Navigating the Topology of Race, Jayne Chong-Soon Lee

8/13/2019 Navigating the Topology of Race, Jayne Chong-Soon Lee

1/30

Brooks, Hannah 1/10/2014For Educational Use Only

NAVIGATING THE TOPOLOGY OF RACE, 46 Stan. L. Rev. 747

© 2014 Thomson Reuters. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. 1

46 Stan. L. Rev. 747

Stanford Law Review

February, 1994

Review Essay

NAVIGATING THE TOPOLOGY OF RACE

Jayne Chong-Soon Leea1

Copyright © 1994 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior; Jayne Chong-Soon Lee

IN MY FATHER'S HOUSE: AFRICA IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE. By Kwame Anthony Appiah. d1 NewYork, N.Y.: Oxford University Press. 1992. 219 pp. $29.95

In this Review Essay, Jayne Chong-Soon Lee summarizes and critiques Kwame Anthony Appiah's attack on the foundationsof racial difference. Appiah uncovers the assumptions and tautologies underlying traditional definitions of race: biology,sociology, history, and essence. In doing so, Appiah hopes to demolish the theoretical legacy of racism. But this attack, Ms. Leeargues, goes too far. Appiah's critique presumes that race has an id entifiable and fixed meaning outside of the social context of its use. Ms. Lee points out that discussions of race never merely describe what race is, but actively construct the meaning of race, and that this meaning continuously shifts. By abandoning the idea that biological and essential definitions of race haveany sound basis, Appiah's approach denies antiracists the flexibility needed to address racism in a world in which the concept “race” has no fixed content. The result is often a world in which racism is perpetuated. For instance, in Shaw v. Reno,amajority of the Supreme Court reached a result that disempowered a historically disenfranchised group because it felt it could not recognize the legitimacy of using race as a basis for reapportionment. Ms. Lee argues that effective confrontation of racism

requires the ability to choose from a multiplicity of definitions of race, as the particular situation demands, and that the use of racial categories is not inevitably racist. She concludes that we should veer away from unitary definitions of race, and beginto refer to plural definitions of race and racisms .

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,--the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men i

Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.1

*748 I. INTRODUCTION

A. Songlines, Dreaming-tracks, Footprints of the Ancestors, or the Way of the Law

In The Songlines , Bruce Chatwin writes of invisible pathways that crisscross Australia, known to white settlers as “Dreaming

tracks” or “Songlines,” and to Aborigines as “Footprints of the Ancestors” or “The Way of the Law.”2 According to Aboriginallegends, totemic ancestors wandered over Australia during the Dreamtime of Creation and sang the world into existence. Theysang into being the trees, plants, rocks, waterholes, animals and even themselves. They ate, danced, made love, killed, an

hunted--leaving tracks of music wherever they went.3 Etching a labyrinth of invisible Songlines that mapped the continent,they left footprints through which their descendants could reconstruct the Creation.

http://www.westlaw.com/Link/Document/FullText?findType=h&pubNum=176284&cite=0212223401&originatingDoc=Id7bb94c10c2911ddb778ead008c6b935&refType=RQ&originationContext=document&vr=3.0&rs=cblt1.0&transitionType=DocumentItem&contextData=(sc.UserEnteredCitation)


2/30




Through these Songlines, Chatwin explains, we can read all of Australia as a musical score by which each route, river, or oth

geographical site could be sung.4 We can picture the Songlines as a “spaghetti of Iliads and Odysseys, writhing this way and

that, in which every ‘episode’ is readable in terms of geology.”5 The melody of every song echoes the contours of the landthat it describes. If we were “dragging [our] heels across the salt-pans of Lake Eyre,” we “could expect a succession of lonflats, like Chopin's ‘Funeral March.”’ On the other hand, if we were “skipping up and down the MacDonnell escarpmentswe would find “a series of arpeggios and glissandos, like Liszt's ‘Hungarian Rhapsodies.”’6 The song is a map, “a memory

