Basic racial realism, social constructionism, and the ordinary concept of race

Joshua Glasgow and Jonathan M. Woodward (2015) have proposed a new account of the metaphysics of race, which they call “basic racial realism.” According to the view, races are kinds whose members are united by sharing similarities, for example, visible traits like skin color, that are not directly relevant to science. They argue that basic racial realism has certain dialectical advantages over the other parties to the debate over race, viz. racial antirealism, biological racial realism, and racial social constructionism. Glasgow and Woodward should be commended for introducing basic racial realism to the debate over the reality of race. It offers a novel account of race that promises to track the ordinary concept of race without undermining the social and political significance of race. For all those benefits, however, basic racial realism faces certain troubles. I argue, first, that basic racial realism is not as consistent with the ordinary concept of race as Glasgow and Woodward make it out to be. Second, I argue that basic racial realism does not enjoy the dialectical advantages over social constructionism that they suggest it does. In the third section, I defend social constructionism about race against their charge that it violates the ordinary concept of race. I conclude with general reflections about the comparative surprises that basic racial realism and constructionism give us regarding race. The three familiar positions in the debate are racial antirealism, biological racial realism, and racial social constructionism. Basic racial realism says that race is real (pace the antirealist) but is neither a natural kind nor a social kind (pace the biological realist and the social constructionist, respectively). On Glasgow and Woodward's view race is a “basic kind,” that is, a kind whose members are united merely by sharing a similarity, but a similarity that is not directly relevant to science (2015, p. 451). (Basic kinds as such, they claim, lack causal powers and so their essential properties sometimes fail to overlap with properties that are useful to science.) Basic kinds are not gerrymandered or arbitrary sets, then, but objective, mind-independent kinds that do not rise to the scientific importance of natural or social kinds. Races are basic kinds in that they are “groups of people who are distinguished from other groups by having certain visible features (like skin color) to a significantly disproportionate degree” (2015, p. 452).1 According to Glasgow and Woodward, familiar parties to the race debate share a commitment to “elitism” about kinds. Such elitism has it that only kinds that are directly relevant to science, whether natural or social, are real. They find the elitist assumption implausible because basic kinds seem to qualify as real on a plausible conception of reality—objective and mind-independent similarity—without being the direct objects of scientific inquiry. Rejecting elitism undercuts the antirealist's argument that race is not real insofar as it is neither a natural nor social kind. For basic kind realism maintains that kinds need not be natural or social to be real. Biological racial realism takes races to be suitably isolated breeding populations. Glasgow and Woodward note that a well-known concern for such a view is that the groups counted as races depart substantially from the groups we ordinarily count as races. For example, the Amish count as a distinct race on some versions of biological racial realism, though not for ordinary users of the concept of race.2 In this way, there is a “mismatch” between our ordinary concept of race and the populations identified by the biological realist. Glasgow and Woodward argue that the source of this problem is the realist's attempt to identify races with biological or natural kinds. The mismatch problem can be altogether avoided if races are simply basic kinds distinguished by the visible traits the ordinary concept of race picks out.3 Constructionists about race, on the other hand, hold that races are social kinds, that is, kinds unified by social factors such as classificatory practices. Glasgow and Woodward claim that the ordinary concept of race tells against thinking of race as a social kind. There are possible cases in which, intuitively, races still exist, yet the social factors that determine race (by the lights of the social constructionist) are absent (2015, p. 456). For instance, if classifying people as “white” or “black” or “Asian” is what determines the existence of those races, then in a situation where everyone is collectively struck with racial amnesia for an hour, races cease to exist. But intuitively, these races still exist even if their members are not classified as members of those races. Like biological racial realism, the constructionist view of race departs from our ordinary concept of race. To the extent that it identifies races with whatever kinds our ordinary concept of race picks out (so long as the mind-independent world can satisfy the demands our concept of race puts on it), basic racial realism's concept of race will never depart from the ordinary concept of race. Constructionism about race is, moreover, supposed to have an advantage over other views of race because it is especially suited for explaining the social and political significance of race. Glasgow and Woodward argue that basic racial realism does just as well as social constructionism on this score. Even though basic racial realism denies that race is social itself, the view can still “license talk about the social significance and impact of race, and about social identities that are built upon race” (2015, p. 457). Basic racial realism separates the social practices involving race from race itself. In this respect, constructionism has no theoretical or explanatory advantage over basic racial realism. Since the latter identifies races with basic kinds, it