Taylor responds to this argument by arguing that racial concepts function more like "parameters" than "limits" (to employ Appiah's [2005, 110ff.] terminology). He tours through some important concepts, particularly Du Bois's concept of "double consciousness" and Zack's concept of "microdiversity", before concluding that we need to continue to employ racial concepts in our public thinking in order to make sense of and address the existential realities of race in our lives. He concludes, "The state shapes public discourse in quite profound ways, and finding oneself written out of the official narratives of national life that this discourse disseminates may seem less like an opportunity to celebrate oneself and one's community in private than like an erasure" (141).
This poses at least two questions:
- What are the 'lived existential' realities of race to which Taylor seems to want to defer?
- How can public recognition of these racial realities help us address the injustices that might in some instances flow from their deployment? Could public recognition in fact function in the opposite way so as to solidify the injustices that flow from the deployment of racial thinking? How might we adjudicate between these two theories of how race functions when politically recognized?
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The "lived existential" realities that Taylor refers to are, in the Heideggerian sense, the conditions of the pre-existent social world that one is thrown into by birth.These conditions predominantly take effect on one's social identity, but intrinsically affect to a certain degree one's individual identity. Existential realities (epistemically objective) are nevertheless dependent on human creation (ontologically subjective).
In the context of race then, it becomes extremely difficult to take an eliminativist approach. Racialized realities have become gnarled within both people's individual and social identities. Side-stepping the urgent but misguided call of eliminativism, one must take into account socially prevalent racial notions in any analyses of identity. It would be simplistic to attempt to forget the heat and flames of the fire, the environment of socially constructed realities, that forge identity.
When politically recognized, notions of race, even when used in progressive contexts such as Affirmative Action, can be be seen as working against the onset of racial equality. A person of color might, after receiving a full scholarship with only mediocre grades, wonder whether they have some incapacity that must be rectified. But the real intent, the true end of racial recognition in Taylor's mind is equality through racial reformation, that may or may not lead to real eliminativism. "Get the kid in college, get him intellectual insight, and get him financial independence," Taylor might say. Now with the playing field leveled, even as a result of racial recognition, brotherhood that crosses soon-to-be transparent racial lines may flourish.
The true contrast between Taylor and Appiah's espousing of racial recognition and eliminativism, respectively, is the measure of importance that means takes over ends, or vice versa. For Taylor, as aforementioned, the ends of racial equality may require a mode of recognition that ends with a disappearance of the subject of that very recognition. For Appiah on the other hand, the end of racial equality must take effect immediately as a strict means in any social policy. If race functions in such a policy, it will never be able to escape the confines of race-thinking, and the society affected by such a policy, will be enjoined to internalize the social fractures that racial recognition promotes.
Concerning the issue of public recognition of racial realities-
Double Consciousness:
Taylor conveys that the public recognition of racial realities calls for us to look at history; how the white race has emerged to hold the roll of the privileged, and how blacks (as Taylor places this racial group on the opposite end of the spectrum) have assumed social stigma of the “stupid, timid, ugly, savage” (135), representing the opposite righteousness ascribed to the “rational, intelligent” (135) white race. Somewhere between these ends of the socially racial identity spectrum lie the other racial groups. Taylor believes that racial groups are very real in a social sense, entirely due to the path mapped by social global history, particularly within the prominence of the western world.
Taylor uses Du Bois’s work on the ‘Double Consciousness” in order to demonstrate better his notion that there is always a give-and-take with our identities, contending that “identity is always a relational affair”, and that one’s sense of self emerges from the interactivity with societies ‘objective’ structure and it’s ascriptions with individual liberty in becoming and being who one wants. Du Bois’s passage in Taylor during these pages holds two very important points: the first being that the “double personality” / “internal duality” parallels with notions of a bounded self realization, and how this double consciousness may prevent us from freely scripting our own life because of the limits that social ascription can toll on existential goals. Secondly, Taylor makes the point that race is dialectical (as mentioned), between self and societal realities.
On Micro-Diversity:
This concept addresses the ‘real consequences’ of genealogies creation of present racial groups. It recognizes these groups within society on the whole, conveying each group has had its own real consequences from its history as a social group. Like the notion of a double consciousness, the idea of micro-diversity is greatly rooted in the historical aspect of the racial question. Taylor writes that "without the awareness of privilege, white identity becomes ahistorical, and the status quo, appears to be a natural occurrence rather than the outcome of centuries of social engineering.
After examining these two passages, discussions of public recognition of racial realities are often raised. If this ‘double consciousness’ aspect of race does not allow an individual the existential freedom to be and do what they want, should we not just stop talking about race, and couldn’t public recognition of this concept just further solidify the injustices of it? Some would say yes on the platform basis that talk of racial injustices, talk of the limiting aspect of the struggle vs. identity and societal ascriptions just further instills the notion that they are real. This standpoint holds good intentiality, in that it is made in hopes of diminishing the negative consequences of limitation that are associated with racial identities.
It is pretty clear that Taylor is a proponent for holding onto racial talk, therefore he himself is a supporter of the idea that racial discussions can help alleviate and help us work through the injustices that are born from the development of racial reality. Taylor reminds us that modernity did come into existence at the cost of immense human suffering, with consequences of very real benefits for certain people. IT is for these reasons and others that Taylor and many others believe racial recognition of it meaningful in fighting the injustices of racial categorization, and there objective nature of its body within societal context… If we do not talk about how history and the geneology of race has led us to this point, and caused great suffering for some and great fortune for others, it will seem as if these social standings racial groups take are inherinent to their nature, not a product of hundreds of tears of social engineering.
Picking up on how the conditions can shape a persons identity I want to point to some work done in the field of psychology. For example there is the theory of “stereotype threat” (
Claude M. Steele. “Stereotyping and its Threat are Real.) that tries to explain why certain groups have higher pressure on them in certain situations resulting in a worse performance in comparison to other groups. (One example would be a math exam and women or African Americans being the group) The theory argues that the pressure put onto members of the respective group by the stereotype (being bad at maths) makes group members perform bad at those tasks, thereby proving the stereotype 'true'. Another very intersting study, especially since Taylor talks about "deep-seated psychological attitudes" (126) concerning racism, is one that deals with interpersonal contact between minority and majority group members. (Interpersonal Concerns in Social Encounters Between Majority and Minority Group Members) This study comes to the conclusion “Whites who tried not to be prejudiced experienced more anxiety and enjoyed the interaction less, but were liked more by their Black partner. Additionally, Blacks who believed their partner was prejudiced enjoyed the interaction more, and their White partner experienced less anxiety and enjoyed the interaction more.” (Shelton 171) I just wanted to add this to the discussion to maybe make more clear how deeply hidden some of the issues Taylor talks about are, and how unconscious we often are of them.
Really do take a look at the links, psychological studies are very nice about putting all their findings into little abstacts upfront.
Other articles :
Are Lower Status and History of Stigmatization Preconditions of Stereotype Threat?
Colorblind and Multicultural Prejudice Reduction Strategies in High-Confl ict Situations
Expecting To Be the Target of Prejudice: Implications for Interethnic Interactions
Forgot about
Steele talking about his study. (starts at about 6:10)
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