Race : a philosophical introduction / Paul C. Taylor.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Taylor, Paul C. (Paul Christopher), 1967-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race--Philosophy.

Race.

Race relations--Philosophy.

Race relations.

Physical Description:

xiv, 202 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, UK : Polity Press ; Malden, MA : Distributed in the USA by Blackwell, 2004.

Summary:

In Race: A Philosophical Introduction, Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. Blending metaphysics and social philosophy, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience, Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Howard Winant and Naomi Zack. The result is the first philosophical introduction to the field of race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race. The book unfolds in a sequence of five chapters, each devoted to one of the following questions: What is race-thinking? Don't we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is colour-blindness? On the way to answering these questions, Race takes up topics like mixed-race identity, white supremacy, the relationship between the race concept and other social identity categories, and the impact of race-thinking on our erotic and romantic lives. Race is suitable for the educated general reader as well as for students and scholars in ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and other related fields.

Contents:

Part I Theory 1

1 What Race-Thinking Is 3

1.1 The language of race 4

1.2 What we mean by "race": what do you mean, "we"? 8

1.2.1 "Race" and race, words and things 12

1.2.2 What "race-thinking" means 15

1.3 Modern racialism: prehistory and background 17

1.3.1 Philosophers on history 19

1.3.2 The anthropological background 20

1.3.3 The ancients 21

1.3.4 Toward modernity 22

1.4 Power, racial formation, and method 23

2 Three Challenges to Race-Thinking 27

2.2 The anti-racist challenge, take 1: isn't race-thinking unethical? 30

2.2.1 What racism is 32

2.3 Classical racialism: history and background 38

2.3.1 Early modern racialism 39

2.3.2 High modern, or classical, racialism 43

2.3.3 The concept of classical racialism 47

2.4 The challenge of human variation: isn't racial biology false? 48

2.4.1 What's wrong with race 49

2.5 The challenge of social differentiation: isn't the race concept just in the way? 52

2.5.1 Ethnicity 53

2.5.2 Nation 57

2.5.3 Class 59

2.5.4 Caste 61

2.5.5 Intersecting principles: gender 63

3 What Races Are: The Metaphysics of Critical Race Theory 70

3.2 After classical racialism: late modern racialism 73

3.3 The US racial terrain today 80

3.4 Varieties of racialism 84

3.4.1 What races are

a radical constructionist account 85

3.5 Ten questions and three alternative accounts 87

3.5.1 You call these races? (Eliminativism) 87

3.5.2 You call these real? 89

3.5.3 Isn't race-thinking dangerous? 92

3.5.4 Who needs reality when you've got language? (Quasi-racialism) 93

3.5.5 Isn't metaphysics dangerous? 95

3.5.6 Aren't races culture groups? (Communitarianism) 98

3.5.7 Aren't races breeding populations? 100

3.5.8 Race-talk may be useful, but does that make races real? 107

3.5.9 Why not just say that false beliefs about race have consequences? 110

3.5.10 Why should I accept a racial identity? 112

Part II Practice 119

4 Existence, Experience, Elisions 121

4.2 Ethical eliminativism, for and against; or, the anti-racist challenge, take 2 125

4.2.1 The slippery slope and the argument from political realism 125

4.2.2 The argument from self-realization 127

4.3 Existence, identity, and despair 129

4.3.2 Despair and terror 131

4.3.3 Double consciousness 133

4.3.4 Micro-diversity 136

4.4 In between: illusions of purity and interstitial peoples 142

4.5 Experience, invisibility, and embodiment 147

4.5.2 Invisibility and the other mind-body problem 149

4.5.3 From the ontic to the ontological 153

5 The Color Question 156

5.2 Color and "courting": the ethics of miscegenation 159

5.2.1 Endogamy and the elements of ethics 162

5.2.2 Racism and criticism 169

5.3 Color blindness and affirmative action 172

5.3.1 Background and arguments 172

5.3.2 Suspect classifications 176.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [184]-192) and index.

ISBN:

0745628826

0745628834

OCLC:

51924149