony Appiah’s, which takes racialism to be roughly (minimalist) race + essentialism (without hierarchy). It also differs from Edouard Machery and Luc Faucher’s sense of ‘racialism’ as the “idea that classifications made on the basis of some visible physical features (skin color, height, hair, etc.) have a biological real ity.” And it is distinct from Lawrence Blum’s idea of racialism as “conferring too great, or inappropriate, importance to racial identity.” Kwame Anthony Appiah, In My Father’s House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 13–14; Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 60; Edouard Machery and

179

180

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13.

Notes to Pages 3–7 Luc Faucher, “Social Construction and the Concept of Race,” Philosophy of Science 72 (2005): 1208. The minimalist and populationist concepts of race count as distinct concepts because their content is distinct. Th is point is clarified in 5.1. Eliminativism about race takes no position on the use of the word ‘race’ and the concept race in connection with nonhuman species and takes no position on the application of the category or kind race to species other than Homo sapiens. I follow the convention of using small capitals to refer to concepts. I follow the convention of using italics to refer to kinds, actual and putative. Ashley Montagu, “The Concept of Race,” American Anthropologist 64, no. 5 (1962): 920. Ibid., 919–928. Richard C. Lewontin, “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): 397. Blum is perhaps the clearest example of a prominent eliminativist who holds the specific position described in this paragraph. “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .” Allen Wood was an exponent of this view, at least at one time (personal communication (November 28, 2005–December 12, 2005). Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 157. Anderson’s minimal race concept is distinct from my minimalist race concept. See note 21 in chapter 2. The notion of racism (racism ≠ racialism) is discussed in 1.2. The door has been nailed shut since the 1972 publication of Lewontin’s “The Apportionment of Human Diversity.” The results of that study have been confirmed by subsequent studies. See Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, “Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review,” Evolutionary Anthropology 10 (2001): 34–40. The term ‘deflation’ is sometimes used in such a way that to be a deflationist about X is to deny the existence or reality of X. I use the term in a different way. Some “deflationists” about race wish to deny that there is a substantive issue concerning the metaphysics of race (e.g., David Ludwig, “Against the New Metaphysics of Race,” Philosophy of Science 82, no. 2 [2015). My deflationism is not of that sort. The questions, What is race? Do races exist? and Is race real? as I understand them are all substantive metaphysical questions. And, as I understand it, deflationary realism is a substantive metaphysical position about the existence of races and the reality of race. Lionel K. McPherson’s “deflationary pluralism” differs from my “deflationary realism” in being a form of eliminativism about ‘race.’ Lionel K. McPherson, “Deflating Race,” Journal of the American Philosophical Association 1, no. 4 (2015): 674–693. McPherson proposes to jettison (that is, eliminate) the word ‘race’ and replace it with ‘socioancestry.’ His deflationary realism “does not maintain that ‘race’ talk is necessarily in error and does not take a stand about whether races exist” (275). But he argues that “once we have rejected the notion that racial essences yield innate cognitive differences there is little

Notes to Pages 8–10

14.

15. 16.

17.

18.

181

point to arguing over the race idea” and contends that “long-standing fi xation on the race idea has obscured the simple truth that visible continental ancestry is the root of the social reality of color consciousness” (674). My position is that, once we reject racialist race, it becomes possible to see that (what McPherson calls) “visible continental ancestry” constitutes the nonmalefic core of the ordinary concept of race, a concept that should be preserved because minimalist races— groups that exhibit visible physical differences corresponding to differences in geographic ancestry— exist. Rather than “displacing” racial thinking with a nonracial alternative, what McPherson is actually proposing is replacing one bad mode of racial thinking—racialist racial thinking—with another positive form of racial thinking, namely, racial thinking using something like the minimalist concept of race. In my opinion McPherson errs both in maintaining that he has escaped from racial thinking and in thinking an escape from racial thinking is necessary. I have tried to show that his pessimism about clarifying the meaning of ‘race’ is premature and that there are forms of “racial thinking” that can be clear and nonmalefic. Rather than “avoid[ing] murky disputes over whether there are races in some sense” (654). I propose to enter directly into these disputes and clarify the senses in which races do and do not exist. Races understood as racialist races do not exist. Races understood as minimalist races and socialraces do exist. Races understood as populationist races very likely exist. See, for example, John Dupré, “What Genes Are and Why There Are No Genes for Race,” in Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, ed. Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 39–51. I take the ugly but useful neologism ‘scientize’ from my colleague Nancy Cartwright. Joshua Glasgow argues plausibly that the races posited by “unconstrained” populationism (populationism that does not include a morphological component) are not races in the ordinary sense of the term and that they are consequently irrelevant to the race debate. A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009), 97–102. Eliminativism, as I understand it, is silent on the issue of the existence of socialrace. One of the strongest advocates of eliminativism (Naomi Zack) does not deny that there is a race that is socially constructed. We might call the position that the kind socialrace, like the biological kind race, ought to be eliminated from our ontology radical eliminativism about race. Blum approaches this position inasmuch as he expresses wariness about “any conferring of reality on race” (his emphasis). I’m not a Racist, 160. The characterization of minimalist race and populationist race as biological and the characterization of socialrace as social will have to be qualified. Minimalist and populationist races have a social aspect insofar as they are maintained and reproduced through social practices that discourage racial interbreeding. Socialrace has a biological aspect insofar as the differential

182

19. 20. 21. 22.

23.

Notes to Pages 10–12 ways in which social groups are treated when they are regarded as racialist races can have adverse effects on physical health. I owe the observation that the concept of socialrace is an emancipatory concept to Raymond Geuss. The concept of socialrace was first introduced in my essay “The Concept of Socialrace,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 40, no. 1 (2014): 69–90. I take the expression “biological correlate” from Adam Hochman, “Against the New Racial Naturalism,” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 6 (2013): 331–351. The minimalist biological phenomenon of race is officially introduced and discussed in 3.2. The biological correlate of socialrace must be distinguished from the biological consequences of socialrace, the way in which, by treating people as members of racialist races, society makes people sick. The claim that minimalist race has a biological correlate is qualified in 7.2. It is made clear that this does not mean that there is one minimalist race for every social race. Socialraces exist for which there are no corresponding minimalist races. McPherson, “Deflating Race,” 675.

1. The Racialist Concept of Race 1. The canonical abbreviation of ‘racialist race concept’ is ‘RRC.’ 2. When I was in graduate school, analytical philosophers were taught to detest the attribution of truth or falsity to concepts. Properly understood, however, the usage is harmless. Saying the racialist concept of race is false is a way of saying that there are no racialist races. The attribution of falsity to the concept should be understood as nothing more than an evocative way of presenting the idea that the concept is vacuous or empty. It is perhaps worth noting that there is in fact historical precedent for speaking of concepts, or in any case, ideas as false. In the Th ird Meditation, Descartes speaks of true and false “ideas,” not concepts, but the difference does not appear to be crucial. An example of a false idea (for Descartes) is cold, which represents what we take to be a real property of bodies; however, the content itself of the idea doesn’t allow us to determine that it is a real property, and in fact it is not. Spinoza speaks of true and false ideas in the Ethics (see especially part 2, proposition 43, scholium): “a true idea is distinguished from a false one only inasmuch as it is said to correspond with that of which it is an idea.” It is not clear that false ideas have to entail the nonexistence of anything corresponding to the idea (they might, e.g., represent an object in a very confused way), but there certainly are cases in which this is what Spinoza means. The idea of “ free will,” as the libertarian understands it, picks out nothing in the world. That seems to track what I say about racialist races. (Thanks to my colleague Donald Rutherford for this point.) 3. Julian S. Huxley and A. C. Haddon, We Europeans: A Survey of “Racial” Problems (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1936); T. H. Huxley, “On the Methods and Results of Ethnology,” Fortnightly Review, 1865, reprinted in

Notes to Pages 13–23

4. 5. 6.

7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14.

183

Man’s Place in Nature and Other Anthropological Essays (London: Macmillan, 1894). Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 106. The distinction between concept and conception is discussed at greater length in 2.1. It should be noted that such stereotypes and stigmas can survive racialism and live on as statistical generalizations, implicit biases, and so on that are troubling when they persist even without racialism. Richard C. Lewontin, “Confusions about Human Races,” Is Race “Real”?, June 7, 2006, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/ Lewontin /. It is possible to construct a race concept that is essentialist but not hierarchical. Such a concept might hold that the fi xed set of fundamental characteristics common and peculiar to each race do not allow an objective ranking. It might hold, for example, that each race makes its own unique and equally valuable contribution to humankind. Or it might not include normative impor tant features in the set of fundamental characteristics that are common and peculiar to each race. W. E. B. Du Bois is sometimes read (for example by Kwame Anthony Appiah) as holding a nonhierarchical essentialist view in “Conservation of Races.” The application of the word ‘racialist’ might reasonably be extended to nonhierarchical essentialist race concepts, in which case one would have to distinguish between hierarchical and nonhierarchical forms of racialism. I shall, however, restrict my application of the term ‘racialist’ to race concepts that are both essentialist and hierarchical. The specific racialist concept that is historically most impor tant and interests me is both essentialist and hierarchical. Affective-voluntative racism is picked out by a version of the so-called “moral concept of racism.” J. L. A. Garcia, “Philosophical Analysis and the Moral Concept of Racism,” Philosophy Social Criticism 25 no. 5 (September 1995): 1–32. Ernst Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976). Philip Kitcher, “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture,” in Racism: Key Concepts in Critical Theory, ed. Leonard Harris (Amherst, NY: Humanities Press, 1999), 88. See S. Molnar, Human Variation (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992); and L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). Richard Lewontin, “Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): 382–398. A discussion of studies following “Apportionment” and replicating its results can be found in Ryan A. Brown and George J. Armelagos, “Apportionment of Racial Diversity: A Review,” Evolutionary Anthropology 10 (2001): 34–40. Noah A. Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” Science 298, no. 5602 (2002): 2381–2385; Marcus W. Feldman, “The Biology of

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Notes to Pages 25–29

Ancestry: DNA, Genomic Variation, and Race,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M. L. Moya (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010). 15. Michael Root, “The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences,” Philosophy of Science 70, no. 5 (2003): 1174. The passage contains a reference to C. P. Jones, T. A. La Veist, and M. Little-Blanton, “ ‘Race’ in the Epidemiologic Literature: An Examination of the American Journal of Epidemiology, 1921–1990,” American Journal of Epidemiology 134 (1991): 1079–1084. 16. Frank B. Livingstone, “On the Non-existence of Human Races,” Current Anthropology 3, no. 3 (June 1962): 279. 17. The necessity of acknowledging this point was brought home to me by an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press.

2. The Minimalist Concept of Race 1. Th is chapter represents a rethinking of my article “The Ordinary Concept of Race,” Journal of Philosophy 100, no. 9 (2003): 437–455. 2. The canonical abbreviation of ‘minimalist race concept’ is MRC. 3. I am grateful to Joshua Glasgow for encouraging me to get clear (or in any case clearer) about this point. 4. Th is may be changing. That is, it is not clear that the ordinary conception of race is as racialist as it once was. On this point, see Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 106. Nonetheless, I think that racialism still pervades ordinary thinking about race. It plays an especially prominent role in racial stereotypes and stigmas. 5. H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 115–157. 6. Tyler Burge, “Concepts, Definitions, and Meaning,” Metaphilosophy 24, no. 4 (October 1993): 309–325, see 316. 7. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 5. 8. Further discussion of the contrast between the ordinary concept of race and the (racialist) ordinary conception of race is provided in my “The Ordinary Concept of Race” and my “The Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race,” Journal of Philosophical Research 37 (2012): 249–282. 9. The racialist concept of race discussed in Chapter 1 and the ordinary conception of race discussed here are one and the same idea. What we learn in this chapter is that the idea that was presented in Chapter 1 as the racialist concept of race is actually a par ticu lar way of articulating the minimalist concept of race. There is no problem in referring to the racialist concept of race as a concept so long as one (i) does not identify it with the ordinary concept of race and (ii) recognizes that it consists of the minimalist concept of

Notes to Pages 29–31

10.

11. 12.

13.

