Minimalist Race Research Paper

721 Words3 Pages

Jonathan Rothenberg
Philosophy 170
How Is Race Perceived?

The fundamental difference between racialist race, socialrace, and minimalist race lies in the distinct variations in the areas of biology, social construction, and scientific elements.

When we reflect on the concept and phenomenon of race, many questions come to mind. Are they biological? Are they justified? Do they truly exist? Thus, we look to three race concepts: racialist race, socialrace, and minimalist race for answers. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to prove that while racialist race views race as an essentialist, hierarchical, biological truth, socialrace and minimalist race give explanations through the concepts of social construction and biological scientific descriptions, respectively. To begin, we analyze the fundamentally incorrect, yet widely believed concept of racialist race. In the eyes of racialist race, there …show more content…

This concept realizes that the racialist concept of race is vacuous and thus labels any social group that is taken to be a biological group (also known as a racialist race) a socialrace. Thus, when looking at “race groups” in current society such as blacks, whites, and asians, these are simply socialraces. Furthermore, because socialraces are a manifestation of social culture, they can change depending on what society you are in. Therefore, unlike the notion of racialist race and minimalist race, they are only conditionally true. Additionally, unlike racialist race, the socialrace concept is non-essentialist, meaning it does not ascribe “biological essences” to races. While it does identify a hierarchy among socialraces, it invariably unmasks the racialist concept of race, and therefore can be considered a deflationary concept. One should note, however, that the phenomenon of socialrace not pretty. To many, it appears real and by virtue of this fact is considered bad as it perpetuates the false concept of racialist