'Race': normative, not metaphysical or semantic

Journal ArticleIn recent years, there has been a flurry of work on the metaphysics of race. While it is now widely accepted that races do not share robust, biobehavioral essences, opinions differ over what, if anything, race is. Recent work has been divided between three apparently quite different answers. A variety of theorists argue for racial skepticism, the view that races do not exist at all.2 A second group defends racial constructionism,3 holding that races are in some way socially constructed.4 And a third group maintains racial population naturalism, the view that races may exist as biologically salient populations, albeit ones that do not have the biologically determined social significance once imputed to them.5 The three groups thus seem to disagree fundamentally on the metaphysical character of race