Essentializing race

ABSTRACT

The authors’ ‘new theoretical framework’ rests on their acceptance of ordinary language constructs. This leads them to an essentialized conception of race. It is not a true theory.     

Patenting race

As genetic databases continue to yield new insights and inventions, the commercial incentive to conflate race and genetics may be hard to resist.     

Social geographies of race: connecting race and space

This article examines what it means to study race from a spatial perspective. In order to make explicit connections between spatial and racial processes, we present an interdisciplinary snapshot of the work being done under the banners of space and race, and offer a framework – a theory of racial space – for linking these concepts. We provide four key characteristics of space – contested, fluid and historical, interactional and relational, and defined by inequality and difference – that overlap with prevalent theorizing on race and racialization. We suggest that a framework of racial space provides a language for explaining the persistence of racial inequality in its varied, and often subtle, forms today, and reveals a useful analytical and practical pathway for challenging and changing the existing racial order.     

Janus-faced race: Is race biological,social, or mythical?

As belief in the reality of race as a biological category among U.S. anthropologists has fallen, belief in the reality of race as a social category has risen in its place. The view that race simply does not exist—that it is a myth—is treated with suspicion. While racial classification is linked to many of the worst evils of recent history, it is now widely believed to be necessary to fight back against racism. In this article, I argue that race is indeed a biological fiction, but I critique the claim that race is socially real. I defend a form of anti-realist reconstructionism about race, which says that there are no races, only racialized groups—groups mistakenly believed to be races. I argue that this is the most attractive position about race from a metaphysical perspective, and that it is also the position most conductive to public understanding and social justice.     

The white race is shrinking: Perceptions of race in Canada and some speculations on the political economy of race classification

Movements for the recognition and official establishment of particular languages in India, among the many hundreds that have been identified and classified by linguists, grammarians, and census takers, have been prominent and recurring features of politics in the subcontinent for a century-and-a-half. These movements have invariably been competitive in character, demanding preference for one, and displacement of other, actual or potential rivals. Further, they have sometimes been associated with hostile and venomous characterizations of both a rival language and its speakers, leading to intercommunal/interethnic violence. Despite the turbulent history of such movements in modern India, viable compromises have been reached concerning the status of the multiplicity of Indian languages and their hierarchical ordering for various purposes. These compromises, however, have profound consequences for the life chances, including the empowerment and disempowerment, of all India’s citizens. These consequences have only recently begun to attract scholarly attention.