185

race plus the four additional logically adventitious racialist elements articulated in 1.2. For useful further discussion of the concept / conception distinction in connection with race, see Joshua Glasgow, A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009), 22–26. Th is remark responds to an objection raised by an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press. Note that there is no need to bring in normative considerations to arrive at the minimalist concept of race. For the view that ‘race’ has no descriptive content, see Quayshawn Spencer, “A Radical Solution to the Race Problem,” Philosophy of Science 81, no. 5 (2014): 1025–1038. It is perhaps worth noting that Linnaeus’s classification americanus corresponds at least roughly to Blumenbach’s American and the OMB’s American Indian or Alaska Native group. His classification europaeus corresponds at least roughly to Blumenbach’s Caucasian, UNESCO’s Caucasoid, and the OMB’s white group. Linnaeus’s asiaticus corresponds at least roughly to Blumenbach’s Mongolian, UNESCO’s Mongoloid, and the OMB’s Asian group. His classification afer corresponds at least roughly to Blumenbach’s classification Ethiopian and the OMB’s black group. Blumenbach’s Malay group corresponds at least roughly to the OMB’s Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander group and can be thought of as an offshoot of his Asian group, Linnaeus’s asiaticus group, and the corresponding UNESCO and OMB groups (Mongoloid, Asian). The difference between the UNESCO three-group classification and the four- or five-group classification of the other systems is an artifact of differences of grain of resolution rather than a fundamental difference. The same is true of the difference between Linnaeus’s four-group classification and the five-group classifications of Blumenbach and the OMB. Linnaeus’s classification is less fine grained than they are, just as it is more fine grained than the UNESCO classification. UNESCO

Negroid

Mongoloid

Linnaeus

Afer

Asiaticus

Blumenbach

African

Asian

OMB

Black

Asian

Caucasoid Americanus

Europeaus

Malay

American

Caucasian

Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander

American Indian or Alaska Native

White

14. Sally Haslanger’s characterization of my approach to the concept of race as “descriptivist” is incorrect inasmuch as it fails to appreciate the central role that examples play in arriving at the characterization of the ordinary concept of race’s logical core. Sally Haslanger, “Language, Politics and ‘the Folk’: Looking for ‘the Meaning’ of ‘Race,’ ” Monist 93, no. 2 (2010): 169–187. 15. The question why the reflective process issues in a single concept is taken up in 4.9.

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Notes to Pages 31–36

16. Elliott Sober, “Evolution, Population Th inking, and Essentialism,” in From a Biological Point of View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 205. 17. In 5.7 a distinction is drawn between the contemporary technical notion of subspecies and the generic version of this notion. 18. Garry Gutting and Elizabeth Anderson, “What’s Wrong with Inequality?,” The Stone, New York Times, April 23, 2015. 19. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” in Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1996, 74. 20. Th is claim can be contrasted with Kwame Anthony Appiah’s well-known adage that “there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask ‘race’ to do for us.” “The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 35. If the “we” in question refers to us (we antiracists), it is simply not the case that we want “race” to do all the things the racialist concept of race purported to do. What we want is precisely a race concept that does what the minimalist concept of race does and nothing more. 21. Cf. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 73; Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 144; Glasgow, Theory of Race, 98 22. Th is clarification replies to an objection raised by Christopher Stephens. 23. The Oxford English Dictionary contains a curious entry (n.6) for ‘race’: “Either of the two sexes (as distinct from the other).” So there is an (obsolete) sense of ‘race’ in which race is sex! 24. Th is feature of the minimalist concept of race distinguishes it from Anderson’s minimal race concept and Haslanger’s concept of color. Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 157; Sally Haslanger, “ Future Genders? Future Races?,” Philosophic Exchange 34, no. 1 (2004): 3. 25. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 71. 26. The reason for emphasizing this point is that there is a tendency in the literature to attempt to base what inferences can be made from race membership on what can be inferred from skin color alone. But much less can be inferred from the fact that an individual has skin color C than can be inferred from the fact that he or she belongs to race R. 27. Alan R. Templeton, “Biological Races in Humans,” Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences 44, no. 3 (2013): 262. There is an impor tant difference between the idea that a visible physical feature figures in the definition of ‘race’ (as one definitional element among others) and the idea that race is defined (solely) in terms of that visible physical feature. Skin color does figure in the definition of ‘race,’ but that word is not defined in terms of skin color alone. 28. Cf. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 4; J. Angelo Corlett, Race, Racism, and Reparations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 9; Naomi Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race (New York: Routledge, 2002), 43.

Notes to Pages 36–46

187

29. The minimalist concept of race’s tolerance of blurry boundaries between races also distinguishes it from scientific definitions of race that regard races as geographically circumscribed populations within a species that have sharp boundaries that separate them from the remainder of the species. H. M. Smith, D. Chiszar, and R. R. Montanucci, “Subspecies and Classification,” Herpetological Review 28 (1997): 13–16, cited in Templeton, “Biological Races in Humans,” 263. 30. I owe this point to my colleague William Bechtel. 31. In “The Ordinary Concept of Race,” I refer to visible physical features of the relevant kind (442). The idea that the visible physical features constitutive of race are features that correspond to differences of geographical ancestry constitutes a specification of what “the relevant kind” is. 32. Richard C. Lewontin, “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): 382. 33. Alan R. Templeton, “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective,” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1999): 632. 34. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 74. 35. Frank B. Livingstone, “On the Non-existence of Human Races,” Current Anthropology 3, no. 3 (June 1962): 280. 36. Cf. Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race, 44. 37. Strictly speaking, Latinos do not constitute a single ethnic group. Inasmuch as the group includes Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and Cubans, the term ‘Latino’ is best understood as denoting a panethnicity. On the notion of panethnicity, see Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). On the idea that Latinos constitute a panethnicity see Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 149, 151, 152. 38. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 154. 39. The concept of socialrace is explicated in Chapter 7. 40. See 2.5. 41. The sense in which minimalist race is a biological notion is discussed in 2.12. 42. Jared Diamond, “Race without Color,” Discover, November 1994. 43. Lewontin, “Apportionment of Human Diversity,” 382. 44. Cf. Edouard Machery and Luc Faucher, “Social Construction and the Concept of Race,” Philosophy of Science 72 (2005): 1209n. 45. Cf. Robin O. Andreasen, “A New Perspective on the Race Debate,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, no. 2 (June 1998): 214. 46. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 4; Corlett, Race, Racism, and Reparations, 9; Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race, 43. 47. See 1.2. 48. See 1.4. 49. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 32. 50. Ibid., 64. Jesse Row imagines a world in which technology is available that makes it possible to change your physical appearance so as to change your

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51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56.

57.

58.

59. 60. 61. 62.

Notes to Pages 46–53 apparent race in his novel Your Face in Mine (New York: Riverhead, 2014). He does not suggest that such technology makes it possible to change your actual race. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 65. Glasgow seems to assume that it’s very unlikely that as many as two-fifths of a group of competent users of the word ‘race’ could be mistaken about a core feature of the concept. But why? The core feature in question isn’t as salient and obvious as some other features. We shouldn’t be surprised to find that people make mistakes in this connection. Competent users of a concept can be mistaken about the proper specification of features of the content of the concept they possess. They may also misapply a concept they possess, especially when the context of application is unusual, as is the case in some science fiction test cases. Other questions: Is the transformation such that George comes to lose his genetic markers of recent African ancestry? Does he come to have ersatz markers of recent European ancestry? If the answer to these questions is yes, then he might well be physically indistinguishable from a white person— and that might be a reason to count him white even though his actual ancestry is black. But note that to be truly physically indistinguishable from a white person, George would have to undergo a genomic transformation that simultaneously erased his past and endowed him with a false genetic history. And even if George lost his genetic markers of recent African ancestry, he would still have recent (1492) African ancestry as a matter of fact, and this is a reason for thinking that he does not become white. Glasgow, interestingly, agrees with this point. Ricardo Ventura Santos et al. “Color, Race, and Genomic Ancestry in Brazil Dialogues between Anthropology and Genetics,” Current Anthropology 50, no. 6 (2009): 787–819. Edward Telles, Race in Another America: The Significance of Skin Color in Brazil (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009), 10. Strictly speaking, C(1) isn’t independent of C(3) either. It is in fact C(1) minus its connection to C(2) and C(3) (call it C(1)*) is the concept that the Brazilian Portuguese terms côr and raça express. Latin has no specific term for ‘race.’ The term ‘gens,’ sometime translated as ‘race,’ is (somewhat) less anachronistically rendered as ‘people.’ The term Linnaeus used to refer to races was ‘varietas.’ Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind (1795 ed.), in The Idea of Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Tommy L. Lott (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), 28. Martin W. Lewis and Karen E. Wiggens, Myth of Continents (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Glasgow, Theory of Race, 32. I owe the observation that the definition of minimalist races leaves open the possibility that races may contain other races to Noah A. Rosenberg. See 2.6.1.

Notes to Pages 53–57

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63. The individuals who constitute a smaller race may also constitute an ethnic group, but it is impor tant not to conflate the ethnic group they form (which is defined in terms of cultural properties) with the racial group they form (which is defined in terms of biological, ancestral, and geographical properties). 64. Cf. Templeton, “Human Races,” 632. 65. I address the worry that there is no number that is the number of races in “Scientific Concept of Race,” 264–265. 66. E. O. Wilson and W. L Brown, “The Subspecies Concept and Its Taxonomic Application,” Systematic Zoology 2, no. 3 (1953): 97–111. 67. Carleton S. Coon with Edward E. Hunt Jr., The Living Races of Man (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965); Richard A. Goldsby, Race and Races, 2nd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1977); Julian Huxley, Alfred C. Haddon, and A. M. Carr-Saunders, We Europeans: A Survey of “Racial Problems” (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935). 68. Th is objection was raised by a reader for Harvard University Press and by my colleague Lucy Allais. The following observation by Theodosius Dobzhansky is instructive in this connection: “ There is nothing arbitrary about whether race differences do or do not exist, but whether races should or should not be named, and if they should, how many should be recognized, is a matter of convenience and hence of judgment.” On this specific point I am in complete agreement with Dobzhansky. Theodosius Dobzhansky, comment on Livingstone, “On the Non-existence of Human Races,” Current Anthropology 3, no. 3 (1962): 280. 69. Zack, Philosophy of Science and Race, 1, 37, 43, 45, 68. 70. Lewontin, “Apportionment of Human Diversity,” 385. 71. Cf. Richard C. Lewontin, “Confusions about Human Races,” Is Race “Real”?, June 7, 2006, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/ Lewontin /. 72. François Bernier, a Frenchman, is often credited with the fi rst (modern) use of the word ‘race.’ The word appeared in his A New Division of the Earth According to the Different Species or Races of Man Who Inhabit It (Nouvelle division de la terre par les différentes espèces ou races d’hommes qui l’habitent), which was published anonymously in 1648. François Berner, “A New Division of the Earth,” in Robert Bernasconi and Tommy L. Lott, The Idea of Race (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2000), 1–4. 73. Michael Root, “How We Divide the World,” in Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, supplement, Philosophy of Science 67, no. 3 (2000): S631. 74. Appiah, “The Uncompleted Argument”; J. Angelo Corlett, “Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy,” in Race and Ethnicity: On Black and Latino Identity, ed. Jorge J. E. Gracia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007); Naomi Zack, Thinking about Race (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1998). 75. My view is that the idea of normatively impor tant differences is an essential feature of the ordinary conception of race rather than the ordinary concept of race (2.1).

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Notes to Pages 58–67

76. The material in this section grows out of a discussion with Philip Kitcher. 77. John C. Avise, Phylogeography: The History and Formation of Species (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 78. See also Chapter 4, n. 1. 79. The possibility that minimalist race = populationist race is discussed in 6.4. 80. For discussion of the way everyday ideas can be transfigured into scientific ones by being embedded into scientific cultural epistemic spaces, see Sophia Efstathiou, “How Ordinary Race Concepts Get to Be Usable in Biomedical Science: An Account of Founded Race Concepts,” Philosophy of Science 79, no. 5 (2012): 701–713. 81. Sally Haslanger, “Ontology and Social Construction” in Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique (New York: Oxford University Press 2012), 83–112; Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 82. For discussion of ‘ideology’ in the pejorative sense, see Geuss, Idea of a Critical Theory, 12–22, 26–44, 87. 83. Ibid., 15–17, 31–33, 69. 84. In Chapter 7 we will see another part of what our race talk tracks, namely socialrace. 85. Philip Kitcher, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 293–317.

3. Do Minimalist Races Exist? 1. The question, Do races exist? is posed with special clarity by phi losopher Kwame Anthony Appiah in “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections,” in Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996). He also argues vigorously for a negative answer to the question. Some of his negative arguments are taken up in 3.5. 2. The idea of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race must be distinguished from the (similarly named) idea of the phenomenon of minimalist race. The former, the idea of minimalist biological phenomenon of race, is, as just noted in the text, the idea of a correspondence in human beings between differences in the patterns of visible physical features and differences in geographical ancestry. The latter, the idea of the phenomenon of minimalist race, is the idea of groups that exhibit patterns of visible physical characteristics corresponding to geographical ancestry, which is to say of groups that exhibit the correspondence that constitutes the minimalist biological phenomenon of race. I argue in the text (3.3) that recognition of the minimalist biological phenomenon of race commits one to recognition of the phenomenon of minimalist race. 3. The idea that visible physical features corresponding to geographical ancestry count as racial is discussed in 2.6.5.

