A Theory Of Race

Social commentators have long asked whether racial categories should beconserved or eliminated from our practices discourse institutions andperhaps even private... » 

Social commentators have long asked whether racial categories should beconserved or eliminated from our practices discourse institutions andperhaps even private thoughts. In A Theory of Race Joshua Glasgow argues thatthis set of choices unnecessarily presents us with too few options. Using bothtraditional philosophical tools and recent psychological research toinvestigate folk understandings of race Glasgow argues that as ordinarilyconceived race is an illusion. However our pressing need to speak to and makesense of social life requires that we employ something like racial discourse.These competing pressures Glasgow maintains ultimately require us to stopconceptualizing race as something biological and instead understand it as anentirely social phenomenon. «