is not committed to the more extravagant racial ontology of social kinds that the former is. In light of the weaknesses of its competitors and the strengths of basic racial realism, Glasgow and Woodward conclude that basic racial realism ought to be considered not only a fourth competitor in the debate about race but also the most promising of the pack. The main advantage Glasgow and Woodward claim for basic racial realism is that it reflects the common-sense way of thinking about race.4 According to basic racial realism, the referents of our race talk are whatever basic kinds in the world satisfy the “conceptually nonnegotiable” commitments of our race concept. “A commitment,” they write, “is conceptually nonnegotiable if abandoning it means abandoning the concept in question” (2015, p. 458; also see Glasgow 2009, p. 24 ff.). On their definition, “races are groups of people who are distinguished from other groups by having certain visible features (like skin color) to a significantly disproportionate degree” (2015, p. 452, cf. Glasgow 2009, p. 34). It is nonnegotiable with respect to the ordinary concept of race that races are tied to these visible traits. Given that the world can satisfy what the application conditions of our race concept demands, there will be no mismatch between our concept of race and the world; the ontology of basic kinds seems tailored to capturing our ordinary concept of race. However, there are several ways in which basic racial realism departs from (though may not yet violate) our ordinary concept of race. I will argue that despite the fact that Glasgow and Woodward acknowledge these features of their view, they do not seem to appreciate the extent to which these features puts their view at odds with the ordinary concept of race, something which the view is tailor-made to capture. The first departure is that basic racial realism entails that there are fewer races than ordinary people recognize. In a footnote, they say, “The basic racial realist may have to admit that certain groups that are sometimes treated as races—such as those identified with the label “Latino” or “Arab”—are not really racial groups if they have no distinctive visible traits, even to some small degree” (2015, p. 453). They entertain three ways of dealing with this concern. First, they could admit that some ordinary classification practices are mistaken. Second, they could identify certain minimal visible differences between races and “adopt a mechanism whereby many individuals within a race can significantly depart from the barely distinctive visible traits of the group without sacrificing group membership” (2015, p. 453). Third, they could hold that races are mere sets, rather than basic kinds. The first option would undermine Glasgow and Woodward's claim that basic racial realism is tailor-made to capture the ordinary concept of race. The last option is not an option insofar as it amounts to abandoning basic racial realism. The second option is only viable if there are in fact some visible traits that are distinctive of each race, that is, traits had by their members to a significantly disproportionate degree. Glasgow and Woodward do not tell us what such features by might be for the categories Latinx and Arab (or MENA—Middle Eastern and North African), so it is not clear that this strategy offers a response to the concern. Moreover, the second option is a promissory note: they will discover some mechanism for allowing persons to belong to races even when those persons do not have the visible traits that differentiate its members from members of other races. Whatever mechanism they identify, however, will group people together on the basis of something more than just visible traits, perhaps ancestry or origination from some geographic location5 or perhaps something cultural, linguistic, or social. The examples of racial categories like Latino and Arab/MENA strongly suggest that visible characteristics like skin color are not the sole criterion for membership in some races. But more importantly, the examples suggest that basic racial realism departs from the ordinary concept of race insofar as basic racial realism only recognizes races whose members are united by distinctive visible traits. Suppose ordinary folk do recognize Latinx and Arab/MENA as racial categories. There is some evidence for this: see Alcoff (2006), Haney López (2005), and Parvini and Simani (2019). Then the ordinary concept of race is not merely a concept of groups of people distinguished by visible traits had by its members to a disproportionate degree. This problem is by no means decisive against basic racial realism.6 But it certainly deserves attention from the basic racial realist, especially since Glasgow has used the failure to include Latinx and Arab as racial categories as a criticism of biological realist views (2019, p. 122). This failure marks a departure from the ordinary concept of race: basic racial realism recognizes fewer races than ordinary folk do. If you'll permit us one more anecdotal observation—and, of course, more robust data would be better—we've found that when people learn that there are different racial classification systems in different societies, they tend to accept it (and do not insist that their own is somehow more privileged). We think, then, that there is an implicit willingness to accept this surprise. If so, then this particular surprise is consistent with whatever is conceptually nonnegotiable about race (emphasis original 2015, p. 461). Basic racial realism, to reiterate, has two surprising results. First, insofar as it denies that Latinx and Arab/MENA are races and ordinary folk think they are, basic racial realism recognizes fewer races than ordinary folks do. Second, it entails that there are many more different races than ordinary folks think there are. One can abandon a concept by denying of it something that is conceptually nonnegotiable. But one can also abandon a concept by getting its