The concept of race can be a valuable tool in analyzing social structures, but we must also keep in mind the consequences of being overzealous in its application.
During the latter half of the 20th century, the progressive sentiment about race and the Civil Rights movement was that we should look beyond outward appearances and resist granting too much importance to race. Martin Luther King Jr. famously endorsed the view, stating in his 1963 speech, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Since the early 1990s, there has been a marked shift towards placing the topic of race at the center of discussions about discrimination and inequality, starting first as an intellectual movement in universities known as “Critical Race Theory.” Kimberle Crenshaw expanded on the project, introducing the notion of “intersectionality” where an individual can hold multiple group memberships such as being a “female” and being “Black” that combine to produce unique kinds of discrimination.
Some philosophers and scholars argue that race can be helpful in identifying sources of rights violations. Race is important, according to some, because there are some injustices that are only visible if we take it into account.
Given that there are no sets of biological properties that are shared by all and only members of a particular race, the concept is a mere social construct – this way to categorize people is not grounded in good science or philosophy. But society is such that being perceived as a member of a particular race makes it likelier that you’ll suffer some sort of injustice, harm, or discrimination.
If we just treat race as if it doesn’t matter, we might miss out on how race plays an important part in how the goods of society are distributed or how discrimination follows racial lines. Perhaps most importantly, if we are to solve a problem, it’s best to have the right diagnosis of the cause.
Suppose that there is a hypothetical population of a thousand individuals. Say that there are about 50 individuals in that population who were shot by the police. If we end our analysis here, it looks like the problem is simply police brutality. Here we may simply implement de-escalation training for officers. But now suppose that 45 of those individuals were Hispanic. Now, all else held equal, the problem appears to be the existence of a racial bias within the police force. The appropriate fix here would be to fire police officers guilty of misconduct and implement racial bias training.
Even if race is technically an illegitimate way to categorize people, Hispanic individuals experienced discrimination in virtue of their perceived group membership. If we ignored the way in which police killings are distributed among races, we would have misdiagnosed the problem and implemented the wrong solution.
While race may be an important factor to take into consideration, this single-minded focus on racial categories that we see today comes with the danger of blinding us to alternative explanations.
In a recent example, Black and Hispanic communities saw a disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The reason? It’s racism of course. A Mayo Clinic article went so far as to claim that the “stress of dealing with racial discrimination” played a role in the disproportionate number of deaths.
An alternative explanation for the disparity is the high incidence of comorbidities in Black and Hispanic groups. We can now ask questions about the incidence of comorbidities in people of color, and it may very well be that the lack of access to healthcare plays a part. But the disparity alone is insufficient grounds for claiming that racism is to blame. This is an oversimplification and the reason identity politics is so vicious is that there is always a deeper level where we may find racism. Perhaps Black and Hispanic communities have limited access to quality health care. Is it that America hates brown people or is it that communities of color tend to be lower-income and healthcare costs money?
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Apart from all of this, there is a worry that our perceived status as a vulnerable group may produce deleterious attitudes in us about our prospects in society. If you come to believe that the deck is stacked against you on the basis of race, well, there’s nothing you can do about your membership in that race and therefore nothing you can do to improve your position. One would understandably develop feelings of resentment and lack motivation to engage with a system where they are set up to fail.
It would be unfortunate to see groups who are already lagging behind becoming even more disadvantaged by the programs intended to assist them.
Racism exists, but the extent to which it does may be exaggerated to the detriment of minorities. Race in itself can still be a useful tool to root out possible sources of injustices, but if we genuinely want to help minorities, it would be best to be judicious about when we apply it, while being open to the reality that circumstances apart from racism often factor into complete explanations.
Rafael Perez is a doctoral candidate in philosophy at the University of Rochester. You can reach him at rafaelperezocregister@gmail.com.