bank for finding one's way about the world.”7

According to Chatwin, Aborigines do not believe that the country exists until they can see and sing it. The land “must first exi

as a concept in the mind,” and then must be sung. “Only then can [the land] be said to exist ....”8 In this Creation, perceptionprecedes existence; melody predates geology. And unlike the biblical Genesis, this Creation does not happen just once. Withothe continuous reenactment of the Creation, the constant performance of the singers, the world could not continue. The lan

unsung would die.9 An Aborigine sustains the life of the land by walking his Songline. “By spending his*749 whole life

walking and singing his Ancestor's Songline, a man eventually [becomes] the track,”10 the track becomes the song, and the songbecomes the land. In this process, both song and land become constructed and constructing: The motif contours the landscapand the terrain shapes the melody.

Chatwin's themes of construction and mapping echo current controversies in academic discussions of race and difference.11

These metaphors capture the crux of important questions in literature and ethnic studies, and in the study of multiculturalisand diversity. How should we define race? Is it based on biological or social differences? What is the relationshipbetweenthe biological and the social? Do biological differences construct social identities, or do social differences dictate biologicaclassifications? As Chatwin might ask the question: Does the landscape prefigure the melody, or does the tune contour th

terrain? These metaphors also summarize legal disputes over the significance that we should accord racial differences.12

Bypassing the debates over the origins of racial geography, legal scholars have instead explored how we can navigate thi

landscape. Should we ignore racial differences and draft raceneutral programs? Or should we explicitly acknowledge raciadifferences and formulate race-specific ones?

More specifically, Chatwin's construction theme illustrates the complex relationship between discourse13 and reality. Ratherthan assume discourse reflects some preexisting reality, we can instead explore how discourse constructs our perception o

reality.14 When I use the term “constructs,” I do not deny the existence of some fixed reality, nor do I suggest that onlydiscourse exists. I do not mean that because we claim that a river does not exist, it ceases to exist. The river exists even if it

constructed discursively--you still get wet if you*750 fall in.15 Instead, I argue that our “reality” is never directly experienced,but always perceived through a discursive framework. This framework itself is not transparent; it filters and authorizes onlcertain versions of reality. We never directly apprehend our river, but always encounter it through some discursive filter. Wmay believe that the river is the result of geological fissures or the footprint of an ancestor. Our encounter with the river and ourexplanation of its wetness are constructed through discursive frameworks. The very naturalness of “reality” is itself the effeof a particular set of discursive constructions. In this way, discourse does not simply reflect reality, but actually participate

in its very construction.16

Along similar lines, we may ask how the law constructs and legitimates racial differences. Current statutory and constitutiondoctrine presupposes that the law merely reflects or recognizes race's independent “reality.” When we claim that racial difference

precedes the law, however, we obscure the role of the law in constructing these differences. For example, in Shaw v. Reno , 17

white plaintiffs challenged a state electoral plan as an impermissible racial gerrymander. Writing for the majority, Justice


3/30




O'Connor used a biological definition of race: She equated race with skin color. But the dissents chose a social definition orace: They equated racial difference with experiences of past discrimination. Whether we believe that race is either biologicor social in nature, one thing is clear: The Justices inShaw all believed that they were merely recognizing an extant racialdifference, not actively constructing it. The belief that the Court merely describes a preexisting reality is itself a discursiv

construction that has led to inequitable outcomes in affirmative action and voting rights cases.18

If “reality” is constructed, how do we then contest prejudiced accounts of racial character? The argument that “reality” i just another discursive construction would seem to undermine challenges to “inaccurate” depictions of race as stereotypeChatwin's theme of mapping shows how we can turn from evaluating the accuracy of racist accounts to tracing the ways i

which these accounts are constructed and legitimized.19 If race does not exist outside discursive*751 frameworks, then ourtask is not to discover the “reality” of race--searching for the authentic features of racial difference-- but instead to survey thtracks of power, to examine the consequences of different versions of racial difference. Our task becomes not to ask whetherthe geographical features really exist, but instead to diagram their topography. Through this analysis, we can discover howracial difference has been constructed, and chart the political effects of various discursive frameworks. Race then becomes theffect of ideological practices rather than their cause. It becomes the terrain upon which power relationships are contested, notmerely the physical differences between groups.