extension radically wrong. We might rightly doubt that someone has our concept “dog” if they believe that pit bulls and collies do not fall under the concept “dog” and that there are many other breeds of dogs, none of which we ordinarily recognize. The concern is that basic racial realism likewise abandons the ordinary concept “race” by under and over populating the extension of the concept “race.” Perhaps these concerns can be dealt with, but until they are, they cast doubt on Glasgow and Woodward's main contention that basic racial realism is consistent with the ordinary concept of race. Glasgow and Woodward argue that basic racial realism enjoys certain dialectical advantages over its competitors. One of those competitors, which I will focus on here, is constructionism about race. According to Glasgow and Woodward, basic racial realism (1) is more ontologically parsimonious than constructionism, (2) has as much explanatory power as constructionism, and (3) is consistent with the ordinary concept of race while constructionism is not. In the following section, I'll address each claim in turn. Glasgow and Woodward say, “Basic racial realism secures much of what we want from a good theory of race, without committing to the more onerous ontology of race put forth in constructionism and biological realism” (2015, p. 457). It may be that basic racial realism is not committed to the more onerous ontology of race put forth by constructionism or biological realism. However, the permissiveness of basic kind realism entails that basic racial realism is ontologically committed to the same kinds as constructionism and biological realism. Recall, a kind is basic if “its members are united merely by sharing a similarity, that is, if they have something in common that is nontrivial but also not directly relevant to science” (2015, p. 451). Any set of objects can rise to the rank of a kind if there is any nontrivial similarity among its members. Given this permissiveness, the basic kind realist should also recognize the reality of the natural and social kinds directly relevant to science. Basic kinds are distinguished from other kinds in that they are not directly relevant to science, but the reality of basic kinds is secured by the nontrivial similarity between their members. It would be ad hoc to deny the reality of kinds that are directly relevant to science and that have causal efficacy; it would involve a reverse “elitism,” to use their terminology, to recognize basic kinds but not the elite kinds relevant to the sciences. So, the basic racial realist, qua basic kind realist, is committed, for example, to the social kinds that constructionists identify as races. The difference, then, between the basic racial realist and the constructionist is not a difference in ontology, but a difference in whether certain kinds are good candidates for the title “races.” Basic racial realists do not have an ontological advantage over constructionists (or biological realists). In fact, the opposite may be argued to be the case: constructionism secures much of what we want from a good theory of race (more on this momentarily), without committing to the more onerous ontology put forth by basic kind realism. [Ba]sic racial realism takes away nothing about the lived, social reality of racial experience; it just classifies that reality as part of practices involving race rather than as part of race itself. On this front, the difference between constructionism and basic racial realism is a bookkeeping difference, not a substantial gap in theoretical resources” (2015, p. 457). Moreover, some constructionists will not see this difference as a matter of mere “bookkeeping.” Haslanger (2012, p. 224), for example, thinks the point of asking “what is race?” is not primarily to describe what ordinary users of “race” have in mind; rather it is to identify what concept of race we ought to use given our theoretical and For and p. the of an account of race is to our attention to the between social and with an of race, as such, the impact that racial practices have on our and by It is, of course, to Glasgow and Woodward to this to the metaphysics of race. their main theoretical seems to be a metaphysics of race that the ordinary concept of race. But the is that that undercuts their claim that basic racial realism has theoretical as constructionism with to explaining the social significance of race. Given that basic racial realism does not much about the social significance of race, basic racial realism theoretical for the kinds of explanatory in which many constructionists are For instance, many constructionists see as in racial over race and racial in or to the of race in a and The only way that basic racial realism's theoretical those of the is if the explanatory is different from the In I argued that Glasgow and Woodward had not that basic racial realism is consistent with the ordinary concept of race. In this section, I to their claim that constructionism about race is with the ordinary concept of race. But I it is that not all constructionists think that it is a of a account of race that it be consistent with the ordinary concept of race. I like p. and Haslanger (2012, p. 224), think of their as what concept of race we should given our social, and political But even this the constructionist can argue that account of race does not as regarding the ordinary concept of race as Glasgow and Woodward The first is that races as a conceptually nonnegotiable be certain visible traits in a way that our racial Constructionists have a problem with that they that we do races visible traits, but it is we that do and it is our of this that race real. But the problem with this is races as a conceptually nonnegotiable be by social when we those racial (2015, p. The constructionist the first commitment because thinks races are groups of people certain visible traits. it seems that the constructionist would do well to with the basic racial realist that race is