Jon-Thanks for this! I take it you mean race is nothing more than an idea (something that is socially constructed clearly exists, but may exist--I think--as nothing more than an idea). That's fine, I suppose. I don't think I'd accept that "believing in race makes one a racist by definition," but that's because I think racists are, by common understanding, wrong or bad. Most of us understand what people mean when they speak of "race," so most of us "believe in it" in some sense--but most of us (I would say) are not wrong or bad. You could say "no, being a racist isn't necessarily being wrong or bad--after all, I said one could be a racist without being a bigot." That's certainly a reasonable way to go, but it would be an uphill battle to convince people concerned about racism of that claim and I am not sure there is enough possible gain to make it worthwhile. What say you? -Andrew
I believe race is a socially constructed idea and doesn't exist. From my perspective believing in race makes one a racist by definition, but not necessarily a bigot. Race inherently "others" groups of people.
What criteria would be used to scientically define a race? I've tried to come up with a list of criteria someone could be tested against for a "race" and it's never a pretty list.
The claim that race is really about ethnicity makes no sense to me. Is the claim that ethnic groups are natural kinds or that ethnicity is socially constructed?
In ordinary usage, at least in Australia, "ethnic group" primarily refers to groups of non-Anglo Europeans (in this context, the term "ethnic" can be used as a slur), but would extend more generally to describe subgroups of a racial group. Both have some basis in reality, but are also socially constructed
I think the candidate third category in premise 1, apart from "natural" and "constructed" (though, what could be more natural for humans than to socially construct things?), that a hypothetical syllogistic bigot would offer is that race is a statistical predictor -- a way, given externally visible facts about a person, to predict whether that person is hidebound, faithless, scheming, foolish, or whatever other trait they are trying to ascribe to this group this year.
The many elements of that predictor might be physical or behavioural, ethnic or socioeconomic, whatever is convenient; most likely they are all of those things. The importance is that they seem (to the bigot's over-keen eye) discernible, (to the bigot's superstitious brain) predictive of... something, and (when the bigot is in fellowship with its own kind) at least approximately shared with others.
We are of course free to gerrymander the notion of "exist" to say that these sorts of noisy predictors do not exist, to borrow an AI imprecation they are just "tensors in a trenchcoat", thereby getting us back to proposition 4, but that just seems like throwing information overboard to keep the argumentative boat afloat.
The obvious counterargument is that what I'm describing _just is_ social construction. In this view, race is what racists think it is, and as long as they think they've got hold of something, and can agree with one another what it is they think they've got hold of, there's enough of a thing to put a name to and that name is "race". But in that case I think we must drop classification 3 -- the social construction crew finished its work and returned its rented bulldozers and its edifice must now await some social demolition.
So I'm at "readings of 'socially constructed' in premise 1 either admit a third prong of premise 1 (agreed heuristic predictions among bigots) or else premise 3 encloses that obviously real thing and fails."
A further problem with this argument (or perhaps a version of the same problem) is that we don't require a term to be a natural kind for it to meaningfully refer.
Consider the term, 'baking powder'. It's clearly not a natural kind, a scientist would break down that category into the relevant chemical compounds that can be used in various kinds of making powder (sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate etc). Yet, it's just obviously false to claim it doesn't exist.
The question of existence in natural language is distinct from whether the term is formulated in the most joint carving fashion [1]. Ofc, if all you mean by socially constructed is just: the boundaries of the concept are set by our human cultural practices than sure baking powder and race are socially constructed. The problem is that ppl try to play fast and loose here and switch up the definition of socially constructed halfway through.
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1: People get confused here because there is a certain very reductionist sense of existence (as in Quine) where something exists only if we quantify over it in our best scientific theory. Of course, taken literally that rule would mean almost nothing we discuss in daily life exists. And given how absurd the conclusion is ofc even Quine would reject it (he'd say that you need to translate these claims into more fundamental vocab where they'll come out true).
