Paste your essay in here…Many philosophers have questioned the metaphysics of race in today's society. Does race still exist in our culture today? Did it ever actually exist? If it does exist should we keep it around? Three philosophers chose to take on these unanswered questions and explain their argument on race. In The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race, Anthony Appiah suggests that we ought to eliminate the idea of race. In Reparations and the Rectification of Race, Naomi Zack suggests that such elimination is not possible because race never existed. In Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race, Paul Taylor suggests that eliminating race is unwise. Naomi Zack's conclusion is the most similarly correlated with Paul Taylor's idea of race because both believe it is unwise and impossible to completely eliminate the idea of race.
In Reparations and the Rectification of Race written by Naomi Zack, Zack argues that race is not real, however, racial injustices are. "Not only is it morally wrong to treat people differently on the grounds of biological race but it is mistaken and wrong to think that there are biological racial differences among people" (Zack 144). To argue her point, Zack uses the example of saying that even though slaves had a different skin color than their owners, they were still of the same race according to the universal human rights doctrine. This doctrine entitled everyone with the same equal human rights. However, she argues that this doctrine was not fulfilled; as race was a tool used to deny certain people of these human rights. Zack says that to see rectification of slavery, we must restore "full humanity to our ideas of the slaves and their descendants" (Zack 139). Meaning we must correct the past by changing the future. Zack's overall claim is that erasing the idea of race is impossible because it never existed. "Since biological race never existed, it cannot be eliminated. Such elimination is not even a logical possibility. (Zack 150)"
Naomi Zack creates a curious argument in Reparations and the Rectification of Race by arguing that she is not an eliminativist however she says that race is not real. This is sort of hard to grasp because eliminativist, like Anthony Appiah, usually believe that race is not real. Zack argues that those who claim to be racial eliminativist "are usually concerned with…a complete assimilation of black culture into white…and a return to worse forms of racism" (Zack 150). Unlike herself, Zack is not concerned with a return to worse forms of racism but rather restoring humanity to those affected by racism in the past. To understand Zack's strange yet strong argument, we must see it from the perspective of not being able to erase something that doesn't actually physically exist.
In The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race written by Anthony Appiah, Appiah also argues the idea of race. Similarly, to Zack, he argues that race is not real, however he is an eliminativist. "The truth is that there are no races: there is nothing in the world that can do all we ask "race" to do for us. The evil that is done is done by the concept and by easy-yet impossible-assumptions as to its application" (Appiah 35-36). Appiah creates this claim by disputing Du Bois' argument of race. He believes that race is not real, unlike Du Bois who says that race boils down to a common history. Appiah justifies that common history does not allow us to make distinctions between something like English and Negro, because "in order to recognize two events at different times as part of the history of a single individual, we have to have criterion for identity of the individual at each of those times" (Appiah 27). This process is continuous and therefore never ends. By describing common history as an infinite circular motion, Appiah concludes that we ought to eliminate the talk of race. "What is present there is not our concept but our word only" (Appiah 36). There is no way to escape this circle of common history, therefore there is no need for race. Although Appiah and Zack both have commonalities between them, they still don't totally agree on the metaphysics of race. As an eliminativist, Appiah argues that we should eliminate race whereas Zack argues that we cannot eliminate it because it was never biologically real.
In Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race written by Paul Taylor, Taylor argues that race is a social fact and it exists because human societies made them exist. "But the main outlines clear: race is a matter of social facts, not of biological essences" (Taylor 125). By social fact, Taylor is inferring that it originated through time in the culture of a society. A dollar bill is an example of a social fact. There is absolutely no value of a paper dollar bill, however, it has value because society says it does. Just like race, it was made up and people's lives were then structured around it even though there was no biological basis. Taylor also states that "Attempting to opt out of or eliminate the conventions that define race in America is unwise" (Taylor 113). This is quite the opposite of what Appiah suggests we do with the idea of race. Appiah and Zack actually have very different pictures about what we ought to do with the concept of race. Even though both Appiah and Zack agree that race was never biologically real, Appiah believes we should eliminate the idea of race and Zack believes we cannot eliminate it because it was never real. Overall, Paul Taylor's opinion on what we ought to do with the idea of race correlates hand in hand with Naomi Zack's opinion. Both Taylor and Zack argue that eliminating race is unwise and not possible.
My proposed argument that Naomi Zack's picture of what we ought to do with race and Paul Taylor's idea is similarly correlated, may be objected by some. However, I find my argument compelling. Particularly, one might challenge how I see a correlation between Zack and Taylor when Taylor's whole paper is about how race is real and Zack's is how it is not real. After analyzing each text thoroughly, I have based my ideas off of the correlation of Zack and Taylor's ideas. Specifically, the ideas of what they believe we should do with the concept of race. Not, the ideas of what each of them suggest regarding the realness of race. Zack believes eliminating race is not possible because it never existed, and Taylor believes eliminating race is unwise. Although they share varying ideas about the concept of race being real, I argue that there is a correlation of views involving what we should do with race.
In conclusion, Anthony Appiah, Naomi Zack, and Paul Taylor all created strong arguments regarding what we ought to do with the concept of race. Anthony Appiah proposed that we ought to eliminate the idea of race. Naomi Zack proposed that such elimination is not possible because race never existed. Lastly, Paul Taylor proposed that eliminating race is unwise. Overall, Naomi Zack's picture of what we ought to do with race is most similarly correlated with Paul Taylor's idea of race. Both believe that it is unwise and impossible to completely eliminate the idea of race.