Historically, the terrain of race has shifted between definitions of (1) race as biological characteristics, historical commonalityor essential identity, and (2) race as the erroneous categorization of people, or the false attribution of traits to people. Botdefinitions, however, locate race as an attribute within people rather than as a complex set of relations between peopleAdditionally, these definitions fail to account for changes in racial conceptions over time, for why race has itself become a sitof political struggle, and, most seriously, for how race is defined not by its inherent meaning but by the social contexts throug

which it is constructed.20 To the extent that we see race as practice instead of object, effect instead of cause, there are importantconsequences for antiracist movements. For once we acknowledge the many ways in which race can be constructed in soci

contexts, we cannot determine beforehand that the content of any particular practice is racist and thus oppressive.21 We cannot

determine that all biological definitions of race are regressive, nor can we presume that all social definitions are progressivSimilarly, we cannot regard all race-specific policies to be subordinating, nor can we assume that all race-neutral programs aroppressive. Instead, we must map out each specific case to determine what the effect of a certain racial practice will be. Onlthen can we intervene effectively to promote racial justice.

The importance of examining the effects of racial definitions rather than their content becomes clearer when we examin

the trajectory of racist discourse. The racist rhetoric of the 1990s is voiced in different terms than that of the 1960s.22 Toexpress racial bigotry, public discourse now employs racially*752 coded words--“Willie Horton” or “welfare queen”--rather

than racial epithets.23 Legal discourse uses the language of liberal “colorblindness,” rather than that of racial inferiority,

to undermine racial reform.24 Fixed definitions of race and racism do not perform well in light of the sheer flexibility ofracist discourse. Perhaps the only constant about race discourse is its malleability, fluidity, and variability. Static strategiethat reject all biological conceptions or all social constructions of race risk racist appropriation and do not permit antiracisreappropriation.25 Either side of the biological/social binarism can be used for political and legal subordination.26 If oneembraces a strictly biological conception of race, racists can claim the biological inferiority of a particular racial group. If onchooses a strictly social-constructionist conception, critics can argue that race does not exist to dismantle affirmative action.Race itself becomes the ground upon which material, legal, and political contests are fought. How we navigate this discursivground is the primary inquiry of this review essay.


4/30




B. Appiah's Motifs

Kwame Anthony Appiah is a prominent participant in the debate over the definitions of race and the significance of raciadifference. A Professor of African-American Studies and Philosophy at Harvard University, Appiah has written extensively oAfrican and African-American literary criticism. In a recent collection of his essays, In My Father's House , Appiah addressesthe construction and mapping of race27 in his usual comprehensive and controversial*753 manner. For the first time,Appiah gathers several themes that have suffused his writings and presents them as a collection. Layered upon each other, thessays reveal an even greater intricacy than each demonstrates individually. Appiah's discussion of the ontology of race, wheconsidered with his analysis of the universal/particular dichotomy, evolves into a rich argument about the politics of racia

particularity.28 Similarly, his discussion of the legacy of racism and racialism develops an added urgency when seen togethe

with his critique of the premises of the African Nativist movement.29

Often brilliant, sometimes contentious, but always absorbing, Appiah's book elevates the dialogue on race onto a new leve

Appiah departs from the familiar landscape of statistical and empirical accounts of racial discrimination, and of historical30 andeconomic accounts of racial ideology, to probe the very definitions of race itself. He bypasses the empirical question of whethracism exists to ask the theoretical question of what race and racism are. Similarly, he avoids the historical question of whdid what, preferring to ask how the “who” and the “what” are constituted. By circumventing the typical questions we ask aborace, Appiah opens up the impasses that currently constrain the dialogue. By analyzing how racial difference is constructed, hcharts the ways in which certain groups are designated as racially distinct. And by asking how racial identity is constructedAppiah investigates the relationship between racial category and racial subjectivity.

