Basic racial realism, social constructionism, and the ordinary concept of race

Joshua Glasgow and Jonathan M. Woodward (2015) have proposed a new account of the metaphysics of race, which they call “basic racial realism.” According to the view, races are kinds whose members are united by sharing similarities, for example, visible traits like skin color, that are not directly relevant to science. They argue that basic racial realism has certain dialectical advantages over the other parties to the debate over race, viz. racial antirealism, biological racial realism, and racial social constructionism.

Glasgow and Woodward should be commended for introducing basic racial realism to the debate over the reality of race. It offers a novel account of race that promises to track the ordinary concept of race without undermining the social and political significance of race. For all those benefits, however, basic racial realism faces certain troubles. I argue, first, that basic racial realism is not as consistent with the ordinary concept of race as Glasgow and Woodward make it out to be. Second, I argue that basic racial realism does not enjoy the dialectical advantages over social constructionism that they suggest it does. In the third section, I defend social constructionism about race against their charge that it violates the ordinary concept of race. I conclude with general reflections about the comparative surprises that basic racial realism and constructionism give us regarding race.

The three familiar positions in the debate are racial antirealism, biological racial realism, and racial social constructionism. Basic racial realism says that race is real (pace the antirealist) but is neither a natural kind nor a social kind (pace the biological realist and the social constructionist, respectively). On Glasgow and Woodward's view race is a “basic kind,” that is, a kind whose members are united merely by sharing a similarity, but a similarity that is not directly relevant to science (2015, p. 451). (Basic kinds as such, they claim, lack causal powers and so their essential properties sometimes fail to overlap with properties that are useful to science.) Basic kinds are not gerrymandered or arbitrary sets, then, but objective, mind-independent kinds that do not rise to the scientific importance of natural or social kinds. Races are basic kinds in that they are “groups of people who are distinguished from other groups by having certain visible features (like skin color) to a significantly disproportionate degree” (2015, p. 452).¹

According to Glasgow and Woodward, familiar parties to the race debate share a commitment to “elitism” about kinds. Such elitism has it that only kinds that are directly relevant to science, whether natural or social, are real. They find the elitist assumption implausible because basic kinds seem to qualify as real on a plausible conception of reality—objective and mind-independent similarity—without being the direct objects of scientific inquiry. Rejecting elitism undercuts the antirealist's argument that race is not real insofar as it is neither a natural nor social kind. For basic kind realism maintains that kinds need not be natural or social to be real.

Biological racial realism takes races to be suitably isolated breeding populations. Glasgow and Woodward note that a well-known concern for such a view is that the groups counted as races depart substantially from the groups we ordinarily count as races. For example, the Amish count as a distinct race on some versions of biological racial realism, though not for ordinary users of the concept of race.² In this way, there is a “mismatch” between our ordinary concept of race and the populations identified by the biological realist. Glasgow and Woodward argue that the source of this problem is the realist's attempt to identify races with biological or natural kinds. The mismatch problem can be altogether avoided if races are simply basic kinds distinguished by the visible traits the ordinary concept of race picks out.³

Constructionists about race, on the other hand, hold that races are social kinds, that is, kinds unified by social factors such as classificatory practices. Glasgow and Woodward claim that the ordinary concept of race tells against thinking of race as a social kind. There are possible cases in which, intuitively, races still exist, yet the social factors that determine race (by the lights of the social constructionist) are absent (2015, p. 456). For instance, if classifying people as “white” or “black” or “Asian” is what determines the existence of those races, then in a situation where everyone is collectively struck with racial amnesia for an hour, races cease to exist. But intuitively, these races still exist even if their members are not classified as members of those races. Like biological racial realism, the constructionist view of race departs from our ordinary concept of race. To the extent that it identifies races with whatever kinds our ordinary concept of race picks out (so long as the mind-independent world can satisfy the demands our concept of race puts on it), basic racial realism's concept of race will never depart from the ordinary concept of race.