Notes to Pages 68–71

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4. James Bogen and James Woodward, “Saving the Phenomena,” Philosophical Review 97, no. 3 (1988): 303–352. 5. Ibid., 321. 6. Ibid. 7. PBS, “Interview with Richard Lewontin,” Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/race/000 _ About /002 _ 04-background-01-04.htm. 8. Marcus W. Feldman, “The Biology of Ancestry: DNA, Genomic Variation, and Race,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M. L. Moya (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 141. 9. C. Loring Brace, “Does Race Exist: An Antagonist’s Perspective,” Nova, February 15, 2000, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh /nova /evolution /does-race-exist .html. 10. Joshua Glasgow, A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009), 86. 11. I do not mean to suggest that eliminativist arguments against the existence of races can be reduced to this move. 12. See 2.11. 13. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 73–74. 14. Ibid., 74. 15. Joshua Glasgow has pointed out to me (in his capacity as a reader for Oxford University Press) that Appiah would not be changing the topic if, in addition to being defined in terms of C(1)– C(3), ‘race’ were also defined to be biologically interesting. My first response is that it is not clear to me that Appiah includes biological interest in his specification of the defining elements of race. My second response is that including biological interest in the specification of the defining elements of race would not be philosophically adroit. Such a specification makes the definition unattractively “thick.” In the absence of a very good reason for including this factor, it should not be included. What one ought to want from a definition of ‘race’ is a specification of what is to be a race that leaves open whether races are biologically interesting. It should not follow from the fact (assuming that it is a fact) that races exist that they are interesting. Should it turn out that races are biologically interesting, this should be a “synthetic” truth, not something fi xed by the definition of ‘race.’ I would make a parallel argument with respect to Glasgow’s suggestion that races are defined as biologically nonarbitrary groups. It’s not clear to me that he defines ‘race’ in this way in Theory of Race. He makes no reference to this idea in his initial elucidation of the concept of race. Moreover, he ought not to define races as biologically nonarbitrary groups. Whether races are biologically arbitrary groups is one of the things to be determined after determining that they exist. 16. Glasgow, 83. 17. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 74. 18. See 2.5. 19. See 2.12.1. In speaking of minimalist races as being biological in the basic sense and biologically respectable in this context, I do not mean to be

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20. 21. 22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

Notes to Pages 71–74 suggesting that they are biologically significant. The case for their biological significance is made in 4.2. I address the question whether minimalist races are biological in the sense of being biologically significant in 4.2. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 74. Th is point is discussed at greater length in 6.7. “Multiracial in American: Proud, Diverse, and Growing in Numbers,” Pew Research Center, June 11, 2015, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2015/06/11 /multiracial-in-america /. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 74. Ibid., 74. See 2.5. In 6.7 I argue that, although it is possible that populationist races may be going out of existence (if they indeed exist), it is unlikely that they are going to cease existing anytime soon. Essentially the same line of argument can be advanced on behalf of minimalist races.

4. Is Minimalist Race Biologically Real? 1. It’s worth noting (if only for the sake of philosophical completeness) that someone might allow that minimalist races exist (in some nonscientific sense) but deny that they enjoy genuine biological existence unless they have biological reality. If biological existence and biological real ity are construed in this way, there is no “gap” between them, but then a gap opens up between showing that minimalist races exist and showing that they enjoy biological existence. An alternative way of formulating the point of this chapter would be to say that it seeks to close the gap between the existence of minimalist races demonstrated in Chapter 3 and the biological existence of minimalist races by showing that minimalist races enjoy biological existence because the kind minimalist race is biologically real. 2. Different philosophers of biology deploy different standards relative to which they think the biological reality of an entity or putative kind is to be assessed. They tend not to be terribly explicit about the standard they use or why it (rather than some alternative) should be the preferred standard. Th is is to say, they are sometimes unclear about their background metaphysics. I’ll try to be clear about my background metaphysics. I don’t think that there is a single standard relative to which minimalist race’s claim to be biologically real can be properly assessed. I shall argue that minimalist race counts as biologically real by virtue of a number of different and somewhat heterogeneous considerations. The idea is that, since minimalist race counts as biologically real in each of these specific ways, it should be counted as biologically real simpliciter. I provide a rough summary of the considerations that count in favor of minimalist race’s biological reality at the end of 4.6. I would like to take this occasion to forestall a possible misunderstanding. In the present chapter I consider the way in which the findings of population

Notes to Pages 75–78

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13. 14.

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genetics bear on the question of the biological reality of the kind minimalist race. Contrary to what some have thought, I don’t think it is necessary to work through the biological research in order to determine whether the minimalist concept of race is instantiated (on Earth). I take that question to have been settled in Chapter 3. It shows that the minimalist concept of race is instantiated on Earth. Having worked through the arguments of that chapter, we know that minimalist races exist and don’t have to wait for natu ral science to tell us that this is so. The findings of population genetics don’t become relevant until the distinct question as to whether the kind minimalist race is biologically real arises. The purpose of this chapter is to address that question, not the existence of minimalist races. This paragraph responds to an objection raised by an anonymous referee for a recent review. Michael Root, “The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences,” Philosophy of Science 70, no. 5 (2003): 1173–1183. John Dupré, “What Genes Are and Why There Are No Genes for Race,” in Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, ed. Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2008), 39–55; Sally Haslanger, “You Mixed? Racial Identity without Racial Biology,” in Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays, ed. Sally Haslanger and Charlotte Witt (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 266. Richard C. Lewontin, “The Apportionment of Human Diversity,” Evolutionary Biology 6 (1972): 381–398; Noah A. Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” Science 298 (2002): 2381–2385. I argue that minimalist race is biologically significant in 4.2. Some philosophers of biology want to say that species have essences that are themselves historical or genealogical in character. Richard C. Lewontin, “Confusions about Human Races,” Is Race “Real”?, June 7, 2006, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/ Lewontin /. Koffi N. Maglo, “The Case against Biological Realism about Race: From Darwin to the Post-genomic Era,” Perspectives on Science 19, no. 4 (2011): 370. Opposing Adam Hochman, Koffi Maglo, and Naomi Zack, Quayshawn Spencer rejects the view that, in order to be biologically real, racial groups must form a very impor tant biological classification. He thus embraces a deflationary conception of biological reality for race. Quayshawn Spencer, “Philosophy of Race Meets Population Genetics,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 (2015): 46–55. Edouard Machery, “Why Do We Th ink Racially? Culture, Evolution, and Cognition,” in Handbook of Categorization in Cognitive Science, ed. Henri Cohen and Claire Lefebvre (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2005), 446. John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence and the Methods of Scientific Investigation, 8th ed. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1882), 150. Ibid. Ibid.

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Notes to Pages 78–81

15. A thing counts as a relatively superficial kind if it is ground on a few biological differences of a comparatively superficial nature and is not “distinguished from all other classes by an indeterminate multitude of properties not derivable from one another.” Joshua Glasgow seems to allow for the possibility of such kinds on page 82 of A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009). 16. Mill, A System of Logic, 150. 17. Ibid. 18. Glasgow, A Theory of Race, 86–90. 19. I provide a fuller characterization of this fact in 4.4. 20. Later on, when we look at the 2002 findings of Rosenberg and colleagues (4.4), we will have reason to question the inference from the fact of continuity to the claim that that there is no nonarbitrary way of demarcating minimalist races. 21. Roberta L. Millstein, “Populations as Individuals,” Biological Theory 4, no. 3 (2009): 268. 22. Ibid. 23. Tyler Burge, Origins of Objectivity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 57. 24. Millstein, “Populations as Individuals,” 268. 25. Elliott Sober, “Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism,” in From a Biological Point of View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 206–207. 26. Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan, “On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans,” Philosophy of Science 70, no. 3 (2003): 1161–1172. 27. Nina G. Jablonski, Living Color: The Biological and Social Meaning of Skin Color (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012). My account follows hers. See also Nina G. Jablonski and George Chaplin, “Human Skin Pigmentation as an Adaptation to UV Radiation,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, no. S2 (2010): 8962–8968; and Ze’ev Hochberg and Alan R. Templeton, “Evolutionary Perspective in Skin Color, Vitamin D and Its Receptor,” Hormones 9, no. 4 (2010): 307–311. 28. Some eliminativists (for example, Lewontin) are skeptical of the idea that skin color is the result of natural selection. Their position is that we don’t know what explains it. PBS, “Interview with Richard Lewontin,” Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/race/000 _ About /002 _ 04 -background-01-04.htm. And some philosophers of science (who have no ax to grind about race) tend to be skeptical of adaptationist accounts of biological features, holding that such accounts are likely to be unsupported just-so stories. Both groups are probably influenced by Harold F. Blum’s analysis of data showing that skin cancer rarely kills people during their reproductive years. Harold F. Blum, “Does the Melanin Pigment in Human Skin Have Adaptive Value?,” Quarterly Review of Biology 36, no. 1 (1961): 50–63. His

Notes to Pages 81–84

29. 30. 31. 32. 33.

34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

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research put a damper on adaptive explanations for skin color and the kibosh on research into the function of human skin pigmentation for more than a decade. The “ just-so story” objection is one that anthropologists, ecologists, and population geneticists have taken to heart and adequately addressed. Research into the origins of skin color has advanced beyond Blum. Biologists have dropped the idea that skin color is adaptive because of the protection it provides against skin cancer. A huge amount of effort has gone toward methods for testing selective hypotheses. None of the methods is perfect, but some of them are good, and they all tend to converge in the cases where selection is clearest. Skin color appears to be one of those cases. (Th is response to the “ just-so story” objection was suggested to me by Doc Edge.) Th is is not to suggest that all visible physical features of race are adaptive. Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1978), 10. The fact that a kind is superficial does not entail that it is gerrymandered (unnatural). Cf. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 81. The notions modest biological kind and relatively superficial kind (defined 4.14) are distinct. Minimalist race is an instance of both sorts of kind. I owe the objection that if races are kinds, they must be unimportant, insignificant kinds we shouldn’t worry about to John Dupré (private correspondence, November 20, 2012). Unimportant, insignificant kinds we shouldn’t worry about are the kind of kind I call “completely superficial” in 4.1.8. Whether there are other legitimate modest biological kinds is a question I leave open. It is true that the fact that human differences of color and shape corresponding to minimalist races are as striking as they are is due largely to the fact that they correspond roughly to differences in social position. It is certainly true, as Steven Epstein points out, that “we are socialized to treat race as a fundamental criterion of classification.” But the notion that the strikingness of human differences of color and shape is wholly due to socialization seems implausible. It seems reasonable to suppose that the visible physical differences of race would be striking in the absence of this process—for example, in a possible world free of racism and a history of racism. Steven Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 218. Tommie Shelby, We Who Are Dark: The Philosophical Foundations of Black Solidarity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 2. See 4.1.4. I take this idea up in lesson 8 of the Conclusion. Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations.” Ibid. For a useful philosophical discussion of the specific technique Rosenberg and colleagues used to identify infraspecific population structure, see Spencer, “Radical Solution,” and Spencer, “Philosophy of Race.”

196

Notes to Pages 85–88

41. Th is sentence is sometimes read as a denial of the claim that the evidence for clustering provides support for any par ticu lar concept of biological race. I think this is a misreading. What Rosenberg and colleagues are expressing is agnosticism on the question whether the evidence for clustering provides support for any par ticu lar concept of “biological race.” They are saying: don’t take the evidence of clustering we provide as evidence of our support for a concept of biological race; we neither support nor reject the idea that the clustering evidence provides such support. In claiming that the 2002 article does in fact provide support for the proposition that minimalist race is biologically real, I am taking up a question they do not address. Noah A. Rosenberg et al., “Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure,” PLoS Genetics 1, no. 6 (2005): e70. 42. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, On the Natural Variety of Mankind (1795 ed.), in The Idea of Race, ed. Robert Bernasconi and Tommy L. Lott. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000). 43. The figure can be found on the Science web page for Rosenberg et al., “Genetic Structure of Human Populations,” http://science.sciencemag.org/content /298 /5602/2381.figures-only. It can also be found on the web by writing ‘rethinkingrace.com’ in the address bar. The reader is encouraged to look at the figure. Th is is one of those cases in which reading is no substitute for seeing. Actually looking at the figure makes the seeing that is believing possible. 44. Mary-Clair King and Arno G. Motulsky, “Mapping Human History,” Science 298 (2002): 2342–2343. 45. Spencer, “Philosophy of Race,” 48. For a list of supporting studies and discussion of the question “whether population geneticists are really reidentifying the same continental populations in different UFG [unsupervised, fuzzy genetic] clustering studies,” see his footnote 14 on page 48. 46. Marcus W. Feldman and Richard C. Lewontin, “Race, Ancestry, and Medicine,” in Koenig, Lee, and Richardson, Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, 98. 47. See 2.3, 2.6.3. 48. Feldman and Lewontin, “Race, Ancestry, and Medicine,” 99. 49. Noah A. Rosenberg, “A Population-Genetic Perspective on the Similarities and Differences among Worldwide Human Populations,” Human Biology 83, no. 6 (2011): 659–684. 50. Philip Kitcher, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 304; Glasgow, Theory of Race, 106; Deborah A. Bolnick, “Individual Ancestry Inference and the Reification of Race as a Biological Phenomenon,” in Koenig, Lee, and Richardson, Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age, 70–85. 51. I owe this point to Noah Rosenberg (personal communication, July 15, 2015). 52. Do the Kalash constitute a minimalist race? That depends on whether they exhibit a distinctive pattern of visible physical features corresponding to a distinctive geographical ancestry—a question on which I take no stand.

