Ethical Eliminativism of Racial Talk Is Not Practical- Yet.

In order to give a well thought out feedback on the question of whether racial thinking (the use of racial concepts, language etc.) is ethical or not, and whether we ought to continue this in practice, it is important for one to examine two other themes within the philosophical study of race: the metaphysics/semantics of race and the history/genealogy of racialism. The latter explores racialism through the genealogical method, so one may better grasp how race has unfolded throughout history to emerge this ‘race’ we see in modernity (which is none-the-less still evolving), while the former explores the question of what race actually is. Taylor believes that race is a method of categorization that assigns mean to bodies and bloodlines (pg 15), although it has been strongly discredited as holding scientific/anthropologic validity. Ultimately, this leaves race as something that exists in a social aspect, but hardly holds as having a true moral nature attached to these groupings of humans based on somewhat loose, superficial shared characteristics like physical attributes and social and economic positioning. The philosophical examination on the genealogy of race provides a mapping of the construction of racialism, its exponential webbing as a means for a politically oppressive tool and a means for domination, leading Taylor to ultimately conclude that race is real and most often socially objective without being ontologically objective. In other words: Race does not exist in the sense that Black, White, Yellow, Red have an actual natural referent with varying meaning in each of these categories, but rather that the continual practice of categorization of humans in this manor has reflected in a racial landscape with real social consequences. It is because of these real consequences that racial thinking should not be deemed as unethical. Because the construction of racial concepts within society have resulted in such real injustices in certain groups of people, although their group’s ontological status is not objective, it can not follow we can just be “color bind” because we know that racialism is a human construct that need not exist. Some argue for ethical eliminativism of racial thinking because race-thinking inevitably leads to racism. A second for ethical eliminativism is called the argument from political realism. This argument states that “race needlessly complicates struggles for justice” and claims that is encourages “activists to ignore the complexity of the issues that their constituents face” (pg 125). A third argument for ethical eliminitivism is based on the notion that racial thinking limits one’s individual pursuits. Taylor answers all of these arguments in contending that keeping racial thinking will better enable us to right the wrongs of classical racialism, meaning racial thinking is ethical to continue in practice. His belief in this is most founded in the idea that we need the concept of race to help us note and track the consequences of racism (126) that its genealogical story has produced. How could the ethical eliminativist not see that it is hardly useful to abandon racial thinking immediately/ altogether when they take the foundation of their stance for elimination to begin with on the fact that race has been horribly oppressive and had very real impacts on people in this world? How can we combat and right these injustices with abandoning the very concepts that explain their cause? Taylor explains that race is a social construct, which means that we have learned which practices need to be habituated to further its existence, therefore we could also unlearn these practices, eventually loosing our distinction between colored races if we can “summon the political will” (127). Racial thinking is not unethical because one must go through race, dissect it, and pick it apart to truly get rid of it and make right the real social consequences of the way race has been applied through out history. Only if this is more fully understood by the people around the world can race and notions of race be eliminated conceptually and practically.