tag:theconversation.com,2011:/ca/topics/race-politics-42367/articlesRace politics – The Conversation2019-10-15T08:33:40Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1251692019-10-15T08:33:40Z2019-10-15T08:33:40ZA turbulent transition: South Africa’s opposition party faces a rocky future<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/296710/original/file-20191011-96252-11z9080.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mmusi Maimane, leader of South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EFE-EPA/Kim Ludbrook</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Elections are moments of reckoning. They can either project a party onto a new trajectory or force a party into introspection.</p>
<p>South Africa’s main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has experienced both scenarios in the last two decades. In the <a href="https://www.da.org.za/why-the-da/history">1999 elections</a> it increased its support by <a href="https://elections.thesouthafrican.com/south-africa-election-results-1999/">almost 8%</a>. For the next 14 years – until 2016 – the DA consistently increased its support in all the elections. Then in 2019 the tide turned and the party lost about 1.5% at the polls. This saw it losing five parliamentary seats, bringing its number of MPs down to <a href="https://www.elections.org.za/NPEDashboard/app/dashboard.html">84 in the 400 seat National Assembly</a>.</p>
<p>A year before the 2016 election, Mmusi Maimane introduced a new epoch in the DA’s history as the first black person to lead the party.</p>
<p>That in itself introduced a transition phase in the party, and a period of turbulence. </p>
<p>The DA is different to South Africa’s governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), in a number of critical respects. While the ANC represents a broad church of interests, the DA is a blended party made up of disparate extant parties. Between 1977 and 1989 it was known as the Progressive Federal Party. Then from 1989 to 2000 it was called the Democratic Party. In 2000 it merged with other parties to become the DA. The party’s name changes are reflected in its membership composition. </p>
<p>During the early 1990s the then Democratic Party participated actively in the country’s constitutional negotiations. It promoted a federal dispensation and made important contributions to formulations around human rights. After the 1994 election it declined to join the unity government but preferred to <a href="https://www.enca.com/opinion/twenty-years-too-late-da">play the role of a critical opposition</a>.</p>
<p>Because it’s a blend of political influences the transition it is facing has, inevitably, had an existential effect on the party.</p>
<p>This is what it’s experiencing at the moment. </p>
<p>In the last number of weeks Maimane’s leadership has become the main focus of attention. But there are other tensions too. The most important is who will take over as the chair of the Federal Council, the party’s governing body between congresses. The former party leader, Helen Zille, has entered the fray <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/p1-helen-zille-says-she-wants-to-be-next-da-federal-council-chairperson-20191004">for the position</a>.</p>
<h2>The party’s transition</h2>
<p>For more than a decade Zille led a drive to transform the party’s identity. Whereas her predecessor Tony Leon’s notion was that the DA should be a critical opposition party, she relaunched it as a <a href="https://www.news24.com/MyNews24/YourStory/DA-We-didnt-copy-Obama-20081117">party of government</a>.</p>
<p>Her role as the mayor of Cape Town since 2006, and later as Premier of the Western Cape province, were the manifestations of this new identity.</p>
<p>Zille, but more so her successor, Maimane also sought to shift the party’s philosophical base. The DA, and its antecedents were all cut from the cloth of <a href="https://irr.org.za/reports/books/between-two-fires-holding-the-liberal-centre-in-south-african-politics">classical South African liberalism</a>. </p>
<p>Its main principles were: individuals form the core of a society; a free market economy and a minimum state with a strong private sector have to provide opportunities for the individual; universal human rights have to protect these principles; and opportunities have to be determined by an individual’s personal merits and not by a shared group identity. </p>
<p>The party also believed in economic growth as the panacea for most social or developmental problems.</p>
<p>The philosophical changes pursued particularly by Maimane have been towards a hybrid form of social democracy with some liberal components. </p>
<p>This shift has seen the party accepting affirmative action in several contexts, such as in employment (in the form of employment equity), in economic restructuring (in the form of black economic empowerment) and land reform. This is in stark contrast to its traditional “open opportunities society” vision. This has led to a standoff between the traditional liberals and new members of the party who support the country’s transformation agenda aimed at redressing past injustices.</p>
<p>Finally, the party’s transition also involves a change in its internal balance of power. Since its time as the Progressive Federal Party in the 1980s, its constituency was concentrated in the Western Cape, followed by Gauteng. </p>
<p>But this has dipped and there’s been less of a focus on the Western Cape while under Maimane’s leadership there’s been a definite shift towards Gauteng as well as a deliberate effort to galvanise support in other provinces. </p>
<h2>Turbulence</h2>
