Classifying recent work on race

Nathan Placencia, a grad student at UC-Riverside teaching this year at DePauw, was at the Dayton Colloquium last weekend.  I really enjoyed getting to know him and his work.  He sent me a question he'd like our blog community to consider (below).  I hope people will be inspired to help him out!  --SH.

"While working on my dissertation I've been trying to map out the domains of inquiry in which contemporary philosophers of race operate. So far I've come up with at least three very rough divisions:
    (1) theorizing about the social scientific use of race;
    (2) theorizing about the political use of race; and
    (3) theorizing about the popular, folk, or ordinary use of race.
For (1) the primary goal of one's theoretical work is to come up with a viable conception of race that can be used by social scientists to build better theories as well as to improve empirical work. Or one argues that there is no viable conception of race and, therefore, social scientists should stop using it. For (2) the primary goal is to expose conceptions of race that have been used to oppress populations and to construct new conceptions of race that either empower oppressed populations or in someway fight against their oppression. For (3) the primary goal is to capture the "folk" meaning of "race talk" and/or to describe how ordinary practices of racial categorizing operate. Usually what follows this investigation is a discussion of whether or not "race talk" and its corresponding practices ought to be eliminated, significantly revised, or conserved.

I would like to find out if practitioners in the field think that this in apt way to divide up contemporary theoretical work on race. And, if so, how would they classify their own work along these lines."

Comments

[Nate P.]

Thanks for posting this Sally. Sorry about the typo at the end of the question it should read "that this *is an* apt way".

Anyway, I had one more possible division, namely, (4)theorizing about racial identity (the social psychological phenomenon). As far as I know, there are only two contemporary philosophers who have engaged in extended discussions about what racial identities are: Sally in "You Mixed" and, of course, Anthony Appiah has been talking about this for quite sometime.

This is not to say that other philosophers don't refer to "racial identities", it is just that they don't give it sustained theoretical treatment. If their are others out there who have, please point me in the right direction.

[Mike Monahan]

Nathan presents an interesting way to think about different foci in the theorization of race. At the same time, it seems to me that robust theorizing in any one of the categories Nathan points toward will have important implications for, if not explicit reference to, the other categories. That is, asking questions about the present or past social scientific uses of race, or trying to formulate a useful social scientific conception of race (1), cannot help but have implications for our understanding of racial oppression and the political uses/abuses of racial categories (2). Likewise, serious discussions of the political dimension (2) needs to grapple with the social scientific status of racial categories (1). And surely a firm grip on either the "folk" meanings of race (3) or racial identities (4) will be intimately connected to the larger social contexts (1 and 2) that condition such meanings and identities. I'm sure that Nathan didn't mean to claim that these were completely discreet categories, but I think it is worth mentioning in any event.

As for recent texts that deal with "racial identities", Linda Alcoff's "Visible Identities" and Shannon Sullivan's "Revealing Whiteness" leap immediately to my mind (and I'm sure there are others). Both of those texts offer extended discussions of the role that race plays in identity.

[Nate]

Mike,

I completely agree that the divisions are interconnected and that results from one will ,most likely, give insight for the others. I think that part of the benefit of making these rough divisions is that it allows us to see how different theoretical projects contribute to each other.

But they can also help us see how theoretical projects come apart. For example, one might think that our ordinary conception of race is inextricably linked to human "biology". However, one might also think that a social scientific conception is not. Moreover, one might think that a political account must recognize that race is inextricably linked to oppression. But one might also think that racial identity is not. Does that make sense?

[Marlisa]

It seems they all have the same "goal" - the fight against racism in society. So distinguishing them in terms of theoretical goals brings out their connections. The second criteria for his classification is social sphere. This seems to indicate that different theorists merely have different ideas about what aspects of a socially constructed concept should be salient in pursuing social justice. It seems a proper theoretical typology should look to theoretical methodology.

[Quayshawn Spencer]

Nathan, these four sound fine, but I would add a fifth area: (5) theorizing about the natural scientific use of race. There are quite a few race theorists who work on biological conceptions of race, such as Robin Andreasen, Philip Kitcher, Lisa Gannett, Naomi Zack, Michael Root, and myself, to name a few. The goal here is to understand what notion of race, if any, might be useful in the study of life, including systematic biology, ecology, biomedical research, population genetics, etc.

Understanding how biologists think about race also interrelates with (1) through (4). Just think about the impact that genetic genealogy tests have on racial identities, or how formulating a genetic notion of race for use in medical genetics could impact racial oppression or folk notions of race.