tied to certain visible traits. For that the groups that constructionists call races to be the with the groups that ordinary folks call races. It also to that race would if our to like each other there would be nothing to our social practices Alcoff Glasgow p. p. However, the constructionist can that certain visible traits are and essential to conceptually nonnegotiable of also thinking they are to determine or the existence of races as kinds. One way to do this is to hold that race is or by the disproportionate of certain visible traits and or by social race then, need not be social on such a constructionist social factors races kinds, even if there are other for the existence of races. The constructionist could their view about what groups of people races as part of their conception of race, without thinking it is part of the ordinary concept of can also the basic racial realist's view of race as a of the concept of race, one that race to visible traits the concept but that also a novel view about what races, viz. that are not directly The is between the of a concept and theoretical of the concept. Glasgow p. use of the in for a to the concept of race, viz. groups by visible traits had by their members to a significantly disproportionate degree. But what the constructionist denies is that the is for race, that is, that the is also consistent with race being by social as their conception of race has One of for the constructionist, is that if the conceptually nonnegotiable of our concept of race is simply that races are tied to or visible then the constructionist can races from which is supposed to for constructionists Glasgow 2009, p. and It is conceptually nonnegotiable of the concept that make with the and cast a which not to be by in the as Glasgow p. that to to rather than to some kind that is to social factors that certain in the concept groups in the world can satisfy the application conditions for race, insofar as it is conceptually nonnegotiable of the concept “race” that they are simply groups certain visible traits. long as the conceptually nonnegotiable of the concept “race” can be in the the constructionist can that to while “race” does not. Glasgow and Woodward argue that it is conceptually nonnegotiable of race that race is not by social factors because we can of possible in which race in the of the social factors identified by constructionists as of these may that constructionism has course, that does not by that the constructionist has the ordinary concept of race for concept than the abandons the ordinary concept of by that ought not to the at the But I about what races kinds are of of race rather than nonnegotiable features of the concept of race. The constructionist and ordinary folk are about groups of people whose members tend to have certain visible traits. visible traits to Glasgow p. talk of race so that they are not one The that they about the of those that is, what it is that races. as about the for race are to be about or of race, Glasgow and Woodward's may only between of race, rather than of race. If this constructionist response is then it the claim that social constructionism about race of our ordinary concept of race. one Glasgow and Woodward's is that metaphysics of race ordinary users of the concept a surprise. For their basic racial realism the and one that does not us to abandon the ordinary concept of race. They that racial realism's surprise is to that have a of not (2015, p. 461). course, it is consistent with concept of to find out that have a more than But as I argued Glasgow and Woodward do not give much of an argument for the claim that out that belong to a more races than is consistent with the ordinary concept of race. they “is to that can from being to not being if we just that and to if we (2015, p. 461). The with is but the against constructionism. It may well be that thinking can from being to not if about violates the concept of But not of constructionism the claim about race. The racial amnesia only constructionist views on which race is by our racial classificatory Glasgow recognizes this (2019, p. but that for any social the constructionist identified as race, there will be in which that from about visible which is at the of the ordinary concept of race. Glasgow is certainly that any social can from of visible traits. But to recognize that the that Glasgow and Woodward involve to our social for example, social certain social and the social of see Glasgow and p. For we acknowledge the social that these the surprises of basic racial realism and constructionism different than Glasgow and Woodward Basic racial realism us this discover that belong to many more races than even have never of and some races Latinx and do not exist. Constructionism certain us this discover that in some possible situation involving in our social world that are not of the race that believe to be in the basic racial realism surprises us about what in the extension of our race constructionism surprises us about the of the same groups ordinary folks identify as races. Glasgow and Woodward are that ordinary people might find it to think races would with social But the constructionist can this as a response to the constructionist conception of race, to the view of what races. We need not see this as that have the or are an different concept. I want to is that basic racial realism also us a surprise. if the given are then it is that the surprise of basic racial realism is consistent with the ordinary concept of race. In the dialectical advantages that basic racial realism is supposed to have are clear than Glasgow and Woodward Moreover, the constructionist conception of race may have a claim to with the ordinary concept of race than they Glasgow and Woodward for the of these but I do not think the familiar positions in the debate should the I the for the for their on the as well as and for of the in this and by M. is an of at the of in primarily on in social ontology, and of race.