<p>What are the symptoms of this turbulence?</p>
<p>The first is the potpourri of individuals with strong personalities, ambitions and who are not always willing to be team players. </p>
<p>A number of examples illustrate this. There was the former parliamentary leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko, who clashed with Zille and Maimane, <a href="https://www.news24.com/Analysis/analysis-race-redress-and-liberalism-how-the-da-lost-its-way-20191010">and then resigned</a>. </p>
<p>Another is the very divisive break of Patricia de Lille, the DA’s mayor of Cape Town, with her Metropolitan Council and executives. And then there was the resignation of Gwen Ngwenya as the party’s policy head because of differences with party leaders, citing what she called an <a href="https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/how-race-poisoned-the-da">“liberal slide-way” in its policies</a>. </p>
<p>Another symptom of, and contributing factor to, the turbulence has been the DA’s relationship with the radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) since the 2016 municipal elections. The party entered into a “strategic cooperation” in municipalities in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay, after elections that saw them <a href="https://www.news24.com/elections/voices/what-a-coalition-could-mean-for-the-future-of-gauteng-south-africa-and-the-big-3-20190507">unseat their common rival, the ANC</a>.</p>
<p>But the cooperation wasn’t built on a firm foundation. The EFF <a href="https://www.polity.org.za/article/eff-withdraws-support-for-da-anc-2019-07-02">announced</a> the end of cooperation with any other party at municipal level in July 2019. This led the DA’s local governments into a phase of perpetual uncertainty. It particularly affected the Tshwane government.</p>
<p>More philosophical but with tangible policy implications, the intensity of the debate on liberalism has also been symptomatic of the turbulence in the DA. </p>
<p>On the one hand are the proponents of the liberal vision of society in which individuals’ opportunities and life are determined by their personal qualities. </p>
<p>On the other hand is the liberal vision that accepts a society with structural inequalities, such as South Africa, cannot be addressed at the individual level, but only collectively. </p>
<p>These two trends don’t directly correlate with a black and white binary in the DA. But it has underscored issues of racial identity or even narrow nationalism in the party.</p>
<h2>What now</h2>
<p>The 2019 election results are closely associated with the ongoing turbulence. Maimane’s leadership in particular has been a factor. He’s been criticised for several reasons. </p>
<p>One goes back to his performance during the campaign and thereafter, when he continued to attack President Cyril Ramaphosa. But the public mood was going the other way. A significant number of DA supporters in Gauteng and the Western Cape gave their national votes to the ANC. This was presumably in support of Ramaphosa, because of his strong anti-corruption stance. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/what-the-four-da-candidates-vying-for-james-selfes-position-have-to-offer-20191005">two main contenders</a> to replace James Selfe as the DA’s federal council chairperson are Zille and Athol Trollip. </p>
<p>They represent two very different options. A win for Trollip would strengthen Maimane’s position. A success for Zille could be seen as part of a fight-back campaign by the Western Cape party establishment to regain lost ground. </p>
<p>What do all of this mean for the DA? The party has made steady progress as the official opposition despite new parties entering the fray. It also presented an alternative to the ANC and the EFF. Both are preoccupied with internal matters. This means that it’s a critical moment for multiparty politics to build trust with the public again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/125169/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Because it’s a blend of political influences the transition it is facing has, inevitably, had an existential effect on the Democratic Alliance.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/927142018-03-21T10:45:08Z2018-03-21T10:45:08ZAsians could opt out of naming a country of origin on the 2020 census, a policymaker’s nightmare<p>A proposal to change the race question for the 2020 census would give Asians the option to mark their race as “Asian,” and also check off or write in their national origin as Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian, Vietnamese and so on. </p>
<p>For the first time in the history of the census, which began in 1790, “Asian” would be a category alongside white and black. The addition of Asian as a racial category reflects the fact that Asians are the country’s <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/">fastest-growing racial group</a>.</p>
<p>But in the current anti-immigrant climate, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2017/08/05/541844705/protests-against-the-push-to-disaggragate-asian-american-data">many Asian-Americans fear</a> how the government will use census data. They believe that by identifying their race or national origin, they will become <a href="http://www.telegram.com/news/20180131/mass-asian-american-data-collection-bill-sparks-fears-of-profiling">targets for discrimination</a>.</p>
<p>Having served on a <a href="http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/2017/04/25/census-must-frame-right-questions-race-national-origin/ideas/nexus/">committee</a> where I advised members of the U.S. Census Bureau, I can attest that this fear will have negative consequences. This gap in data will make it difficult for policymakers to identify and serve their diverse needs.</p>
