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Race: a social destruction of a biological concept

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Abstract

It is nowadays a dominant opinion in a number of disciplines (anthropology, genetics, psychology, philosophy of science) that the taxonomy of human races does not make much biological sense. My aim is to challenge the arguments that are usually thought to invalidate the biological concept of race. I will try to show that the way “race” was defined by biologists several decades ago (by Dobzhansky and others) is in no way discredited by conceptual criticisms that are now fashionable and widely regarded as cogent. These criticisms often arbitrarily burden the biological category of race with some implausible connotations, which then opens the path for a quick eliminative move. However, when properly understood, the biological notion of race proves remarkably resistant to these deconstructive attempts. Moreover, by analyzing statements of some leading contemporary scholars who support social constructivism about race, I hope to demonstrate that their eliminativist views are actually in conflict with what the best contemporary science tells us about human genetic variation.

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Notes

  1. Here is the translation manual for the coin analogy. The two coins with opposite biases (towards heads or tails) correspond to the two individuals from two different populations that have opposite allelic biases (towards A1 or A2). Different flips of the coin correspond to different loci. The heads or tails outcome in a particular coin throw corresponds to the A1 or A2 outcome on a particular locus.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rafael DeClercq, A. W. F. Edwards, Charles Murray, Alex Rosenberg, Omri Tal and Jiji Zhang for useful comments on earlier drafts.

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  1. Lingnan University, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong

    Neven Sesardic

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  1. Neven Sesardic
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Correspondence to Neven Sesardic.

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Sesardic, N. Race: a social destruction of a biological concept. Biol Philos 25, 143–162 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9193-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-009-9193-7

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