Race is a concept that has been used to categorize and group human beings. It is a social construct that has no biological basis, yet it continues to persist in social policy and law in the United States and elsewhere. The concept of race is also central to Western philosophy. It has been influential in the works of authors like Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, and Frantz Fanon and in movements such as Negritude, Critical Philosophy of Race, and the philosophy of liberation. This entry focuses primarily on contemporary scholarship regarding the conceptual, ontological, and epistemological issues raised by the concept of race and its role in the development of Western ideas.
Some scholars, particularly those working within the field of anthropology, have attempted to create a scientific basis for the concept of race. The term “race” was first introduced in the 17th century as a folk ideology associated with the different populations—Europeans, Africans, and Amerindians—brought together by European exploration and colonization. It became fully embedded in the culture of the United States in the 19th century.
Those scholars who believe that race is an evolutionary construct argue that different phenotypic traits correlate to differential hierarchical positions in society. This position is called political constructivism. Those who reject the notion of racial evolution as a basis for race argue that the concept is purely a social construct. The latter group is called reductive anthropology or cladistic theory.
The reductive anthropology school of thought argues that there are a limited number of morphological characteristics that define each race. These morphological traits, in turn, determine social and economic status. The reductive anthropology school also holds that differences in these characteristics are due to a variety of genetic and environmental influences, rather than simply to environment.
A strong argument against the reductive anthropology school was presented by Ashley Montagu (1905-1999). Invoking insights from modern, experimental genetics, he forcefully rejected the anthropological notion that race consists of a series of perceptible physical characteristics. He argued that, instead, the building blocks of evolution are genes, and these genes influence human behavior at a far finer level than do morphological changes.
A growing number of people—including many members of the dominant racial groups—are beginning to question the usefulness and validity of the idea of race. In particular, the reductive anthropology school has been challenged by those who believe that the categories of race and ethnicity are social-political constructs, not scientific or biological. The most prominent of these arguments comes from a group called the Critical Race Theory (CRT) movement. The reductive anthropology school has been further challenged by philosophers who have articulated genealogical understandings of the historical emergence of the concept of race. These approaches draw on the work of Michel Foucault and other scholars to develop an understanding of how the idea of race has functioned as a category of knowledge and power in the history of the West. They also challenge the reliance on phenotypic characteristics to categorize people and justify discriminatory practices, such as racial profiling.