<h2>Fear of being counted</h2>
<p>Fueled by rumors, insecurities and misconceptions, some Asian-Americans fear that marking their national origin on the 2020 census will lead to an <a href="http://www.statehousenews.com/email/a/2018226?key=426c63c">Asian registry</a>.</p>
<p>The fear was visible in January, when the largest public hearing room in the Massachusetts State House was <a href="http://www.statehousenews.com/email/a/2018226?key=426c63c">packed to capacity</a> with Asian-Americans. Many of them were there to object to a bill that would require state agencies to collect more accurate, detailed data on Asian-Americans. The bill moved forward despite their protests, and a similar bill is being considered in <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/connecticut-bill-would-bar-state-collecting-student-data-specific-sub-n857121">Connecticut</a>.</p>
<p>These bills are not the first of their kind, nor is the push for more detailed and accurate data. <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/california-governor-signs-bill-disaggregate-asian-american-health-data-n655361">California</a> already mandates that state-level data on Asian-Americans be broken down by national origin. This allows the state to better serve their educational, health care and language needs.</p>
<p>Those who are afraid of these changes point to an ugly, irrevocable stain on U.S. history – the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II – as evidence that the government can’t be trusted. In a <a href="https://www.census.gov/srd/papers/pdf/rsm2002-01.pdf">2002 report</a>, the U.S. Census Bureau acknowledged to having “proactively cooperated with the internment.” Some Asian-Americans believe they are protecting their identities, families and civil rights by refusing to mark their race or national origins on the census. </p>
<p>Former Census Bureau Director <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/">Ken Prewitt recognized</a> the Census Bureau’s involvement with the Japanese internment. He attested that the onus is on the census bureau “to bend over backwards to maintain the confidence and the trust of the public.” Trust is especially critical in the current <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/u-s-citizenship-immigration-services-drops-nation-immigrants-mission-statement-n850501">anti-immigrant political climate</a>. </p>
<p>Today, census bureau administrators have security measures in place. When census data are released to federal agencies or organizations, they are carefully reviewed so that <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/confirmed-the-us-census-b/">individual information is not disclosed</a>.</p>
<h2>Diversity of Asian-Americans</h2>
<p>High rates of immigration mean <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/08/key-facts-about-asian-americans/">Asians are the fastest-growing racial group</a> in the United States. Two out of three Asians are immigrants. When you count only adults, the figure increases to four in five. While the new face of U.S. immigration is Asian, Asian is a catch-all category that masks tremendous differences.</p>
<p><iframe id="j9BZB" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/j9BZB/3/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>While Asian-Americans are often touted as so-called <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2015/10/14/news/economy/asian-americans-disadvantage/index.html">model minorities</a> because they are perceived to have high levels of education, a closer look reveals the extreme diversity of this population. Indians, Chinese and Koreans <a href="https://www.russellsage.org/asian-american-achievement-paradox">graduate from college at higher rates</a> than all other U.S. racial groups. At the other extreme are Hmong Americans: 40 percent do not graduate from high school, and only 14 percent have a bachelor’s degree - half the national average. </p>
<p>In addition, according to self-reported data from the American Communities Survey, one-third of Asian-Americans indicated that they speak a language other than English at home and <a href="http://aapidata.com/blog/countmein-language-access/">do not speak English very well</a>. How well people speak English varies widely by national origin group. Nearly three-quarters of Asian Indians speak English very well, but less than one-quarter of Burmese and Buatanese do.</p>
<p>These detailed data can, for example, help policymakers identify which Asian ethnic groups need English language translators to help fill out the census in subsequent years.</p>
<p>More detailed data also affect Asian-Americans’ health care. According to the American Cancer Society, Vietnamese men and women experience the <a href="https://www.cancer.org/content/dam/cancer-org/research/cancer-facts-and-statistics/annual-cancer-facts-and-figures/2016/special-section-cancer-in-asian-americans-native-hawaiians-and-pacific-islanders-cancer-facts-and-figures-2016.pdf">highest rates of lung cancer</a> among all Asian-Americans. Indians and Pakistanis experience the lowest. </p>
<p>Japanese and Korean men and women experience some of the highest incidences of colon cancer – about three times higher than Indians and Pakistanis. Knowing which Asian ethnic groups are more susceptible to particular types of cancer can help tailor health interventions, and, in turn, save lives.</p>