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53. David Serre and Svante Pääbo, “Evidence for Gradients of Human Genetic Diversity within and among Continents,” Genome Research 14, no. 9 (September 2004): 1679–1685. 54. Ibid., 1679. 55. Rosenberg et al., “Clines, Clusters, and the Effect of Study Design on the Inference of Human Population Structure,” PLOS Genetics 1, no. 6 (December 2005): 0661. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid., 0668. 58. Larry Adelman, “Race and Gene Studies: What Differences Make a Difference?,” Race: The Power of an Illusion, 2003, http://www.pbs.org/race/000 _ About /002 _ 04-background-01-02.htm. We can of course use our eyes to distinguish the visual representations of the genetic clusters that correspond modulo our assumption to continental-level minimalist races in the K = 5 graph. 59. Epstein, Inclusion, 27 (my italics). 60. Alan R. Templeton, “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective,” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1999): 632. 61. Ibid., 632. 62. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 86. 63. Just to be perfectly clear, I don’t think that the results of the 2002 Rosenberg article bear on the question: Do minimalist races exist? That’s a question that has to be answered separately. In my view, the fundamental question in the philosophy of race on which the results of this study bear is whether minimalist race is biologically real. My contention is that they indicate that minimalist race (or more precisely, continental level minimalist race) is biologically real if sub-Saharan Africans, Caucasians, East Asians, Amerindians, and Oceanians constitute minimalist races. 64. Since the differences in microsatellites between continental-level minimalist races do not code for any of the visible physical features distinguishing such races, it would be misleading to refer to them as “racial” differences. There is nothing “racial” about them. They are perhaps better understood as “nonracial” genetic differences between races. 65. I owe this point to Noah Rosenberg (private correspondence). 66. Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv, and Hua Tang, “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease,” Genome Biology 3, no. 7 (2002): 1–12. 67. Rosenberg, “Population-Genetic Perspective.” Note that, in this article, Rosenberg makes the point with reference to pairs of individuals who belong to different geographical regions and pairs of individuals who belong to the same geographical region. 68. Spencer, “Radical Solution.” 69. Spencer himself took a similar position in “What ‘Biological Racial Realism’ Should Mean,” Philosophical Studies 159, no. 2 (2012): 181–204.

198

Notes to Pages 94–97

70. In 6.10 I provide a supplementary reason for thinking that, if populationist races exist, they count as biologically real, namely that reproductive isolation (in the sense of the term articulated in 5.5) provides a biological ground for the division of the species into populationist races. If minimalist races are populationist races, this additional reason for counting populationist races biologically real applies to them too. 71. I will provide considerations in Chapter 8 in support of the idea that physicians ideally ought also to be aware of their patients’ socialrace. The notion of socialrace is the subject of Chapter 7. 72. Th is remark responds to an objection raised by an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press. 73. In their 2008 article “Biological Conceptions of Race and the Motivation to Cross Racial Boundaries,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 6: 1033–1047, Melissa J. Williams and Jennifer L. Eberhardt found that “conceiving of racial group membership as biologically determined increases acceptance of racial inequities” (1033), a result that should give anyone disposed to defend a biological conception of race pause. A close reading of the article, suggests, however, that the authors understand conceiving of race biologically in essentialist terms, that is, they appear to identify conceiving of race biologically with conceiving of biological race essentialistically. An impor tant theme of this book, however, is that these are two different things. It is not clear that the authors, who are both social psychologists, countenance the possibility of a nonessentialist biological conception of race. The article provides no indication that they attempted to discriminate between attitudes of subjects holding essentialist and nonessentialist biological conceptions of race. It does not provide specific information about the political outlook of those who hold a nonessentialist biological conception of race. It is of course possible that nonessentialist biological thinking about race correlates with acceptance of racial inequity, but the study itself provides no evidence for this hypothesis. The article’s finding that people who hold essentialist biological conceptions of race “tend to understand racial inequities as natural, unproblematic, and unlikely to change” comes as no surprise. Biological essentialism about race (aka racialism) rationalizes racial inequities as natural, unproblematic, and unlikely to change. There is, however, nothing in the content of the nonessentialist deflationary biological conception of race defended here that provides the least support for the acceptance of racial inequities. Unlike biological essentialism, it provides no “justification for a racially inequitable status quo and for the continued social marginalization of historically disadvantaged groups” (1033). The authors draw a sharp contrast between biological conceptions of race and conceptions of race as a social construct, the apparent assumption being that these two ways of viewing race are mutually exclusive. They found that those who were “led to think that race is a social construct felt more emotion-

Notes to Page 99

199

ally engaged [by racial inequities] than those led to think that race is a biological construct.” Th is book, however, endorses deflationary realism about biological race and social constructionism about social race as consistent and indeed complementary positions. The view it defends is not that race is a biological rather than social “construct” but rather that minimalist race is a nonessentialist biological phenomenon not correlated with normatively impor tant differences and that socialrace is a pernicious social phenomenon characterized by racial inequities that finds its ideological ground in a false biological conception of race— and that an understanding of both the biological and the social phenomenon is required for a full understanding of race. Its account of biological and social race undercuts the notion that racial inequities are natural, unproblematic, and unlikely to change.

5. The Populationist Concept of Race A precursor to this chapter, “The Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race,” was published in the Journal of Philosophical Research 37 (2012): 249–282. 1. Philip Kitcher, “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture,” in Racism: Key Concepts in Critical Theory, ed. Leonard Harris (Amherst, NY: Humanities Press, 1999), 87–117; Philip Kitcher, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 293–317. As I noted in the Introduction, every serious attempt to defend race as a biological category post–World War II has deployed a nonracialist, populationist race concept. The specific populationist race concept expounded in this chapter is distinguished by its inclusion of a morphological component (patterns of phenotypic differences), a feature that connects it to the minimalist concept of race and guarantees its relevance to the race debate, and by the specific notion of reproductive isolation in terms of which it is defined. Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan’s concept of race as ecotype does include a morphological component but it, unlike the populationist race concept, does not contain a historical component. The populationist race concept is also distinguished by the fact that it does not require that populationist races exhibit the degree of genetic distinctiveness that is required of subspecies, as the latter notion is standardly understood in the literature. These constitute respects in which the populationist race concept is deflationary. The canonical abbreviation of ‘populationist race concept’ is ‘PRC.’ 2. Ernst Mayr, Systematics and the Origins of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942). 3. A full characterization of the populationist concept of race would have to include an account of the concept of population in terms of which it is framed. I assume that such an account can be given but will not attempt to spell it out. For useful work on this topic, see Roberta L. Millstein, “The Concepts of Population and Metapopulation in Evolutionary Biology and Ecology,” in Evolution since Darwin: The First 150 Years, ed. Michael A. Bell,

200

4.

5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

Notes to Pages 99–102 Douglas J. Futuyma, Walter F. Eanes, and Jeffrey S. Levinton (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 2010), 61–86; and Roberta L. Millstein, “Th inking about Populations and Races in Time,” in “Genomics and Philosophy of Race,” ed. Rasmus G. Winther, Roberta L. Millstein, and Rasmus Nielsen, special issue, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 (2015): 5–11. To say that the concepts minimalist race and populationist race are distinct is not to say that the (putative) kinds minimalist race and populationist race are distinct. I suggest that the two kinds may be one and the same in 6.4. My exposition of population thinking follows Elliott Sober’s treatment. Elliott Sober, “Evolution, Population Thinking, and Essentialism,” in From a Biological Point of View (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 201–232. Nothing in what is said in this paragraph is intended to be inconsistent with the idea of species (races) as ontological individuals. The fact that there will presumably be borderline cases in which it is indeterminate whether the patterns of phenotypic characteristics distinguishing apparently different races really are distinct does mean that the race of people within fuzzy border zones will be indeterminate and that people who are neither surefire members of the extreme races nor located within the indeterminate border, if such there were, would have no race at all. As Joshua Glasgow points out, “ These implications violate what appear to be platitudes, that everyone has some race or some combination of races, and no one has an indeterminate race or no race at all.” Joshua Glasgow, A Theory of Race (108). I would grant that these platitudes are fi xtures of the ordinary conception of race and associate them with racialism but deny that they are built into the ordinary concept of race. It is worth recalling here that on my view (a view that Glasgow accepts), the ordinary concept of race is a group-level concept. Its job is to group groups, not individuals. The idea that there might be people about whom there is no fact of the matter as to what race they are and that there might be people who have no race at all is surprising. But I take it to be a palatable implication of the vagueness of the populationist concept of race (and, for that matter, of the vagueness of the minimalist concept of race). We should not find it surprising that thinking these concepts through should have some surprising results. It is often true that thinking concepts through has surprising results. Nor should we regard these par ticu lar surprising results as reasons for rejecting the accounts of the concepts given. See Jared Diamond, “Race without Color,” Discover, November 1994. Cf. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections,” in Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 73; Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002), 144; Joshua Glasgow, A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009), 98; Kitcher, “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture,” 103–104.

Notes to Pages 103–110

201

10. Th is responds to an objection raised by an anonymous reader for Oxford University Press. 11. Ernst Mayr, Animal, Species, and Evolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 17. 12. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 97. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid., 99n21. 15. See 2.6.1. 16. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Genetics and the Origins of Species (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937), 230–231. 17. Mayr, Animal, Species, and Evolution, 91. 18. Ibid. 19. The role that social relations play in the constitution of populationist race is discussed in 6.13. 20. Kitcher, “Race, Ethnicity, Biology, Culture,” 101. 21. David L. Hull, “Species, Subspecies, and Races,” Social Research 65, no. 2 (1998): 351–367. 22. Alan R. Templeton, “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective.” American Anthropologist 100, no. 3 (1999): 632. 23. Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer, 1986), 107–109. 24. Arguing against Koffi Maglo and Naomi Zack, Quayshawn Spencer rejects the view that races must be subspecies in order to be counted biologically real in “Philosophy of Race Meets Population Genetics,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 52 (2015): 46–55. 25. Lori J. Lawson Handley, Andrea Manica, Jerome Goudet, and François Balloux, “Going the Distance: Human Population Genetics in a Clinal World,” Trends in Genetics 23, no. 9 (2007): 432. 26. Adam Hochman. “Against the New Racial Naturalism,” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 6 (June 2013), 347–349. 27. John H. Relethford, Human Population Genetics (Hoboken, NJ: WileyBlackwell, 2012), 215. 28. Hochman, “Against the New Racial Naturalism,” 347–349. 29. This point was suggested to me by an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press. 30. Alan R. Templeton, “Biological Races in Humans,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 44, no. 3 (2013): 262–271. 31. Cf. ibid. 32. My discussion of the notions of lineage and phylogenetics is indebted to Joyce Havstad (private conversation). 33. “Graphical Explanation of Basic Phylogenetic Terms,” University of California Museum of Paleontology website, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu /glossary/gloss1/phyly.html. 34. Robin O. Andreasen, “A New Perspective on the Race Debate,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, no. 2 (June 1998): 214.

202

Notes to Pages 113–116

35. See 2.8. 36. See 2.2. 37. “A ‘planet’ is a celestial body that (a) is in orbit around the Sun, (b) has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a hydrostatic equilibrium (nearly round) shape, and (c) has cleared the neighbourhood around its orbit.” Resolution 5A, Definition of ‘Planet,’ International Astronomy Union, 2006. See my “On the Idea of a Scientific Concept of Race,” 261. Th is definition represents a “scientization” of the ordinary concept of planet. 38. Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1955), 152. 39. Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan, “On the Concept of Biological Race and Its Applicability to Humans,” Philosophy of Science 70, no. 3 (2003): 1161–1172. 40. It should be noted that populationist races, if they exist, are ecotypes. Minimalist races are certainly ecotypes. They consist of groups of individuals who share one or more adaptations to a specific environment. But neither minimalist nor populationist race are defined in terms of adaptation to specific environments. They exhibit adaptive variation but are not based on adaptive variation. Nor are all the distinctive phenotypic features of minimalist and populationist races adaptive. And, of course, not all ecotypes are races. The fact that minimalist (and possibly populationist) races are ecotypes is a contingent, empirical fact. There are possible biological worlds in which there are minimalist and populationist races that are not ecotypes. 41. Ibid., 1161–1162. 42. Cf. Kitcher, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” 306. The populationist race concept, like the minimalist race concept, does point to features (skin color, hair texture, head shape) than can be enlisted to revive unjust and damaging social practices, but these features are there anyway. They are easily recognized without the assistance of the populationist race concept. 43. The populationist concept cannot, of course, prevent people from taking the idea of groups of populations that exhibit distinctive patterns of genetically transmitted phenotypic characteristics— corresponding to the group’s geographical ancestry and belonging to a biological line of descent initiated by a geographically separated and reproductively isolated founding population— and maliciously imputing intrinsic normative importance to these groups. But this is not something it, or any concept, can be reasonably expected to do. Any concept can be abused. As philosopher Allen Wood has remarked, “We can’t weed out ideas on the ground that they might be abused—if we did that consistently, then we’d have no ideas left” (personal communication, November 28, 2005). The claim that the populationist concept is nonmalefic may lead some readers to think of Melissa J. Williams and Jennifer L. Eberhardt’s “Biological Conceptions of Race and the Motivation to Cross Racial Boundaries,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 94, no. 6 (2008): 1033–1047.

