How to Be a Biological Racial Realist

Abstract

Quayshawn Spencer shows that there is a widely used race talk in American English where race is a biological division and biologically real. That race talk is the Office of Management and Budget’s since 1997. Spencer shows that what race is, in this race talk, is just a set of five biological populations in the human species. After defending this qualified biological racial realism, Spencer shows how his qualified biological racial realism is helpful in answering the question of whether any folk racial scheme has epistemic value in medical genetics.