Taken as a whole, Appiah's argument does not threaten the possibility of African-American identity, as some commentator

have argued.31 Rather, he questions the uncritical use of biological and essential conceptions of race as premises of antiracis

struggles.32 His point is that we cannot analyze racial difference from within frameworks that already assume biologicaldifference. These efforts fail to question the naturalized frameworks and do not consider alternatives (for example, the potentiof cultural identities). Further, these attempts fail to take seriously the legacy of racist domination. The term “race” may be shistorically and socially overdetermined that it is beyond rehabilitation. Rather than presume biological and essential definitioof race to be solutions to racism, Appiah suggests that we approach these presumptions as*754 problems for antiracism. Hethereby challenges the fundamental tenets of current antiracist practice.

But Appiah wages the battle too fiercely. Having uncovered the falsity of biological and essential conceptions of race anracial unity, he suggests that we abandon the term “race” and substitute “culture.” In doing so, he overestimates the constrainof racist domination and underestimates the possibility for antiracist struggle. Because Appiah views race as unity, he cannconceive the possibility of an antiracist argument that uses a biological or essential conception of race, and thereby invitereactionary appropriation of his arguments. Similarly, because he examines the content of racial definitions instead of theieffects, he rejects all uses of these conceptions of race instead of selecting certain uses in certain social contexts. By abdicatinall uses of these conceptions of race, he underestimates the multiplicity of race and racially based resistance to racism.

C. Relevance to American Issues of Race and Law

Appiah primarily discusses African identity and Pan-Africanism in his book. But his arguments about race apply to Americarace issues. As Appiah himself has pointed out, definitions of racial identity have been forged by both Africans and AfricanAmericans in a mutual conversation. The main characters in Appiah's book, the two founders of Pan-Africanism, are AlexanderCrummell and W.E.B. DuBois--both African-American by birth. In this dialogue on race, African and African-America


5/30




identities are too interwoven to be easily separated. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., cautions us: “We must chart both the moments ocontinuity and discontinuity between African cultures and African-American cultures. Only a fool would try to deny continuiti

between the Old World and the New World African cultures.”33 Of course, the substance of those continuities must be mapped

out carefully. Further, current issues of race and racism transcend national boundaries.34 To pretend otherwise is to ignore theinternational nature of scholarship, communication, immigration, and travel. Indeed, we have much to learn from the methodthat *755 Appiah uses to analyze race and racism. In his book, Appiah examines the heritage that African-Americans have

bequeathed to Pan-Africanists.35 I reverse his trajectory by examining the inheritance that African-Americans have receivedfrom Pan-Africanists. The legacy has come full circle.

Appiah's arguments also bear on discussions of race in the American legal system. His methods of analyzing race and racishelp us navigate the impasses over racial difference in the law. Currently, one heated legal debate concerns the use of raceconscious measures intended to benefit historically oppressed groups. Advocates of race-neutral measures argue that legislationintended to benefit minorities should be tested by thesame standards as that intended to harm them. On the other hand, advocatesof race-conscious measures respond that laws requiring or permitting activity designed to benefit minorities should be teste

by less stringent standards than those designed to harm them.36

Appiah suggests that, before we can resolve this dispute, wemust uncover the implicit definitions of race used by each side.

Before applying Appiah's arguments to legal debates, it is important to examine the context in which these ideas were formed: thacademic debate over the significance of racial difference in literary scholarship. Because Appiah's reasoning, though precisis complex and often misunderstood by critics, I will review Appiah's specific arguments at some length. This analysis of thcontext and method of Appiah's arguments will provide a foundation for the analysis of legal scholarship that follows.

II. THE LANDSCAPE OF RACIAL THEORY

A. Surveying the Terrain

In a momentous 1986 exchange that summarized the day's current controversies on race, three scholars shared their ideas obiological and social conceptions of race. Anthony Appiah argued that “race” did not exist; Houston Baker, Jr., replied tha“race” had material effects; and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., countered that “race” was a trope with serious consequences.