Notes to Pages 119–120

203

Do the authors of this article not show that biological conceptions simply as such are malefic by virtue of being correlated with acceptance of racial inequities? I do not think so. It is true that the authors speak of biological conceptions of race without explicitly indicating that they mean essentialist biological conceptions, but references to biological essentialism in the text and the inclusion of ‘essentialism’ among their list of keywords suggest that they are tacitly identifying biological conceptions of race with biologically essentialist conceptions of race. Their study provides no support for the hypothesis that nonessentialist biological conceptions of race will be associated with acceptance of racial inequities. They do not show that biological conceptions simply as such are malefic. And here we have to ask, why should a nonessentialist biological conception of race such as the one captured by the populationist concept of race lead people to accept racial inequities? What features are contained in the concept that would lead one to predict this effect? There do not appear to be any; the concept does not assert any intrinsic connection between race and normatively impor tant features. It even lacks the suggestion that human races are species in the making that is part of the content of Kitcher’s biological race concept. (For further discussion of Williams and Eberhardt, see Chapter 4, n. 69.) It is true, as Kitcher observes, that “throughout history, allegations of deep differences in temperament and capacity, claims grounded in no evidence, have done incalculable harm” (“Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” 293), but the populationist concept of race makes no such allegations. It is also true, as Kitcher observes, that the use of race concepts in the past has generated “immense harm” (302). But surely it is significant that the race concepts that generated immense harm in the past were racialist race concepts. The same point can be made with respect to the race concepts that “continue” to cause damage (316). They too are racialist race concepts. When Kitcher says, “Even if the concept of race plays a role in some lines of biological inquiry, the values of those lines of inquiry, and of pursuing them through retention of the concept of human race, would have to be sufficiently great to outweigh the potential damage caused by deploying this concept in the other contexts” (302), it seems that he is assuming that any biological race concept (including presumably his own nonracialist biological race concept) has the potential to generate immense harm. What is not clear is why he thinks this. There is nothing in the content of the populationist concept of race that should lead to any deleterious effects when deploying it in our social discussions. It provides no justification for a racially inequitable status quo or for the continued marginalization of historically disadvantaged groups.

6. Populationist Race: Existence and Real ity 1. See 5.8. 2. See Chapter 3.

204

Notes to Pages 120–131

3. I owe this objection to James Messina. 4. Robin O. Andreasen, “A New Perspective on the Race Debate,” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 49, no. 2 (June 1998): 200. 5. Wendy Wang, “The Rise of Intermarriage,” Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends, February 16, 2012, http://www.pewsocialtrends.org /2012/02/16/the-rise-of-intermarriage/. 6. Hope Yen, “Multiracial Americans Become Fastest Growing US Group,” Huffington Post, May 28, 2009. 7. See Elizabeth Anderson, The Imperative of Integration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). 8. I return to this theme in lesson 10 in the Conclusion. 9. Philip Kitcher, “Does ‘Race’ Have a Future?,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 35, no. 4 (Fall 2007): 298. 10. One should distinguish the damage resulting from hurricanes and floods, which may be attributed to human activity (or lack thereof), from the occurrence of hurricanes and floods themselves. If, however, the recent increase in the frequency of hurricanes and floods is due to climate change, then the incidence of such disasters has an anthropogenic dimension as well. 11. Henry Louis Gates Jr., “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes,” in “Race,” Writing, and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 5. 12. G. A. Cohen, Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), 115. 13. Gates, “Writing ‘Race’ and the Difference It Makes,” 4. 14. Ibid., 5.

7. The Concept of Socialrace

1. 2.

3.

4.

Th is chapter is a revision of an article by the same title that appeared in Philosophy and Social Criticism 40, no. 1 (2014): 69–90. The canonical abbreviation of ‘socialrace concept’ is ‘SRC.’ Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994 [1986]). I fi rst discussed the concept of socialrace in “Race Concepts in Medicine,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 38 (2013): 6–31. ‘Socialrace’ is generally elliptical for ‘socialrace in ————’ where the ‘————’ is to be fi lled in with the specification of a par ticu lar context, for example, a nation, society, or region. A socialrace is a socialrace in a par ticu lar nation, society, or region. ‘Socialrace’ can also refer to a generic structure that can be instantiated in different nations, societies, or regions. Socialrace takes different forms in different geographic and sociohistorical contexts. It is not monolithic. I do not find it helpful to speak of socialrace as a “ human kind.” Blacks, whites, and Asians (occupants of par ticu lar socialraces) are not different

Notes to Pages 131–132

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

205

kinds of human beings, nor are they different kinds of persons. The profound effects of socialrace on individual identity and inner life notwithstanding, socialrace does not fi x the nature of the individual. On human kinds, see Ronald R. Sundstrom, “Race as a Human Kind,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 28, no. 1 (2002): 91–115. Kwame Anthony Appiah associates socialrace membership with being “a kind of person.” See Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections,” in Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, by Kwame Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 30–105, 78. Ian Hacking, who is responsible for the introduction of talk of ‘ human kinds,’ has wisely switched to speaking of ‘interactive kinds.’ See his The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). The intuitive notion of a group I operate with does not require that groups be unified by “we” intentions. Group membership can be conferred and groups may come into being solely as the result of conferring the status group on a collection of individuals. For example, a group may be constituted as a group by being regarded by another group as the enemy. To say that the idea of a racialist race is the idea of a group that satisfies the conditions of the racialist concept of race is not to say that there are groups that actually satisfy the racialist concept. One consequence of the definition of ‘socialrace’ (a socialrace = a social group that is taken to be a racialist race) is that, should it actually come to pass that social groups are no longer taken to be racialist races, socialraces would eo ipso cease to exist. I suspect that implicit belief in the existence of racialist races supports the continued existence of socialraces at the present time. Explicit belief in racialist races may be declining, but implicit belief in them persists, embedded as it is in the practices of socialrace. The existence of socialraces functions to reinforce belief in racialist races inasmuch as socialraces appear to be racialist races. So long as socialraces exist, it will appear to be the case that racialist races exist, and so long as it appears to be the case that socialraces exist, belief in the existence of racialist races will persist. That said, I want to allow for the possibility that a phenomenon might come to exist that is distinct from but very much like the one for which I have reserved the name ‘socialrace.’ The phenomenon would be founded on nonracialist (nonessentialist) racist conceptions of race that attributed racial differences in abilities, aptitudes, and talents to differences in the statistical distribution of alleles or differences in culture and ground these differences in “dispositional causes,” that is, causes “internal to the individual” (for example, genes, culture, voluntary individual choice). Such a phenomenon, call it neo-socialrace, could persist even in the absence of belief in racialist races. The belief may persist as a presupposition of the legitimacy of the practices it rationalizes, a presupposition that beneficiaries of the practices might be disinclined to avow. Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

206

Notes to Pages 132–134

10. W. E. B. DuBois, Dawn of Dusk (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1984 [1897]), 153. 11. Michael Root, “The Use of Race in Medicine as a Proxy for Genetic Differences,” Philosophy of Science 70, no. 5 (2003): 1173–1183. 12. Recognition of the idea that the social groups that are taken to be racialist races are really social groups is becoming increasingly widespread. It will simplify our exposition to focus on the earlier situation—call it the classical situation—in which this fact is not generally recognized. 13. Note that the intended sense of ‘race’ in ‘social phenomenon of race’ is the sense that expresses the concept socialrace. There is a distinct idea of ‘the social phenomenon of race’ that does not require this concept. One can take ‘race’ as a biological term and understand by ‘the social phenomenon of race’ the social relations between biologically identified groups (races). Th is is the “social phenomenon of race” that the so-called race-relations theorists understood themselves to be exploring. To have the idea of the social phenomenon of race in the second sense is not yet to have the concept socialrace, though it is easy to see the second sense as an anticipation of the first sense and easy to read the first sense back into the second. See, for example, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 103–105. 14. On the idea of ideology, see Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). The fact that the racialist race concept has this ideological function makes it socially constructed in what might be called the pernicious sense. It does not, however, make racialist race a social kind. 15. I owe this suggestion to Raymond Geuss. 16. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 55. 17. See note 19. 18. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 9. 19. On institutional racism, see Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] and Charles Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation (New York: Vintage, 1967). 20. To say that socialrace is by nature hierarchical is not to say that each and every assignment of social meaning to the visible physical features associated with the ordinary concept of race must be hierarchical. The concept of socialrace leaves open the possibility of noninvidious assignments of social meaning to skin color, nose shape, head form, and the like. 21. Geuss, Idea, 16. 22. Paul C. Taylor, Race: A Philosophical Introduction (Malden, MA: Polity, 2005), 86–87. Note that on my account, this is not part of the definition of socialrace. It is an empirical fact about socialraces. 23. Bernard Boxill, “Introduction,” in Race and Racism, ed. Bernard Boxill (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 31–32. 24. There is no assumption that the specific criteria for individual racial classifications are coherent.

Notes to Pages 134–138

207

25. Joshua Glasgow, A Theory of Race (New York: Routledge, 2009), 139. 26. Cf. Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., On Race and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1996), 21, 29; Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., “Conserve Races? In Defense of W. E. B. Dubois,” in W. E. B. Du Bois on Race and Culture, ed. Bernard W. Bell, Emily R. Grosholz, and James B. Stewart (New York: Routledge, 1996), 15–37, 21. 27. Jacobson, Whiteness. 28. One fairly recent change in socialrace is that people are now less likely to avow belief in the racialist conception of race. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 132. One striking fact about the phenomenon of socialrace is its capacity to survive even as avowed belief in racialist race declines. 29. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 55. I suspect that this odd claim—that race is a dimension of human representation rather than an illusion—is the result of a conflation of socialrace (which is not an illusion) with racialist race (which is an illusion). The concept racialist race is a dimension of human representation and an illusion. The phenomenon socialrace rests on an illusion but its existence is not an illusion. It is “an element of social structure” (ibid.). 30. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010). 31. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 115. 32. On the notion of false consciousness, see Geuss, Idea. 33. The notion of reification is discussed in detail in 6.13. 34. I take the term ‘biological correlate’ from Adam Hochman, “Against the New Race Naturalism,” Journal of Philosophy 110, no. 6 (2013): 334. 35. See 2.6.1.2. 36. Tyler Burge, “Concepts, Definitions, Meanings,” in Foundations of Mind (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007 [1993]). 37. Glasgow makes essentially the same point with two thought experiments (disaster and temporary amnesia), the specific force of which turns on the outlandishness of the idea that the institution of socialrace could go out of business in an instant. It is not, however, necessary to consider such remote possibilities to see the basic point that the continued existence of socialraces depends on the continued existence of the practice of racialist classification and that the existence (or nonexistence) of races corresponding to the ordinary concept of race is independent of the existence of this practice. 38. Recognition that the word ‘race’ can be used to refer to the phenomenon of socialrace + the belief that race is not a biological kind (and hence that ‘race’ has no biological referent) can mislead people into thinking something like that socialrace is the only meaning ‘race’ can have. Whether or not there is a biological kind of race, there is no denying that the word ‘race’ in at least one of its senses purports to refer to a biological kind. 39. Sundstrom, “Race as a Human Kind,” 91. 40. Glasgow makes the following telling concession: “I do not mean to deny that constructivism rightly taps into a core part of racial discourse” (Th eory

208

41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46.

47.

48. 49.

50. 51. 52.