<p>More accurate data are better data. By choosing to be counted and choosing to provide the most detailed data on the 2020 census, Asian-Americans will help protect themselves, their families and their civil rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/92714/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jennifer Lee received funding from the Russell Sage Foundation and the National Science Foundation to support this research. She is a Senior Researcher at AAPI Data, which features demographic data and policy research on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.</span></em></p>Asian-Americans are extremely diverse. Fear of giving the government personal data may make it more difficult to provide the right educational, health care and other services to specific populations.Jennifer Lee, Professor of Sociology, Columbia UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/869022017-12-07T19:18:10Z2017-12-07T19:18:10ZCan Atlanta’s new mayor revive America’s ‘black mecca’?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/198212/original/file-20171207-11325-hmznti.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Keisha Lance Bottoms.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/John Bazemore</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Atlanta mayoral showdown between Keisha Lance Bottoms and Mary Norwood was a political battle 30 years in the making.</p>
<p>Atlanta was poised to elect its first white mayor in decades. However, Bottoms, who is black, claimed a <a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/local-govt--politics/recount-unlikely-favor-norwood-atlanta-mayor-race/deIcq2TERof8fpeXJVkueK/">narrow victory</a> with a few hundred votes more than her opponent. Norwood, who is white, has called for a recount that is unlikely to alter the results.</p>
<p>The election demonstrated the complicated nature of race, class and gender in southern politics. The world has watched Atlanta – the “Black Mecca” – emerge as the vanguard for political inclusion through black electoral politics. Yet, tensions have <a href="http://www.atlantamagazine.com/great-reads/marta-tsplost-transportation/">long simmered</a> just below the surface of the so-called City Too Busy to Hate, as I write in my book, “<a href="https://www.uncpress.org/book/9781469635354/the-legend-of-the-black-mecca">The Legend of the Black Mecca</a>.” Atlanta’s pomp and circumstance of the “Black Mecca” is in jeopardy.</p>
<p>Will keeping Atlanta’s executive leader black help resolve these tensions?</p>
<h2>The black new South</h2>
<p>It has been 44 years since <a href="https://saportareport.com/lets-salute-maynard-jackson-40-years-after-becoming-atlantas-mayor-changing-citys-history/">Maynard Jackson Jr.</a> became the first black mayor of Atlanta. And yet, by and large, Atlanta’s working and poorer classes have suffered as the city has risen to global prominence.</p>
<p>The 1980s dealt a deafening blow when President Ronald Reagan <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/reagans-real-legacy/">cut federal funding</a> to American cities. During that time period, Atlanta’s mayors had no choice but to expand the city through developments made by international investors with profit in mind, but no interest in helping the city’s poor. For example, by the 1980s, Atlanta had the second-highest poverty rate in the country, a large homeless population, a high high school dropout rate along with a drug crisis and a recession. As I explain in my book, Atlanta was also one of the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/14/us/drugs-in-atlanta-a-lost-generation.html">top-ranked cities</a> in the country for incidence of violent crimes. </p>
<p>In 1987, Atlanta’s white business community and the black city government started a bid to host the Centennial Olympic Games. In the bidding process, they promoted the city to the world but did little for Atlanta’s natives. Since then, as I see it, Atlanta’s black leadership has been compromised. </p>
<p>The city’s white business elite saw the Olympic bid as a means to recapture Atlanta’s urban center from blight, triggered by white flight of prior generations. They constructed the <a href="http://www.1ac.com/thelocation.php">Atlantic Center</a>, a master-planned, multiphase office complex with 3 million square feet of premium office space. They also created the <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/local/red-dog-disbanded/YX52PfLGA4pDORgnbcgJCK/">Red Dogs</a>, a military-style police outfit, an aggressive police force in black neighborhoods with high occurrence of drug sales and use as well as violent drug-related crimes. In just seven months after its founding, the Red Dogs were responsible for 721 felony arrests.</p>
<p>During this time, white money transcended black political power. Black politicians became pawns between the city’s white business, black middle classes and poor, and international Olympic delegations.</p>
<h2>Atlanta anticipated</h2>
<p>As I explain in my book, the popular political sentiment of the black masses is one of distrust and resentment toward leadership. They believe black leaders pursued policies that benefited white and black elites to the exclusion of the vast majority of black citizens who had brought them to power. </p>
<p>Take housing, for example. From 1974 to 1984, funding for the city’s public housing was slashed by 74 percent. So, Atlanta’s leadership demolished much of it, displacing thousands. The city is now 30 years into a 40-year plan to take back downtown real estate and set housing at market prices – making it unaffordable to working Atlantans who don’t have generational wealth.</p>