In The Uncompleted Argument: DuBois and the Illusion of Race , Appiah argued that biological race does not exist. He pointedout that[a]part from the visible morphological characteristics of skin, hair and bone, by which we are inclined to assign people to thbroadest racial categories-- black, white, yellow--there are few genetic characteristics to be found in the population of Englan

that are not found in similar proportions in Zaire or in China ....37

In other words, biological traits do not distinguish members of one putative race from another. Appiah concluded that “ther

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*756 done bythe concept and by easy--yet impossible--assumptions as to its application.”38 Appiah's argument provoked heated responses.

Some commentators denounced what they saw as the deconstruction of Black identity39 and the dismissal of the history of racistsubordination. Others applauded Appiah's argument as the necessary dismantling of biological, naturalized, and essentialis

concepts of race.40


6/30




Houston Baker, Jr., an African-American literary critic, objected that “what Appiah--in harmony with his privilege

evolutionary biologists--discounts as mere ‘gross' features of hair, bone, and skin is not, in fact, discountable.”41 Relatinghis own encounters with racism, Baker pointed out that “Appiah's eloquent shift to the common ground of subtle academdiscourse is instructive but, ultimately, unhelpful in a world where New York cab drivers scarcely ever think of mitochondri

before refusing to pick me up.”42 Baker suggested that Appiah's dismissal of the significance of race fails to account for thehistorical and social experiences of racism and can be politically dangerous at a time when hegemonic “whitemale” discour

attempts to undermine advances made by women and people of color.43 Baker feared that “when science apologizes and saysthere is no such thing, all talk of ‘race’ must cease. Hence ‘race,’ as a recently emergent, unifying, and forceful sign of differenc

in the service of the ‘Other,’ is held up to scientific ridicule as, ironically, ‘unscientific.”’44 To demolish biological race,Baker implied, is to threaten the emergence of racial subjectivity. He suggested that Appiah jeopardized the political agendof African-Americans by denying any legitimate basis for asserting a group identity based upon a common racial history an

common social experiences.45 Such an exercise, taken to its extreme, negates the possibility of the assertion of racial identity.

By contrast, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., another African-American literary critic, agreed with much in Appiah's leveling o

biological race. Gates questioned the value of morphology as a classifier, asking, “[w]ho has seen a black or red person, a whityellow, or brown? These terms are arbitrary constructs, not reports of reality.”46 Like Appiah, Gates proclaimed that “‘races,’

put simply, do not exist, and that to claim that they do, for whatever misguided reason, is to stand on dangerous ground.”47

For him, racial designations (“the white*757 race” or “the black race”) are descriptive metaphors, not biological facts. Gates

viewed race as a “trope of ultimate, irreducible difference,” not as objective truth.48 Race is a fiction, albeit a powerful one.

Gates later explained how race affects the daily lives of African-Americans. Narrating his own version of Houston Baker, Jr.“taxi fallacy,” Gates asks us to picture the following:Houston, Anthony, and I emerge from the splendid isolation of the Schomburg Library and stand together on the corner of 135th Street and Malcolm X Boulevard attempting to hail a taxi to return to the Yale Club. With the taxis shooting by us as

we did not exist, Anthony and I cry out in perplexity, “But sir, it's only a trope.”49

Gates ends his hypothetical ironically: “If only that'sall it was.”50 Race, according to Gates, is a construction that carriesserious consequences.

The intensity of these debates over the definition and significance of race can be explained by each participant's recognition the political consequences of adopting a particular definition. In proposing definitions of race and racism, scholars navigatedamong biological, historical, social, cultural, essential, and political conceptions. Surprisingly, the underlying theme was thawe must choose between these definitions. The discursive framework that dominated these debates mapped possible definitio

of race as binarisms.51 Race was defined as either biologically or socially constructed. Recognition of race proceeded in an

all-or-nothing fashion: Either race exists,or it does not; either culture exists, or it does not.52

This all-or-nothing choice is not very helpful. As I have explained, race and racism are malleable concepts that changconstantly. Embracing one view to the exclusion of the other leaves open the possibility of racist appropriation *758 and limitsthe potential for antiracist struggle. The fluidity of racist discourse requires us to accept that “race” can be defined in mandifferent ways simultaneously. Once we relinquish exclusive definitions of race, we are free to explore the consequences ocertain conceptions of race in a variety of situations. We can begin to chart the complexity of the terrain we call race when wrefuse to accept restrictive binary categories.


