RACE: CONCEPTUAL AND EMPIRICAL ISSUES II

Moral Conversation Project:  Critically evaluate Boxill’s argument in favor of affirmative 
action.  Can you think of a better argument(s) in favor?

I.  	From last time:
A. Race is not a concept that refers to a socially-independent, biological “natural 
kind”.
B. It seems to a “socially constructed” concept (like gender, as opposed to 
sexuality).
C. But unlike gender, for example, it purports to be a biological, natural kind 
concept.


II.  	Last time I suggested that race might be an ideological concept.  Such a concept 
has to be understood through its role in an ideology—in this case, an “ideology of 
domination”—where an ideology of domination is a set of beliefs that are held to
justify one group’s being in a position of dominance over another.  More specifically, 

        An ideological concept
        A.  purports to refer to some objectively, scientifically-based feature (X);
        B.  but there is no such feature (X);
C. is such that were there such a feature (X), it might justify a form of domination 
of one group by another;
D. the presence of this feature (X) is believed by members of a dominant group to 
justify their domination of the dominated group;
E. but the dominant group’s belief that the dominated group is characterized by a 
feature (X) that justifies this domination, is explained, not by the presence of X, 
but by the dominant group’s interest in remaining dominant; 
F. the dominant’s group’s characterizing of the dominated group as possessing a 
feature (X), that justifies their domination, results in the dominated group’s 
seeming to have qualities that are taken to be symptomatic of X and to justify the 
dominance.

III.  	Consider this possibility in light of Jane Elliott's A Class Divided.  Does this 
analysis fit the way the concept of "blue-eyed" and "brown-eyed" worked in the film?

IV.  Might it be, then, that there is no such thing as race (that is, such as the socially-
constructed or folk concept of race) "in nature" and that the concept only arises for an 
ideological purpose?  That is, that the concept's function is to play a role in a form of 
group injustice.  If that is so, then what ethical position does that put us in now?  The
point is not that the concept of race is only used to dominate.  For one thing, members of 
"racial minorities" come to see themselves as members of a common group, sharing a 
common history, heritage, cultural forms, and so on. 

V. Historical background:  the simultaneous emergence of the modern concept of 
race and the modern concept of natural rights.
A.  John Locke and the idea of equal basic human rights.
i. All persons have equal rights to liberty.
ii. Natural independence
iii. No right to dominance and control based on:  divine right, 
customary right, or conquest.
iv. Only consent can justify coercive measures.
        	B.  But what makes someone a person?
i. New born children are not persons, since they lack the capacities 
for rational self-control and judgment.
ii. Therefore, parents have rights to control them.
iii.  Similarly, other animals lack these features as well, and so they 
also lack natural rights not to be controlled.
iv. Thus any being that, like children or "brutes," cannot be trusted to 
rational self-control, has no right to liberty.
C.  These seem to be roughly the same features used to characterize racial inferiors: 
"childlike" or "brute-like", therefore unable to make their own decisions, 
therefore apt for control by others.
D. Might it then be no coincidence that the concept of race and theories of equal 
human rights come into existence in the same period in the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries?  Other factors?  The peculiar factors of emerging colonial 
commerce and trade between western Europe and its colonies.

VI..  Race, Genes, and IQ
A. IQ and intelligence.
B. The observed differences in mean IQ between blacks and whites.  What might 
explain this?
C. Herrnstein and Murray:  “[h]owever discomnfiting it may be to consider it, 
there are reasons to suspect genetic considerations are involved.”
D. Heritability of IQ (i.e., genetic explanation of individual differences) vs. 
explaining the group difference by a hypothesized genetic difference between 
the groups.
E. Are there reasons to think that such an hypothesis might be correct?

VI. A.  Note first that even if it were correct, that it would not follow that
i. a gap in, say, academic performance would be inevitable (since 
that would result from heredity + environment) or
ii. that IQ is not malleable (e.g., the Flynn effect) or
iii. that it would automatically justify any form of different treatment.  
(N.B. Herrnstein and Murray make this same point (CP,33) as does 
Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan: “as to the faculties of the mind, . . . 
howsoever [men] may acknowledge many others to be more witty, 
or more eloquent, or more learned; yet they will hardly believe 
there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at 
hand, and other men's at a distance. But this proveth rather that 
men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not 
ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of any thing, than 
that every man is contented with his share.)
B. As for evidence in favor of H&M’s hypothesis, they point out that there is no 
good environmental explanation for the IQ difference:
i. not explained by difference in socio-economic status,
ii. not explained by cultural-bias of the tests
C. Might there be other explanations than genetic?  Is any environmental 
explanation suggested by the film A Class Divided?
D. One possibility is that a racial system is a caste-system.  In a caste system, 
(lower) caste members share experiences marking them as subordinates in a 
hierarchy they cannot change.  They are immutable subordinates.  There is 
evidence that such environmental factors are associated with differential 
performance on IQ tests that is comparable to the observed black/white 
difference.  E.g.  Buraku caste members who scored, on average, substantially 
below mean Japanese scores, but migrated to the U.S. showed no differences 
from other Japanese immigrants on average, when in the U.S.
J. S. Ogbu explains this as resulting from a lack of “effort optimism,” i.e., the 
sense that hard work and serious commitment will be rewarded.  
E. Compare this with the experience of the “Currency lads and lasses,” the sons 
and daughters of convicted prisoners sent to 19th Century Australia:  “There is 
a degree of Liberty here which you can hardly imagine at your side of the 
Equator . . . They are in short as free as the Brids of the Air and the Natives of 
the Forests . . . and this they all understand before they can speak that two and 
two make four.”