Constructionism about race is, moreover, supposed to have an advantage over other views of race because it is especially suited for explaining the social and political significance of race. Glasgow and Woodward argue that basic racial realism does just as well as social constructionism on this score. Even though basic racial realism denies that race is social itself, the view can still “license talk about the social significance and impact of race, and about social identities that are built upon race” (2015, p. 457). Basic racial realism separates the social practices involving race from race itself. In this respect, constructionism has no theoretical or explanatory advantage over basic racial realism. Since the latter identifies races with basic kinds, it is not committed to the more extravagant racial ontology of social kinds that the former is. In light of the weaknesses of its competitors and the strengths of basic racial realism, Glasgow and Woodward conclude that basic racial realism ought to be considered not only a fourth competitor in the debate about race but also the most promising of the pack.

If this constructionist response is successful, then it undermines the claim that social constructionism about race runs afoul of our ordinary concept of race. Nevertheless, one thing Glasgow and Woodward's paper helpfully reveals is that every metaphysics of race gives ordinary users of the concept a surprise. For their money, basic racial realism gives the smallest surprise, and one that does not force us to abandon the ordinary concept of race. They say that “[b]asic racial realism's surprise is akin to learning that you have a bunch of cousins you did not know about” (2015, p. 461). Of course, it is consistent with concept of cousins to find out that you have a bunch more than you thought you did. But as I argued above, Glasgow and Woodward do not give much of an argument for the claim that finding out that you belong to a bunch more races than you thought you did is consistent with the ordinary concept of race. “Constructionism's surprise,” they assert, “is akin to learning that your cousin can go from being your cousin to not being your cousin if we just forget that she's your cousin and become re-related to you again if we remember” (2015, p. 461). The analogy with cousins is suggestive, but overstates the case against constructionism. It may well be that thinking your cousin can go from being your cousin to not if you forget about them violates the concept of cousin. But not every version of constructionism makes the analogous claim about race. The racial amnesia thought experiment only targets constructionist views on which race is entirely determined by our racial classificatory practices.¹⁵

Glasgow recognizes this (2019, p. 131) but argues that for any social factor the constructionist identified as grounding race, there will be situations in which that factor comes apart from facts about visible appearances, which he believes is at the core of the ordinary concept of race. Glasgow is certainly right that any social factor can come apart from distributions of visible traits. But it's important to recognize that the scenarios that Glasgow and Woodward imagine involve radical change to our social world, for example, re-structuring social arrangements, ending certain social practices, beginning others, and fundamentally altering the social meanings of human bodies (also see Glasgow 2009 and 2019, p. 133). For once we acknowledge the radical social change that these thought experiments involve, the respective surprises of basic racial realism and constructionism look somewhat different than Glasgow and Woodward suggest. Basic racial realism gives us this surprise: you discover that you actually belong to many more races than you thought, even ones you have never conceived of and some races you thought existed (e.g., Latinx and Arab) do not actually exist. Constructionism (of certain stripes) gives us this surprise: you discover that in some remote possible situation involving radical change in our social world that you are not of the race that you believe yourself to be in the actual world. Put differently, basic racial realism surprises us about what falls in the extension of our race talk; constructionism surprises us about the nature of the very same groups ordinary folks identify as races.

Glasgow and Woodward are correct that ordinary people might find it shocking to think races would disappear with social change. But the constructionist can interpret this shock as a response to the constructionist conception of race, to the constructionist's view of what unifies races. We need not see this shock as indicating that constructionist's have changed the subject or are using an entirely different concept. What I want to emphasize here is that basic racial realism also gives us quite a surprise. And if the arguments given above are correct, then it is doubtful that the surprise of basic racial realism is consistent with the ordinary concept of race.

In sum, the dialectical advantages that basic racial realism is supposed to have are less clear than Glasgow and Woodward suppose. Moreover, the constructionist conception of race may have a better claim to consistency with the ordinary concept of race than they acknowledge. Glasgow and Woodward deserve credit for expanding the scope of these debates, but I do not think the familiar positions in the debate should fear the newcomer.