Notes to Pages 139–144 of Race, 119). My view is that the “core part of racial discourse” that constructivism taps into is precisely the (secondary) sense of ‘race’ that corresponds to socialrace. Glasgow himself holds that a transition from biological race talk to social race talk is arguably underway (Theory of Race, 142–143). To possess concept C “implicitly” is to have C, that is, to operate (think) using C without recognizing that one has or operates with C. One may possess C without having a clear, express formulation of the concept. We can attribute implicit possession of C to A when we must do so to make sense of some bit of behav ior or cognitive performance on the part of A. Implicit possession of a concept is inferred. The cognitive performance in question in the text is grasping the phenomenon of socialrace as the phenomenon of socialrace. The thought is that, to do this, one must have some discursive route to the phenomenon in question and that the only thing that could secure such a route would either be the concept socialrace or a concept very much like it. Omi and Winant, Racial Formation, 64–65. If one tweaks Omi and Winant’s idea of a ‘racial formation’ (which is the idea of a process) to get the idea of the product of this process, one has the idea of socialrace. Their focus on process reflects their interest as social theorists in the how of socialrace. They want a causal explanation of how socialrace comes to be (hence their postulation of ‘racial projects’). Our focus on the product of this process reflects our philosophical interest in understanding the what of socialrace: what it is for a social group to be socialrace. Nancy Krieger, “A Glossary for Social Epidemiology,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 55 (2001): 696. Root, “Use of Race,” 1175. For discussion of the racialization of Hispanics / Latinos, see Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993); Sally Haslanger, “Future Genders? Future Races?,” Philosophic Exchange 34, no. 1 (2004): 4–27, 21. Alcoff, Visible Identities, 238. It may be a matter of how a socialrace’s members are treated by members of another society, for example, the way in which sub-Saharan Africans were treated by Europeans during the time of the slave trade. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 148. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 78–82. “Pass” is perhaps best understood as a so-called factive verb. One passes for white if one is (in fact) taken for white without (in fact) satisfying the socially accepted criteria for whiteness, whether or not one intends or attempts to be so taken. But the verb is often understood to connote effort as well as success. To ‘pass’ (it is thought) is inter alia to attempt to pass. This is perhaps because

Notes to Pages 144–148

53.

54.

55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

209

it is falsely assumed that anyone in a position to pass for white (in the factive sense) would attempt to do so. I am opposed to the idea of taking socialrace membership to be scalar, that is, I am hostile to the idea that one can be more or less black (or more or less white, and so on) when socialrace is in question. The distinction between the idea of membership in a socialrace (secured by satisfaction of the socially accepted criteria for being a member of the associated racialist race) and the practical significance thereof is meant to accommodate the differential practical significance of being a member of a socialrace depending, for example, on skin color—without introducing the idea of scalarity. A rather different idea pointing in the direction of scalarity in racial membership or identity is the notion that there are norms for being, for example, black, with respect to whose satisfaction one could be said to be more or less black, white, or Asian. The concept of socialrace recognizes the existence of such norms (norms for being a member of a racialist race) but is not committed to their validity. People who are members of more than one socialrace in a socialrace regime that does not recognize mixed race as a racial position will be in the anomalous situation of not having an established socialrace position in society. Having such a position is one way of being a “normal” member of a society organized around the institution of socialrace. Not to have such a position is to have no place in the social world along the dimension of socialrace. Hence, perhaps, the pathos of mixed-race individuals seeking social recognition for their distinctive mixed racial identity. Appiah, “Race, Culture, Identity,” 103. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 225. Glasgow, Theory of Race, 144, 139. Glasgow would say that the “plus” is supposed to be that ‘race*’ allows for racial* harmony and equality, without contradiction. Ibid., 150. Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . . ,” 147. Ibid., 169. Ibid., 160. Haslanger, “Future Genders? Future Races?,” 7. Sally Haslanger, “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them to Be?,” Nous 34, no. 1 (2000): 31–55, 44. Ibid. Ibid., 34. Taylor, Race, 87. Ibid., 74. Ibid., 86. Outlaw, “Conserve Races?,” 22. Ibid., 21. Ibid., 17. The idea that “each member of a par ticu lar race and / or ethnie shares the group’s defining characteristics,” if these characteristics are supposed to

210

Notes to Pages 148–154

include cultural elements, seems to me an unfortunately essentialistic, but dispensable, component of Outlaw’s conception. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid., 22. 75. Ibid., 30.

8. Health, Race, Medicine 1. Mindy Thompson Fullilove, “Comment: Abandoning ‘Race’ as a Variable in Public Health Research—an Idea Whose Time Has Come,” American Journal of Public Health 88, no. 9 (1998): 1297–1298. Fullilove writes poignantly, “Why continue to accept something [that is, the concept of race] that is not only without biological merit but also full of evil social import?” (1297). 2. Michael J. Fine, Said A. Ibrahim, and Stephen B. Thomas, “The Role of Race and Genetics in Health Disparities Research,” American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 12 (2005): 2125–2128. 3. Neil Risch, Esteban Burchard, Elad Ziv, and Hua Tang, “Categorization of Humans in Biomedical Research: Genes, Race and Disease,” Genome Biology 3, no. 7 (2002): 1–12. 4. On the distinction between ‘use’ and ‘mention,’ see W. V. Quine, Methods of Logic, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982): 50, 146n, 268. The notion of socialrace is introduced in Chapter 7. 5. Fullilove, “Abandoning ‘Race,’ ” 1297. 6. Steven Epstein, Inclusion: The Politics of Difference in Medical Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 232. 7. Sandra Soo-Jin Lee, Joanna Mountain, and Barbara A. Koenig, “The Meaning of Race in the New Genomics: Implications for Health Disparities Research,” Yale Journal of Health, Policy, Law, and Ethics 1 (2001): 36. 8. M. Greg Bloche, “Race-Based Therapeutics,” New England Journal of Medicine 351, no. 20 (2004): 2037. 9. Richard S. Cooper, Jay S. Kaufmann, and Ryk Ward, “Race and Genomics,” New England Journal of Medicine 348, no. 12 (2003): 1169. 10. Robert S. Schwartz, “Racial Profi ling in Medical Research,” New England Journal of Medicine 344, no. 18 (2001): 1392. 11. Epstein, Inclusion, 13. 12. Ibid., 204, 232. 13. Lawrence Blum criticizes broad uses of the word ‘racism’ on the ground that they may render the term meaningless and promote defensiveness. I do not think that the acceptation of the term I am employing is so broad as to render it meaningless, nor should its use promote defensiveness. Lawrence Blum, “I’m Not a Racist, But . . .”: The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). 14. See references in Robin O. Andreasen, “The Concept of Race in Medicine,” The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Biology, ed. Michael Ruse (New York:

Notes to Pages 154–159

15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

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Oxford University Press, 2008); and Jonathan Michael Kaplan, “When Socially Determined Categories Make Biological Realities: Understanding Black / White Health Disparities in the U.S.,” Monist 93, no. 2 (2010): 281–297. Nancy Krieger, “Embodiment: A Conceptual Glossary for Epidemiology,” Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 59 (2005): 350. Nancy Krieger, “Refiguring ‘Race’: Epidemiology, Racialized Biology, and Biological Expression of Race Relations,” International Journal of Health Services 30, no. 1 (2000): 332. Nancy Krieger, “Embodying Inequality: A Review of Concepts, Measures, and Methods for Studying Health Consequences of Discrimination,” International Journal of Health Services 29, no. 2 (1999): 332, 333. Shannon Sullivan, “Inheriting Racist Disparities in Health: Epigenetics and the Transgenerational Effects of White Racism,” Critical Philosophy of Race 1, no. 2 (2013): 190–218. Cf. Epstein, Inclusion, 2. National Institute of Health, “Cystic Fibrosis,” Genetics Home Reference, August 2012, http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition /cystic-fibrosis. National Institute of Health, “Tay-Sachs Disease,” Genetics Home Reference, October 2012, http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition /tay-sachs-disease. Esteban González Burchard et al., “The Importance of Race and Ethnic Background in Biomedical Research and Clinical Practice,” New England Journal of Medicine 348, no. 12 (2003): 1173. Ibid. Ibid. “Carbamazepine,” MedlinePlus, July 16, 2012, http://www.nlm.nih.gov /medlineplus/druginfo/meds/a682237.html. Choong-Chor Chang, Chun Lai-Too, Shahnaz Murad, and Suraiya Hani Hussein, “Association of HLA-B*1502 Allele with Carbamazepine-Induced Toxic Epidermal Necrolysis and Stevens–Johnson Syndrome in the Multiethnic Malaysian Population,” International Journal of Dermatology 50 (2011): 221. “Not a Black and White Question,” Economist, April 15, 2006. Alexander Dew et al., “Paucity of HLA-Identical Unrelated Donors for African-Americans with Hematologic Malignancies: The Need for New Donor Options,” Biology of Blood and Marrow Transplantation 14 (2008): 93. Ian Hacking, “Why Race Still Matters,” Daedalus 134, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 108. Reading this passage brought it home to me that, as an African American, I had a special reason to enlist as a bone marrow donor. So I joined the National Marrow Donor Program’s Be the Match Registry. Lee, Mountain, and Koenig, “Meaning of Race,” 39; Schwartz, “Racial Profi ling in Medical Research,” 1392. See 4.5. What it is for a social group to be taken to be a racialist race is discussed in 7.1.

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Notes to Pages 162–167

33. Marcus W. Feldman, “The Biology of Ancestry: DNA, Genomic Variation, and Race,” in Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, ed. Hazel Rose Markus and Paula M. L. Moya (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 157. 34. Cf. Robin O. Andreasen, “Race in Medicine.” 35. The senses in which the ordinary concept of race is biological are discussed in 2.12. 36. Lundy Braun, “Race, Ethnicity, Health: Can Genetics Explain Disparities?,” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 45, no. 2 (2002): 171. 37. Th is presupposes a certain theory of justice, one with which some luck egalitarians would disagree. See Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” Ethics 100, no. 2 (1999): 287–337, for an instance of the sort of view presupposed. 38. Although the medical community can in principle pursue both the investigation of the health effects of racism and the investigation of medically relevant genetic differences among races, and although there is reason for thinking that neither project should be wholly abandoned—which is the point I am urging here—there is a real question about funding. In the real world, money that goes to fund one research project does not go to fund another. One reason for regarding funding of the investigation of the health effects of racism as more urgent than funding research into medically relevant genetic differences among races is that it is clear that racism is a major cause of health differences among races, whereas it is most likely that, if there are medically relevant genetic differences among races, they will turn out to be a minor cause of health differences among races. (I develop this last point in the text.) 39. Anne Fausto-Sterling, “Refashioning Race: DNA and the Politics of Health Care,” Differences 15, no. 3 (2004): 18. Fausto-Sterling mentions the idea that “the best way to eliminate health disparities is by the successful wedding of genomics to epidemiology” by way of criticizing it. Ibid. 40. Harold P. Freeman, “Why Black Women Die of Cancer,” New York Times, March 13, 2014; Tara Parker-Pope, “Tackling a Racial Gap in Breast Cancer Survival,” New York Times, December 20, 2013; Tara Parker-Pope, “The Breast Cancer Racial Gap,” New York Times, March 3, 2014. 41. “ Triple Negative Breast Cancer,” Breastcancer.org, June 24, 2016, http://www .breastcancer.org/symptoms/diagnosis/trip_neg. 42. Cf. Sullivan, “Inheriting Racist Disparities.” 43. Michael J. Fine, Said A. Ibrahim, and Stephen B. Thomas, “The Role of Race and Genetics in Health Disparities Research,” American Journal of Public Health 95, no. 12 (2005): 2126; Bloche, “Race-Based Therapeutics,” 2036; Braun, “Race, Ethnicity, Health,” 160. 44. On this point, see Kaplan, “Socially Determined Categories,” 282. 45. Th is stronger point was urged on me by an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press.

Notes to Pages 169–175

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Conclusion 1. Mike James, Brad Heath, and Peter Eisler, “Wilson: Struggle with Brown Was like Fighting ‘Hulk Hogan,’ ” USA Today, November 25, 2014, http://www.usatoday.com /story/news/nation /2014/11/25/ brown-wilson -ferguson-killing-grand-jury/70076886/. 2. See Chapter 8, note 4. 3. See 6.15. 4. Ibid. 5. Ashley Montagu, “The Concept of Race,” American Anthropologist, n.s., 64, no. 5, pt. 1 (1962): 927. Ellison in the original. 6. Thanks to my colleague Monte Johnson for discussion of this point. 7. In saying that race is biologically unimportant, I mean that biological race is biologically unimportant. We don’t want to say that socialrace is biologically unimportant. It is biologically impor tant because racism is an impor tant social determinant of health. 8. See 4.2. 9. See 4.2. 10. See 4.4. 11. See 5.5, 6.10. 12. See 8.2.2. 13. See 3.5, 4.3. 14. See 4.6, 4.7. 15. See 2.3, 2.6.5. 16. See 6.7. 17. I owe the idea of “mere differences” (sometimes expressed simply as “differences”) to Anita Silvers.