Jon-Thanks for this! I take it you mean race is nothing more than an idea (something that is socially constructed clearly exists, but may exist--I think--as nothing more than an idea). That's fine, I suppose. I don't think I'd accept that "believing in race makes one a racist by definition," but that's because I think racists are, by common understanding, wrong or bad. Most of us understand what people mean when they speak of "race," so most of us "believe in it" in some sense--but most of us (I would say) are not wrong or bad. You could say "no, being a racist isn't necessarily being wrong or bad--after all, I said one could be a racist without being a bigot." That's certainly a reasonable way to go, but it would be an uphill battle to convince people concerned about racism of that claim and I am not sure there is enough possible gain to make it worthwhile. What say you? -Andrew
I believe race is a socially constructed idea and doesn't exist. From my perspective believing in race makes one a racist by definition, but not necessarily a bigot. Race inherently "others" groups of people.
What criteria would be used to scientically define a race? I've tried to come up with a list of criteria someone could be tested against for a "race" and it's never a pretty list.
The claim that race is really about ethnicity makes no sense to me. Is the claim that ethnic groups are natural kinds or that ethnicity is socially constructed?
In ordinary usage, at least in Australia, "ethnic group" primarily refers to groups of non-Anglo Europeans (in this context, the term "ethnic" can be used as a slur), but would extend more generally to describe subgroups of a racial group. Both have some basis in reality, but are also socially constructed
I think the candidate third category in premise 1, apart from "natural" and "constructed" (though, what could be more natural for humans than to socially construct things?), that a hypothetical syllogistic bigot would offer is that race is a statistical predictor -- a way, given externally visible facts about a person, to predict whether that person is hidebound, faithless, scheming, foolish, or whatever other trait they are trying to ascribe to this group this year.
The many elements of that predictor might be physical or behavioural, ethnic or socioeconomic, whatever is convenient; most likely they are all of those things. The importance is that they seem (to the bigot's over-keen eye) discernible, (to the bigot's superstitious brain) predictive of... something, and (when the bigot is in fellowship with its own kind) at least approximately shared with others.
We are of course free to gerrymander the notion of "exist" to say that these sorts of noisy predictors do not exist, to borrow an AI imprecation they are just "tensors in a trenchcoat", thereby getting us back to proposition 4, but that just seems like throwing information overboard to keep the argumentative boat afloat.
The obvious counterargument is that what I'm describing _just is_ social construction. In this view, race is what racists think it is, and as long as they think they've got hold of something, and can agree with one another what it is they think they've got hold of, there's enough of a thing to put a name to and that name is "race". But in that case I think we must drop classification 3 -- the social construction crew finished its work and returned its rented bulldozers and its edifice must now await some social demolition.
So I'm at "readings of 'socially constructed' in premise 1 either admit a third prong of premise 1 (agreed heuristic predictions among bigots) or else premise 3 encloses that obviously real thing and fails."
A further problem with this argument (or perhaps a version of the same problem) is that we don't require a term to be a natural kind for it to meaningfully refer.
Consider the term, 'baking powder'. It's clearly not a natural kind, a scientist would break down that category into the relevant chemical compounds that can be used in various kinds of making powder (sodium bicarbonate, monocalcium phosphate etc). Yet, it's just obviously false to claim it doesn't exist.
The question of existence in natural language is distinct from whether the term is formulated in the most joint carving fashion [1]. Ofc, if all you mean by socially constructed is just: the boundaries of the concept are set by our human cultural practices than sure baking powder and race are socially constructed. The problem is that ppl try to play fast and loose here and switch up the definition of socially constructed halfway through.
--
1: People get confused here because there is a certain very reductionist sense of existence (as in Quine) where something exists only if we quantify over it in our best scientific theory. Of course, taken literally that rule would mean almost nothing we discuss in daily life exists. And given how absurd the conclusion is ofc even Quine would reject it (he'd say that you need to translate these claims into more fundamental vocab where they'll come out true).