BrainChocolate

[Total Read Time= 5 minutes]

Talk of race in the US and elsewhere is a politically and socially loaded issue that never fails to ignite the fiery passions of those who disagree about it, and in many circumstances, those who agree about it as well. But this sort of discussion is not one I’m interested in having right now as I have no intention of igniting anyone’s fiery passions.

Instead, I’m going to talk about the fundamentals of what race is and how we should approach it. If this sounds like it isn’t relevant to you, stay with me–I promise you that it is.

What’s the Point?

I want to do this because I happen to be one of the relatively rare students of philosophy who is, first and foremost, concerned with how to use philosophy to help us in real world, every day circumstances. I’m not at all interested in it as an elitist intellectual exercise. But that’s a whole different issue.

Current “Race-thinking” in a Nutshell

The usual approach to thinking about race usually takes the form of answering the question, “What is race and what should we do with it?” I don’t mean (capital R) “Race” in the sense of black, white, asian, etc… I’m talking about the concept of race itself, in the most broad sense. There are many ways to answer this question but here are a couple of common examples:

“What is race…?”

(1) “Race is a biological fact rooted in genetics.”
or
(2) “Race is a social construct that we use to point out social and political differences.”

The second part of the question, “…and what should we do with it?” asks “If I believe race is X, what action needs to be taken?” For example:

“…and what should we do with it?”

(1) “Race is a biological fact so we need to figure out how it determines our skills and talents.”
or
(2) “Since race is socially constructed, we should stop using it and get rid of the idea of race.”

You probably recognize the “usual question” of race (“What is it and what should we do with it?”) from your everyday experience–after all, it’s the question that frames the entire discussion of race world-wide. Answers number (1) above were widely used to argue that white people were superior to other races and that we should therefore treat people of different races as inferior, or as is popular these days, that different races are good at different things because of their race. Answers number (2) above are taken by many civil rights activists in one form or another.

Side note: neither of these views hold water, even under a relatively simple analysis. If you’d like to discuss this, DEFINITELY contact me because I’m doing work in philosophy of race right now and I love talking about it. Nathan [at] brainchocolateblog [dot] com.

Aside from that though, I believe that the question “What is race and what should we do with it?” is the wrong question and is the main cause of our frustration when talking about race. So how do we fix it?

So What’s a Better Way to Think About Race?

No matter who you are, you know that you experience life in different ways depending on where you are–think about it. When you’re by yourself, you think about yourself internally (individual experience). When you’re with friends in a casual setting, you socialize and relate to them on a personal level (social experience). And in other settings you try to influence, persuade, or manipulate people to get them to do certain things or act certain ways (political experience). [I should mention that i don't mean "political" in the sense of politics or political parties, I just mean "any action that involves power, influence, control, etc."]

So of course, when you’re in each of these settings, you think of life differently–you don’t experience life in the same way when you’re just hanging out with friends (social experience) as when you’re trying to convince a stranger to buy a product you’re selling (political experience). So, because we have (at least) these three ways of experiencing the world, we need three different ways of explaining these three different kinds of experiences.

So what does that mean for race? It means that when we ask the question “What is race and what should we do with it?” we actually have to ask it three separate times:

(1) “What does race mean to me for the sake of my own identity?” (individual experience)
(2) “What does race mean when I’m interacting with my friends socially?” (social experience)
(3) “What does race mean in the context of systems of power and control?” (political experience)

So we can’t just give one answer to the question, “What is race and what should we do with it?” because the answer is completely different depending on what kind of experience we’re talking about.

…and Why is This Important?

It may be well and good to say, “race is a false construct and we should completely get rid of the concept because it doesn’t hold scientific or biological merit.” But that creates huge problems for our political experience: the effects of racism are still very strongly felt and if we ignore the concept of race, the problems will continue and most likely get worse. It also presents problems to individual experience: if we all decide not to recognize race, and John has based a large part of his identity around his own race, then we’re effectively telling him that a huge chunk of his identity is illegitimate, wrong, and doesn’t/shouldn’t exist.

By instead asking the question three separate times, and considering how each of our three answers effects the others, we completely avoid all of these types of problems. The “usual question” by itself, “What is race and what should we do with it?” is a bad question because it forces us to give an answer that ends up only reflecting parts of the ways we experience our lives–it’s the reason why when someone tells us “race is XYZ!” we think, “Yeah, I guess I agree with that, but something just doesn’t feel right about it.”

It doesn’t feel right because it only partially reflects how we really experience the world, and we can’t pinpoint exactly why it doesn’t feel right because the “usual question” doesn’t allow us to. My re-framing of the philosophy of race as well as race-thinking in general, I believe, is a necessary step in solving problems of race–if we fail to think about race in terms of the three different questions, we will fail to respond to the problems that race presents in such a way that we will be forever weighed down by the heavy fog of ambiguity.

[Adapted from my current project paper in philosophy of race.]