Acknowledgments

To complete a book is to acquire debts. I fear I will be able to discharge only some of the many I have acquired. My formal work on race traces back to a wonderful conference on concepts of race and racism organized by Jorge Garcia at Rutgers University in the fall of 1994. It is owing to his kind invitation that I began to think philosophically about race. Thanks are due to the students who participated in my Fall 2014 graduate seminar in which we worked our way through the penultimate version of the manuscript: Michael Pittman, Chris Suhler, Constance Sutter, and Danny Weltman. Five former graduate students from earlier incarnations of that seminar stand out as deserving of special thanks: Sophia Efstathiou, Joyce Havstand, Alexandre Marcellesi, James Messina, and Kory Schaff. Joyce was kind enough to offer me an informal tutorial on phylogenetics and work through drafts of Chapter 5. I am grateful to the many students who have taken my undergraduate course “Philosophy and Race” and who have given me the opportunity to get clearer about the material presented in this book. A number of current and former colleagues at my home institution, the University of California, San Diego, provided useful discussion and helpful comments on parts of the book, including Lucy Allais, William Bechtel, Craig Callender, Nancy Cartwright, Monte Johnson, Philip Kitcher, Dana Nelkin, Samuel Rickless, Clinton Tolley, and Christian Wütrich. I owe a special debt to Philip Kitcher. Without his confidence that I could carry out this book-length project, I doubt that I would have had the courage to undertake it. Thanks to Nancy Cartwright for extensive discussion, to Bill Bechtel

215

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Acknowledgments

for help with Rosenberg et al. 2002, to Chris Wütrich for reminding me that differences of disease and drug susceptibility are “humanly” impor tant, and to Clinton Tolley for working his way through several drafts of Chapters 2 and 7 and for discussion of the nature of concepts. Sam Rickless reminded me of the importance of my topic at a point at which I was feeling especially low. I profited enormously from extended email correspondence on the project of rehabilitating the ordinary concept of race with Allen Wood, who was at the time extremely skeptical of the project. His incisive criticisms forced me to get much clearer about what I was (and was not) saying. Th is book represents my considered response to his objections. I owe thanks to Doc Edge and Noah Rosenberg for instruction on population genetics, comments on drafts, and general encouragement. Thanks also are due to Kyle Sanford for reading drafts, discussion of background issues in the philosophy of biology, and intellectual and moral support. Thanks go to Quayshawn Spencer for inviting me to a terrific conference at the University of San Francisco entitled “The Race Debates . . . from Philosophy to Biomedical Research” and for numerous informative discussions of issues in the philosophy of race. Thanks are also due to the audience at that conference. Jonathan Kaplan and Ed Weiser provided helpful comments on Chapter 8. I owe thanks to Christopher Stephens for his formal comments on a Pacific APA paper that was a precursor to Chapter 4. Alan Templeton was kind enough to correspond with me about the biology of race. I am grateful to John Dupré for discussion of the kinds of kinds. Raymond Geuss provided valuable comments on a predeces sor to Chapter 7. Michael Root provided detailed comments on the main precursor to Chapter 5. Belated thanks to Mike DePaul for the painful task of editing the manuscript of that paper. Mary Devereaux read more versions of that manuscript than anyone should be asked to read. She also helped me polish the rhetoric of the introduction and conclusion. I’m indebted to Gary Watson for discussion of the general project. I would like to thank Tyler Burge for helpful discussion of underlying issues in the philosophy of language associated with the minimalist concept of race. Thanks to David Theo Goldberg for introducing me to the idea of antiracism. I give special thanks to David Malament for showing me, back in graduate school at the University of Chicago, that I could do work in the philosophy of science, something I might not have other wise believed. I am grateful to Peter Momtchiloff for his kind support and encouragement. Joshua Glasgow read the manuscript and was especially generous and probing. I wish to thank Danny Weltman for his assistance with the index. I am grateful to Lindsay Waters, executive editor for the humanities at Harvard University Press, for his enthusiasm for my project. Thanks are a due to Joy Deng

Acknowledgments

217

at the Press. They are also due to the two anonymous readers for the Press. This book is much better for their criticisms and suggestions, and my gratitude to them is deeply felt. Ashley Moore at Westchester Publishing Ser vices did an excellent job of copyediting. I thank her for allowing me to speak in my own voice. It was a pleasure working with Mary Ribesky, the editor at Westchester Publishing Ser vices responsible for seeing my book through the production process. I am indebted to the Brocher Foundation in Geneva, Switzerland, for the three-month residency taken during a sabbatical to work on this book. I should also like to thank my fellow fellows Robert Cook-Deegan and Jessica Morzersky for helpful conversations during that stay. Personal thanks are due to Mary Devereaux (who gets mentioned twice in these acknowledgments, once as colleague, once as spouse) and to my children, Johanna Elisabeth Goldmann and Sarah Devereaux Hardimon, who were forced to suffer through the endless process of writing this book. Finally, I owe special thanks to Phyllis Tyson.

Index

Adelman, Larry, 197n58 afer, 30, 43, 50, 185n13 Africa, 51, 56, 158 African American, 38, 40, 155–157, 211n29 Africans, sub-Saharan, 36, 68, 81, 103, 197n63, 208n49 age, 83 Alaska Native, 185n13 Alcoff, Linda Martín, 143 Allais, Lucy, 189n68, 215 America, 56, 122 American Indian, 30, 38, 41, 43, 185n13 americanus, 30, 43, 50, 185n13 Amerindians, 93–94, 170, 197n63 Amish, 36 ancestry, 31, 37–40, 42–43, 50, 67, 86–87, 162, 175, 180n13, 188n52; and ecotype, 115; essential to race, 45–49; individual, 49. See also condition C(2) ancestry group, 42, 47, 162. See also condition C(2) Anderson, Elizabeth, 6, 32, 39, 180n10, 186n24, 212n37 Andreasen, Robin, 110, 121 antiracism, 8, 171, 186n20

APOE, 157 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 70–71, 82, 143, 144, 179n2, 186n20, 190n1 arbitrariness objection, 79–80 arbitrary, 41–42, 54, 90, 189n68, 191n15; focus on visible physical features not, 37; identity group, 32, 39; objection, 42, 79–80; threshold for specieshood, 107. See also gerrymandering archetypal examples of races, 30, 38, 43, 52, 185n13 Asian, 47–48, 56, 205n4 asiaticus, 30, 38, 43, 50, 185n13 attunement, 37 aurora borealis, 82 authenticity, 40, 146 Avise, John C., 190n77 Bernier, François, 189n72 biogeography, 60, 67, 111–112 ‘biological,’ 59–63, 71, 191n19 biological correlate, 10, 135–136, 170–171, 182n22 biological interest, 70–73, 82–84, 111–112, 191n15

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220

Index

biological kind, modest, 8, 82, 95, 124, 195n32 biological significance, 7, 53, 74, 80–82, 87, 92, 95–97, 124–125, 127, 174, 191nn19–20 biology, the science of, 20, 60, 81, 102, 112 black, 1, 50, 56, 132, 142–144, 204n4 (chap.7), 209n53 blacks, 41 Bloche, M. Greg, 210n8, 212n43 Blum, Lawrence, 12, 39, 144–146, 179n2, 180n9, 181n17, 184n4, 187n37, 210n13 Blumenbach, Johann Friedrich, 30, 43, 50, 51, 85, 185n13 blurriness, 36, 73, 79–80, 187n29. See also fuzziness; vagueness Bogen, James, 67 Bolnick, Deborah A., 196n50 bone marrow, 157, 211n29 Boxill, Bernard, 133 Brace, C. Loring, 69 Braun, Lundy, 212n36, 212n43 Brazil, 48–49 Brown, Michael, 169 Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de, 50 Burchard, Esteban González, 197n66, 210n3, 211n22 Burge, Tyler, 28, 79, 216 candidate races. See archetypal examples of races Cartwright, Nancy, 181n15, 215 Caucasian, 20, 29–30, 43, 50–51, 55, 93, 156, 158–159, 185n13, 197n63 Caucasoid, 30, 57, 185n13 Caucasus, 51 Cavalli-Sforza, L.L., 183n11 CCR5, 94, 157 CFTR, 156 characterization, factually correct, 30 classification, racial, 22, 42–43, 54–56, 113 clines, 24, 38, 89 clusters, genetic, 84–90, 93, 108, 196n41

Cohen, G. A., 204n12 colonialism, 4, 14 color, 1, 25, 48–49, 186n24; of skin, 35–36, 59–60, 80–82. See also côr colored, 56 colorism, 49 common evolutionary fate, 107, 110–111 compatibilism, about race in medical research, 150, 162–167, 212n38 concept, 109; as true or false, 182n2; candidate scientific, 9, 112–113, 120; emancipatory, 132, 172 conception, 13, 28, 56, 57–58, 140, 200n7 condition C(1), 31, 34–38, 41–42, 188n56 condition C(2), 31, 42–49 condition C(3), 31, 42, 50–52 Conditions of minimalist racehood, 31 continent, 51, 85–86, 89, 92 Coon, Carleton S., 189n67 Cooper, Richard S., 210n9 côr, 48–49, 188n56 Corlett, J. Angelo, 186n28, 187n46, 189n74 covariance, 71 culture, 40, 142 Darwin, Charles, 19, 20 deflation, 95–96. See also deflationary realism; race, minimalist concept of: respects in which deflationary; race, populationist concept of: respects in which deflationary deflationary realism, 7–8, 95–97, 125–126, 171, 173, 180n13 Descartes, René, 182n2 Diamond, Jared, 41–42, 102 differences, mere, 175 distinctive geographical location: and biology, 60; and minimalist race, 31. See also condition C(3) DNA, 91, 122. See also gene; microsatellites Dobzhansky, Theodoisius, 189n68, 104, 106, 115

Index

221

Du Bois, W. E. B., 132, 148 Dupré, John, 75, 195n33, 216

fuzziness, 101, 200n7. See also blurriness; vagueness

East Asia, 53, 68 East Asian, 39, 50, 52–54, 93, 197n63 Eberhardt, Jennifer L., 198n73, 202n43 ecoraces, 115 ecotype, 115–116, 199n1, 202n40 Edge, Doc, 195n28, 216 Edwards, A. W. F., 22–23 Efstathiou, Sophia, 190n80, 215 embodiment, 154 epigenetics, 155 Epstein, Steven, 90, 195n35 Espiritu, Yen Le, 187n37 essence, 19, 77–78, 99–102, 128–129, 183n8, 193n7, 198n73; biological, 16, 20, 28, 33, 163, 193n7; racial, 16, 20, 32–33, 101 essentialism, 19, 78, 100, 198n73 Ethiopian, 30, 38, 50, 85, 185n13 ethnicity, 19, 40–41, 142–143, 189n63 ethnorace, 142–143 Eurasia, 81 europaeus, 30, 38, 43, 50, 185n13 European, 50 everybody has a race, 46–47 exclusionism: about biological race in medical research, 11, 150, 161–162; about socialrace in medical research, 150, 161 existence, biological, 74, 158, 192n1. See also real ity, biological explanation, scientific constituent, 116–117

Garcia, J. L. A., 183n9, 215 Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., 128–129 gene: coding, 91, 159; for race, 75. See also microsatellites genetic profi le, 21–22; of the minimalist concept of race, 61, 65–66; of the populationist concept of race, 121; of the racialist concept of race, 21–23 genetics, 23–24, 84–93, 121, 156–159. See also clusters, genetic; DNA; gene; genetic profi le; population genetics geographic ancestry, 50, 87, 113, 162 George, 45–48, 188n52 gerrymandering, 37, 79–80, 195n31 Geuss, Raymond, 62, 182n19, 206n15, 216 Glasgow, Joshua, 45–48, 51–52, 69, 71, 79–80, 84, 103–104, 135, 145–146, 181n16, 184n3, 188n51, 188n53, 191n15, 194n15, 200n7, 207n37, 207n40, 209n58, 216 gold, 82 Goldberg, David Theo, 142, 216 Goodman, Nelson, 81 group, 131, 205n5 group, racialized, 39, 136, 142, 145–147 group-level concept, 31, 200n7

false consciousness, 135, 172 Faucher, Luc, 179n2 Fausto-Sterling, Anne, 212n39 Feldman, Marcus, 23, 68, 87, 162 fi xation index (Fst), 107 founding population, 99, 112 Franklin, Benjamin, 136 Fulani, 41 Fullilove, Mindy Thompson, 210n1

H2O, 9, 120 Hacking, Ian, 205n4, 157–158 Hamilton, Charles, 206n19 Hardimon, Michael, 1, 182n20, 184n8, 187n31, 189n65, 202n37, 204n2, 211n29 harm, 6, 64, 203n43 Hart, H. L. A., 28 Haslanger, Sally, 62, 142, 147, 185n14, 186n24 heritability, 35, 155 Herrschaft, 63 HEXA, 156 hierarchy, 17, 63, 133, 146–147, 183n8, 206n20