<p>I am disheartened by my generation’s negligence. As of Dec. 5, 2017, 640,861 voters <a href="https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/2017-city-of-atlanta-general-election/2017-election-results">were registered</a> in Atlanta’s Fulton County and DeKalb County districts. Only 92,169 voters cast ballots for the mayoral race. For black Gen Xers, this mayoral race demonstrates how negligent we are in understanding history. Our parents bore witness to disenfranchisement and second-class citizenship until the mid-1960s, only for us – the black electorate of Atlanta – to became idolaters of power and popularity, splitting the black vote and forgetting to perform politically.</p>
<p>Narrowly, black Atlantans delivered this election for Bottoms. The vote was divided by race. Maps show that Bottoms’s victory came from <a href="https://atlanta.curbed.com/2014/6/2/10092862/how-segregated-is-atlanta">predominantly black</a> neighborhoods of Atlanta’s west, southwest, south, southeast and east sides. Norwood carried neighborhoods in the predominantly white northern half of the city. Strikingly, the numbers indicate <a href="http://www.myajc.com/news/atlanta-mayoral-runoff-election-2017-precinct-results-map/nnKzoJYBcvkd4E5Hit38CM/">poor voter turnout</a> for both candidates. What does this mean for the future of a city branded as “the City Too Busy to Hate,” “The Black Mecca” and “Hotlanta”?</p>
<p>Let’s be clear: Atlanta is liberated territory for black, brown and other communities on the fringes. Yet, it may be too much to ask our city to live up to all of its competing images. Journalist John Helyar once wrote, “If New York is the Big Apple and New Orleans is the Big Easy, Atlanta is the Big Hustle.” Perhaps Atlanta can focus inwardly – recalibrating virtue and merit – casting aside its conniving spirit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Maurice J. Hobson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The city’s image as a model for black mobility and civil rights is crumbling. An expert on race and class politics takes us behind the veneer of one of the South’s most important cities.Maurice J. Hobson, Assistant Professor of African-American Studies, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/825042017-08-31T20:24:29Z2017-08-31T20:24:29ZRacism is real, race is not: a philosopher’s perspective<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/183420/original/file-20170825-23353-tytjlu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=147%2C318%2C4027%2C3135&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">There are no races – biological or social – only racialised groups. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/portrait-family-sitting-on-steps-outside-516648430?src=O5pFr0gJ8h3AzacdZtKYRg-1-45">from www.shutterstock.com </a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We live in a richly diverse country, populated by Indigenous Australians, recent immigrants, and descendants of relatively recent immigrants. Some feel threatened by this diversity; some relish it. </p>
<p>Most of us, I think, are unsure quite how to talk about it.</p>
<p>We have many words to describe diversity. We ask people about their ancestry, their ethnicity, and – most awkwardly – their “background”. We seem least comfortable asking people about their “race”, and with good reason. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-markers-of-everyday-racism-in-australia-71152">The markers of everyday racism in Australia</a>
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<p>Racial classification has been used to justify some of the most heinous crimes of modernity, including those <a href="https://aiatsis.gov.au/sites/default/files/products/discussion_paper/tatzc-dp08-genocide-in-australia.pdf">committed on our own shores</a>. Asking people about their “race” can make you sound a bit, well, racist. </p>
<p>Yet “racial” classification is still commonplace. Many articles in The Conversation use the term “race” to describe human diversity. For example, one asks <a href="https://theconversation.com/whats-behind-racial-differences-in-restaurant-tipping-35889">what’s behind racial differences in restaurant tipping?</a>, while another tells us that <a href="https://theconversation.com/infants-learn-to-distinguish-between-races-1379">infants learn to distinguish between races</a>. </p>
<h2>Racialised groups</h2>
<p>What justifies the continued use of racial classification? Nothing, or so I argue in <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.003">Replacing Race</a>, an open-access article published recently in the philosophy journal Ergo. </p>
<p>I argue that there are no races, only racialised groups – groups that have been misunderstood as biological races. </p>
<p>The reader may object – “surely, I can see race with my bare eyes!” However, it is not race we see, but the superficial visible biological diversity within our species: variation in traits such as skin colour, hair form and eye shape. This variation is not enough to justify racial classification. Our biological diversity is too small, and too smoothly distributed across geographic space, for race to be real.</p>
<p>This is not merely an opinion. From a scientific perspective, the best candidate for a synonym for “race” is “subspecies” (the classification level below “species” in biology). When scientists apply the standard criteria to determine whether there are subspecies/races in humans, <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23684745">none are found</a>. In chimpanzees yes, but in humans no. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/human-races-biological-reality-or-cultural-delusion-30419">Human races: biological reality or cultural delusion?
