Yeah, that summary is not great, but the longer video was worthwhile. It gave names to categories I was not able to put my finger on before.
The three schools of thought about what “race” is were,
Naturalism (“it’s biological reality”)
Social constructionism (“it’s a social reality, but the bio part is fake”)
Skepticism (“The things you’re calling ‘race’ have always been something else: culture, nationality, ethnicity, etc.”)
Because I said,
“race does not exist”. It’s a mistaken categorization; it does not carve reality along its natural joints.
I think that would make me a race skeptic.
The three schools of thought about what should be done about the “race” concept were,
conservationists (“Keep it.” They’re pretty much Naturalists.)
reconstructionists (“Reinterpret it.”)
eliminativists (“Get rid of it. The whole concept just perpetuates Naturalism, and therefore racism.”)
I find myself most agreeing with the eliminativism, which is the position most congruent with my sckepticism. Although I see that I had been a reconstructionist in the past, because that’s the default in my cultural milieu, and because I formerly lacked the concepts necessary for eliminativism. Perhaps many other reconstructionists would move towards eliminativism once they had the concepts to think about it. These memes are worth spreading.
I liked the distinction made between colorblindness (a position I considered ideal, but unworkable) and racelessness. The former is the position that race ultimately doesn’t/can’t/shouldn’t matter, at the cost of perhaps ignoring the current racism problem, in the hopes that this will eventually make it go away. The later acknowledges racism exists (and is a problem and calls racialization/the whole “race” concept as symptoms of this problem), without admitting that race exists.
Yeah, that summary is not great, but the longer video was worthwhile. It gave names to categories I was not able to put my finger on before.
The three schools of thought about what “race” is were,
Naturalism (“it’s biological reality”)
Social constructionism (“it’s a social reality, but the bio part is fake”)
Skepticism (“The things you’re calling ‘race’ have always been something else: culture, nationality, ethnicity, etc.”)
Because I said,
I think that would make me a race skeptic.
The three schools of thought about what should be done about the “race” concept were,
conservationists (“Keep it.” They’re pretty much Naturalists.)
reconstructionists (“Reinterpret it.”)
eliminativists (“Get rid of it. The whole concept just perpetuates Naturalism, and therefore racism.”)
I find myself most agreeing with the eliminativism, which is the position most congruent with my sckepticism. Although I see that I had been a reconstructionist in the past, because that’s the default in my cultural milieu, and because I formerly lacked the concepts necessary for eliminativism. Perhaps many other reconstructionists would move towards eliminativism once they had the concepts to think about it. These memes are worth spreading.
I liked the distinction made between colorblindness (a position I considered ideal, but unworkable) and racelessness. The former is the position that race ultimately doesn’t/can’t/shouldn’t matter, at the cost of perhaps ignoring the current racism problem, in the hopes that this will eventually make it go away. The later acknowledges racism exists (and is a problem and calls racialization/the whole “race” concept as symptoms of this problem), without admitting that race exists.