222

Index

Hispanics, 38, 56 HLA-B*1502, 94, 157 Hochman, Adam, 193n10, 108–109, 207n34 homunculus, 60–61 Hull, David L., 201n21 Human Genome Diversity ProjectCentre Étude Polymorphism Humain [HGDP-CÉPH], 23, 84 Huxley, Julian S., 182n3, 189n67 Huxley, T. H., 182n3 identity, racial, 1, 41, 143–145, 149, 209n54 identity group, arbitrary, 32, 39 ideological, 62–63, 135, 172, 179n1, 206n14 illusion, 127–128, 134–135, 146, 172, 207n29 implicit bias, 153, 166, 169, 183n6 inclusionism: about biological race in medical research, 150, 162; about socialrace in medical research, 150, 161 innateness, 35, 46, 180n13 intuition, 30, 42–43, 59, 77, 79, 104 investigation: of the health consequences of racism and racial discrimination, 153–156, 167–168; of medically relevant race-related genetic differences, 94, 156–159, 167–168 Irish, 134, 136, 170 isolating mechanism, 104–106, 123 Jablonski, Nina G., 194n27 Jackson, Michael, 46 Jacobson, Matthew Frye, 134, 206n13 Japanese, 41, 53, 157 Jews, 134, 136, 167 Kalash, 88, 196n52 Kaplan, Jonathan, 80, 199n1, 115, 216 kind, biological, 77, 82, 131, 181n17, 207n38; modest, 82, 195n32, 195n34; profound, 82, 91; very significant, 8, 16 kind, genetic, 75

kind, human, 204n4 kind, interactive, 205n4 Kind, Millian, 78, 127 kind, relatively superficial, 78–79, 84, 96, 173, 194n15, 195nn31–32 kind, relevant, 81 Kitcher, Philip, 20, 99, 106–107, 125, 203n43, 215 Kreiger, Nancy, 140, 154 Laplander, 50 Latinos, 38–39, 56, 136, 187n37 law of large numbers, 91 Lewontin, Richard C., 4, 21–24, 26, 37, 42, 55, 68, 77, 87, 123–124, 194n28 Lewontin’s cleaver, 22, 65–66, 124 Lewontin’s fallacy, 22 lineage, 109–111, 119–120 line of descent: biological, 8, 43, 109–111, 202n43; infraspecific, 110. See also lineage Linnaeus, Carl, 30, 43, 50, 185n13, 188n57 Livingstone, Frank B., 25, 38 Los Angeles, inhabitants of, 115 Ludwig, David, 180n13 Machery, Edouard, 179n2, 77 Maglo, Koffi, 77, 201n24 major geographic regions, 23, 68, 84–85, 91–92. See also Africa; America; East Asia; Eurasia; Oceania Malay, 30, 43, 50, 56, 185n13 Mayr, Ernst, 20, 98–99, 102–106 McPherson, Lionel K., 180n13 Mendel, Gregor, 19 Messina, James, 204n3, 215 metaphysical, 43, 45, 95–96, 173, 180n3 microsatellites, 23, 84–93, 159, 197n64 Mill, John Stuart, 78 Millstein, Roberta L., 79–80, 199n3 mixed-race individual, 49, 72, 192n23, 209n54 monophyly, 43, 110 Montagu, Ashley, 174 Moore, Ashley, 217

Index morphology, 37, 42, 70–71, 90, 102–104, 162, 199n1. See also phenotype Negritos, 36, 103, 115 Negroid, 30, 38, 43, 57, 185n13 neoracialism, 17, 26, 34 neosocialrace, 205n7 New York City, inhabitants of, 115 nonarbitrariness, 37, 79–80, 84, 90, 191n15 nonmaleficness, 6, 64, 116, 171, 181n13, 202n43 normativity, 4, 16, 32–34, 57–58, 62, 185n12 objectivity, 37, 39–40, 58, 86, 90 Oceania, 51, 81 Oceanians, 22, 93–94, 124, 197n63 OMB [Office of Management and Budget], 30, 43, 185n13 Omi, Michael, 133, 134, 139–140, 145, 207n29, 208n43 one-drop-rule, 56 order in nature, 37, 71 Outlaw, Lucius T., Jr., 134, 148–149, 210n72 Pääbo, Svante, 88–89 Pacific Islander, 30, 43, 54, 185n13 panethnicity, 187n37 passing, 144, 208n52 patterns of visible physical characteristics, 190n2; and ethnicity, 41; and indeterminacy, 101, 200n7; and minimalist race, 31, 34–39, 53, 55–57, 67–73, 77; and populationist race, 3, 119–122; and racialist race, 16; and the appearance-changing machine, 46; and the Kalash, 196n52; distinctive, 38, 202n43. See also condition C(1) phenetics, 103 phenomenon: in Bogen and Woodward’s sense, 67–70. See also race, phenomenon of minimalist phenotype, 20, 34, 68, 100–104, 110, 119, 122, 200n7, 202n40, 202n43. See also morphology

223

phlogiston, 3, 15, 121, 131 phylogeny, 110–112 Pigliucci, Massimo, 80, 115, 199n1 planet, 114 pluralism, 108, 173, 180n13 population genetics, 65–66, 76, 121, 123–124 populationism, 3, 9, 103–104, 181n16 population thinking, 20, 31, 99 power, 133 predictive power, 24, 77 Quine, W. V., 210n4 raça, 48, 188n56 RACE: and GEOGRAPHY, 50–52; and racial classification, 54–55; biological, 59–60; different from ETHNICITY, 40–41; different from RACIALIST RACE, 170; different from SEX, 35; different from SKIN COLOR, 35; relation to CÔR, 48–49; subdividability of, 52–54; transportability of, 56; whether C(1) is essential to it, 41–42 race: definition of, 173; idea not superfluous, 173; not one thing, 29, 53, 70, 71, 138; real ity of, 30 race, biological concept of, 62, 106–108, 150, 161–162, 170, 203n43 RACE, concept-label, 48 race, eliminativism about, 3–5, 126, 174; in medical research, 150–153, 161; and minimalist race, 68–72; compatible with socialrace, 134, 181n17; kernel of truth in, 4–5; mistake of, 5; poor grounds for antiracism, 8; radical, 181n17 race, minimalist, 6–9, 62, 120; and biomedicine, 94–95; biological real ity of, 74–80, 174–175, 197n63; biological significance of, 80–82; intrinsic interest of, 82–84; whether distinguishable at the level of the gene, 84–93 race, minimalist biological phenomenon of, 67–70, 190n2

224

Index

race, minimalist concept of: as biological correlate of socialrace, 135–136, 170; as distinct from racialist concept, 44–45; as necessary condition for social race, 136; coherence of, 56–57; continuities with populationist concept, 113, 114–116, 200n4; defi ned, 31; deitic argument for existence of, 72–73; difference from populationist concept, 62, 120; ecumenicalism of, 44–45, 150; future of, 73; merits of, 64, 83; neither racialist nor racist, 32–34; not a cultural concept, 40; populationist concept of race as scientiziation of, 113–114; procedure through which arrived at, 30–31; racialist minimalist, 44–45; real ity of, 29, 65–73; respects in which defl ationary, 33, 39, 52, 71, 95–96; status of, 27–29; three basic conditions of, 34–40, 42–45, 50–51; transportability of, 56; unimportance of, 33, 174–175; whether biological, 58–62; whether genuine race concept, 57–58; whether it allows for races in races, 52–54; whether revisionary, 64; whether social, 62–63 race, ordinary conception of, 13, 28, 56–57, 184n4, 184nn8–9, 189n75, 200n7 race, ordinary concept of, 30, 34–35, 56, 189n75, 200n7; and racialism, 13; biological, 163; core of, 28, 52, 57, 138; continuous with populationist concept of race, 114–115; distinct from socialrace, 10, 136–138; equal to minimalist race, 3, 27–29, 57 ‘race,’ ordinary English word, 34–35, 174, 181n13, 181n16, 184nn8–9, 189n75, 200n7; meaning not just referent, 93; not safe to use without circumspection, 138; secondary sense of, 4; why it should be retained, 171 race, phenomenon of minimalist, 190n2 race, populationist, 62, 120

race, populationist concept of, 62, 98–129; and reproductive isolation, 104–106, 122–123; as scientization of minimalist race concept, 113–114; biological real ity of, 122–126; continuities with minimalist concept, 113, 114–116; defi ned, 99; does not specify a par ticu lar racial classification, 113; existence of, 118–123; nonmaleficness of, 116; respects in which deflationary, 100, 111, 116, 125; sense in which counts as scientific concept, 102; vs biological concept of species, 102–103; vs biological race concept, 106–107; whether illusory, 127–128, 172; whether natu ral, 125–126; whether phylogenetic, 111–112; whether subspecies, 107–109. See also populationism race, racialist concept of, 12–26, 184n9; as distinct from concept of race, 5, 170; as distinct from minimalist concept, 44–45; as failed biological kind, 131; belief in existence of, 205n7; defined, 15–18, 32; how it could have seemed plausible, 18–19; refutation of, 19–25; role concept plays in the constitution of socialrace, 131–135; role in medical research, 151–153; whether biological, 60–62; whether social, 63; why start with, 13–15 race fairies, 134 “races,” lactase-positive and lactasenegative, 41, 102 racial health disparities, 163–165 racialism, 17, 179n2, 198n73. See also race, racialist concept of racial thinking, 173–174, 181n13 raciation, biological, 81, 106, 111 racism, 17, 49; as distinct from racialism, 33–34; as social determinant of health, 153–156, 182n18; as social isolating mechanism, 123; direct effects of, 154–155; ideal of a world without, 175; indirect effects of, 155; institutional,

Index 133, 153–156; pure individual, 153; undermined by minimalist race, 84 Rawls, John, 28 raza, 39 realism, deflationary. See deflationary realism real ity, biological, 8, 53, 74–97, 177, 192n2; and human activity, 125–126; genet ically grounded, relatively superficial, 93; relatively superficial, 79, 80, 93; versus biological existence, 74. See also race, minimalist: biological real ity of; race, populationist concept of: biological reality of reification, 126–127, 135 reproductive isolation, 8–9, 99, 198n70, 104–106, 114, 120, 122–123 Risch, Neil, 92 Root, Michael, 25, 56, 141, 216 Rosenberg, Noah A., 23–24, 66, 84–85, 87–93, 108, 121, 124, 159, 216, 188n61, 195n40, 196n41, 196n51, 197n63, 197n65, 197n67, 216 Row, Jesse, 187n50 Rutherford, Donald, 182n2 Sami, 55 Sanford, Kyle, 216 scalarity, 53, 209n53 Schwartz, Robert S., 210n10, 211n30 scientization, 8, 113–114, 202n37 Serre, David, 88–89 sex, 35, 186n23, 75, 83–84 Shelby, Tommie, 83 Silvers, Anita, 213n17 Simpson, George Gaylord, 174 Singapore, 56 Sober, Elliot, 31, 80, 200n5 social construction, 62–63, 125, 136, 198n73, 206n14 social constructivism, 10–11, 136, 138 ‘socialrace,’ 137–141 socialrace, 181n17, 213n7 socialrace: contrasted with ethnicity, 142–143; as causal variable, 135, 160; as concept, 3, 10, 132; as distinct from

225

ordinary concept of race, 131; as distinct from racialist race, 133, 138; as hidden, 132; as medically relevant, 158–160, 162–163; as obvious, 149; biological dimension of, 134–136, 149; by nature hierarchical, 133, 206n20; defined, 9–10, 131–135, 204n3; desiderata for an account of, 141–145; expresses a concept distinct from the ordinary concept of race, 10, 136–137; Latinos as a, 39; need for concept of, 140, 172; not monolithic, 204n3; phenomenon of, 10, 135, 148, 172, 208n41; whether race concept, 138–139 socialrace identity, 143–144 socialwitch, 131 species, 20, 31, 77, 193n7 species, 80 SPECIES, 55, 104 species concept, biological, 193n7, 99 species in statu nascendi, 106–107 Spencer, Quayshawn, 185n12, 193n10, 195n40, 87, 93, 197n69, 201n24, 216 Spinoza, Benedict de, 182n2 Stephens, Christopher, 186n22, 216 stereotype, racial, 17, 169 stigma, racial, 169, 183n6 stigmatization, 167 strikingness, 83, 85, 195n35 structural determinant of health, 160 structure, 84–89 structure: genetic, 23, 92, 115; racial, 92 subjective, 37, 58, 90, 143, 169 subspecies, 20, 31; in the technical sense of the term, 107–109 Sullivan, Shannon, 155 Sundstrom, Ronald, 137, 205n4 Swedes, 41 Taylor, Paul C., 147–148 Telles, Edward, 188n55 Templeton, Alan R., 37, 190, 107, 216 tree, 60–61

226

Index

triumvirate of human biodiversity, 83 trope of ultimate difference, 128–129, 172–173 Ture, Kwame (Stokely Carmichael), 206n19 Turkic, 55 twin Earth, racial, 45, 51–52 typological thinking, 19, 99–102 UGT1A1, 157 UNESCO [United Nations, Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization], 30, 43, 57, 185n13 unicorn, 60 vagueness, 36, 44, 49, 50, 80, 101, 200n7. See also blurriness; fuzziness va rieties, 30, 188n57

visible-physical-feature-changing machine, 25, 35, 46–48 Voltaire, 31 water, 120 white, 1, 41, 50, 78–79, 134, 185n13, 188n52, 204n4, 209n53 white thing, 79, 82 Wilson, Darren, 169 Wilson, E.O., 189n66 Winant, Howard, 133, 134, 139–140, 145, 207n29, 208n43 witch, 131 Wood, Allen, 180n9, 202n43, 216 Woodward, James, 67–68 Zack, Naomi, 181n17, 193n10, 201n24 Ziv, Elad, 197n66, 210n3