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<p>Racial classification is unscientific. However, humanities scholars have their own justifications for race-talk. Many argue that while there are no biological races, there are social races. Race, as philosophers put it, is a social kind.</p>
<p>In my view, the redefinition of race as a social kind has been a major mistake. Most people still think of race as a biological category. By redefining it socially, we risk miscommunicating with each other on this fraught topic. </p>
<h2>Race does not exist</h2>
<p>Not only is the redefinition of race as a social kind confusing, I argue that <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.003">race does not exist even as a social kind</a>. Racism is real, in both an interpersonal and a structural sense, but race is not.</p>
<p>Once the idea of race is divorced from biology, strange things start happening, conceptually. What makes a group a “race”, if race is social, rather than biological? </p>
<p>We could say that races are just the groups that are labelled as races, but this doesn’t work. Just as witches are not women accused of being witches, races are not merely groups labelled as races. There has to be something more to the group for it to qualify as a social kind. </p>
<p>Nobody has put their finger on this “something more”. Some tie “race” to “essentialism”. Essentialism is the view that groups have <em>essenses</em>: fixed traits that all members of a group have, and which are unique to that group. “Social races”, on this view, are groups treated as if they have some unchangeable essence. </p>
<p>This move fails. While racialisation is often essentialising, it is not always. If you look at current “scientific” racism, you’ll see that it’s all about alleged inborn <em>average</em> differences between the so-called “races”, not racial essences (which does not make it any less horrid, <a href="http://www.peterdanpsychology.ro/ro/pagina/25/files/docs/more%20on%20black%20iq.pdf">or more plausible</a>). </p>
<p>Moreover, essentialist thinking is not only applied to racialised groups. Gender is also essentialised, and so is ethnicity. </p>
<p>Remember when I said strange things start happening when race is defined socially? Well, if races are social groups subject to essentialism, we would have to accept that men and women constitute <em>de facto</em> races!</p>
<h2>Let’s abandon “race”</h2>
<p>We should abandon attempts to save the category of race. There is no good way to make sense of the category from a biological or a social perspective. There are no races, only groups misunderstood as races: racialised groups.</p>
<p>Racialised groups are not biological groups, in the sense that they are not biological races. Yet how you are racialised does depend on superficial biological characteristics, such as skin colour. That is to say, racialised groups have biological inclusion criteria, vague and arbitrary as they may be. </p>
<p>These biological inclusion criteria are <em>determined by social factors</em>. Philosophical debates about “race” have relied on a dichotomy between the biological and the social. However, this is a false dichotomy: the biological and the social interact. </p>
<p>In racialisation, the biological and the social interact with a number of other factors: administrative, cultural, economic, geographic, gendered, historical, lingual, phenomenological, political, psychological, religious, and so on. I call this view “<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0004.003">interactive constructionism about racialised groups</a>”.</p>
<p>The category of the “racialised group” can be of great value, politically. It offers a way for those who have historically been treated as members of “inferior races” to assert and defend themselves collectively, while distancing themselves from the negative and misleading associations of the term “race”. “Race” is not needed for purposes of social justice. </p>
<p>According to researcher Victoria Grieves in her article <a href="https://theconversation.com/culture-not-colour-is-the-heart-of-aboriginal-identity-30102">Culture, not colour, is the heart of Aboriginal identity</a>,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Being of Aboriginal descent is crucial because this is our link to country and the natural world. But at the same time, Aboriginal people do not rely on a race-based identity … continuing cultural values and practice are the true basis of Aboriginal identity in the whole of Australia today</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The category of race is not needed for cultural identity or political action. </p>
<p>We need to be talking about racism, racialisation, and racialised groups, not “race”. Given that “race” fails as both a biological and a social category, let’s consign it to the dustbin of history’s bad ideas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/82504/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Hochman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is no good way to make sense of the category “race” from biological or social perspectives.Adam Hochman, Lecturer, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.