Race (Fallacy of Race)

To deconstruct a biased legacy and comprehend its raison d’être in an increasing variety of discourses that justify essentialist dispositions, natures, and perspectives on gender and ethnicity in respect to cultural difference and social stratification is a philosophical obligation. This implies a rethinking of all our basic conceptualities from new angles. For example, a racialized conception of one’s identity, writes Appiah, is retrogressive. He insists:

Every human identity is constructed, historical; everyone has its share of false presuppositions, of the errors and inaccuracies that courtesy calls “myth,” religion “heresy,” and science “magic.” Invented histories, invented biologies, invented cultural affinities come with every identity; each is a kind of role that has to be scripted, structured by conventions of narrative to which the world never quite manages to conform. (373)

We can decode divisive traditions through well-defined tasks. From the viewpoint of logicians, a first...