Ep. 228: Social Construction of Race (Appiah, Mills) (Part Two)

The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast

Mark Linsenmayer

Casey, Paskin, Philosophy, Linsenmayer, Society & Culture, Alwan

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2019

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Continuing on Kwame Anthony Appiah's "Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections" (1994), Charles Mills's "But What Are You Really?, The Metaphysics of Race" (1998), and Neven Sesardic's "Race: A Social Destruction of a Biological Concept" (2010) with guest Coleman Hughes.

Racial classifications vary geographically, therefore race is socially constructed. Given this, can we retain the positive aspects of group-identification without hierarchies and what Appiah calls "imperialism of identity?"

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End song: "Tired Skin" by Alejandro Escovedo, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #60.

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Partial Exam of Life relies on your support to find out how to help in ways that are cheap or even free for you.
0:05.4	Please visit partialexaminalife.com slash support.
0:17.0	Hey, this is the Partial Exam of Life episode 228 Part 2.
0:21.1	We've been talking about the social construction of race about Kwame Anthony Abbey's,
0:25.9	race culture identity, Charles Mills, but what are you really?
0:29.6	And Nevin Sassardic's race, a social deconstruction of biological concept, Coleman, can you recap for us?
0:35.7	I was pointing out that many of the people quickest to disparage rightfully the history of race being a social construct,
0:44.5	the one-drop rule, the ridiculous and racist ways we've conceptualized race in the past,
0:51.5	are also eager to preserve those conceptions in many ways,
0:55.9	which is to say they will assume that the one-drop rule still holds in America and are not eager to change it.
1:04.0	In the sense of preserving, wanting to preserve something like black identity.
1:08.3	Since we've talked about the one-drop rule, I've done the 23 and me report on my genetic composition.
1:16.0	I have 1.1% sub-Saharan African. Apparently that qualifies me, and so I've been answering the question wrong for the last 50 years of life.
1:25.7	So I'm wondering if there's going to be any influence of all of this ancestry and genetic stuff on popular perceptions.
1:34.8	It's alluded to in one of the essays that the bifurcated black, white distinction in the United States could be more nuanced,
1:41.6	like in the Caribbean, where there's three categories, you know, black, white, and somewhere in between.
1:46.8	That points towards the idea that race is socially constructed, at least in the United States,
1:51.7	because clearly there's an alternative construction of the concept of race or construction of race that is employed very nearby
1:59.0	that we don't choose to use except in Louisiana.
2:01.8	Then we have the example of, oh, there's orientals.
2:05.1	And you mentioned the research where asked whether or not they identified as Asian Americans.
2:10.8	And the answer was no, they're Japanese or Chinese or Taiwanese or Korean or what have you.
	...

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