7/30




After all, the meaning of race is never given solely by its content. Its meaning is always constructed by the social contexts iwhich it is embedded. Since these social contexts change constantly, the term “race” possesses no fixed content. Race always hmany meanings. Because we cannot determine the “racism” of a practice from its content alone, we can never predict whetha practice will be racist or antiracist. Instead, we must examine the practice's social situation and effects. This indeterminac

does not mean we need abandon all prediction. It is almost certain that references to race at a Ku Klux Klan rally will be racisand equally clear that those in Toni Morrison's work will be antiracist. What this indeterminacy does mean is that we oftecannot ascertain whether a practice is racist apart from its social context and its effects. With context and effect so importanwe cannot afford to abandon any of the possible conceptions of race. In the constantly changing topology of race and racismbiological, social, cultural, essential, and political conceptions all have a place in antiracist struggle. The best that we can dis to navigate this terrain.

B. Biological Race

Appiah suggests that racism appears permanent because we continue to use vocabulary tainted by unquestioned supposition

about race.53 Unless we dismantle and analyze the ways we employ ideas of race, we unwittingly reproduce the verydiscrimination and stereotypes that we have condemned. Treating the legacy of scientific racism seriously, Appiah argues tha

race has no meaningful genetic or morphological basis.54 Dissatisfied with merely debunking biological race, he ventures evenfurther by dissecting the common assumption that a group of people with a common history comprise a race. Appiah argues thdefining race as a common history biologizes racial differences.*759 To know what the relevant common history is requires

a prior assumption about who is to be included in this history.55 Finally, he questions the assertion of racial particularity andthe call for racially-based resistance, arguing that these tactics only reinforce the false and dangerous notion of racial essence

Although his methods are controversial, Appiah's relentless deconstruction of race addresses clearly important theoretical anpolitical concerns. First, he recognizes the need to dissect the legacy of nineteenth century scientific racism: the institutionalizeequation of biological difference with racial inferiority and the use of this biological inferiority to justify racial discriminatio

and exclusion. Second, Appiah seeks to dismantle the naturalization of racial difference--the belief that race is an inherenfixed characteristic located within people rather than in social relations between people. Third, Appiah attempts to historicizthe concept of race by demonstrating that race arose from a confluence of specific historical and social factors. Fourth, he seekto expose the processes through which subjects become “racialized” beings, allowing us to examine how racial differenceemerge from, rather than create, an atmosphere of racial domination. Fifth, Appiah emphasizes the dangers of invoking a reifiedracial essence, even in the name of resistance to dominant norms (as in the African Nativist and Negritude movements). FinallAppiah challenges entrenched understandings of racial difference and racial hierarchy in our society. In short, Appiah's analysis propelled by the need to undermine the “naturalness” of racial diff erences and the existence of racism in our world today.

In the chapter “Illusionsof Race,”56 Appiah maps the ways that race has been defined. Arguing that both current academicand common sense definitions of race have inherited the conceptual framework of nineteenth century scientific racism, Appia

sets out to debunk these definitions by deconstructing biological notions of race.57 By biological race, Appiah refers to acommonsense notion that racial classifications, such as “black” and “white” refer to distinct groups identified by their hereditar

physical characteristics--such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features.58 Often these physical characteristics allegedlycorrelate with moral traits. And these moral traits, associated with racial classifications, are then used to rank races hierarchicallNot surprisingly, those races associated with negative moral traits rank lowest in this hierarchy. Appiah seeks to dismantle thbiological definition of race by emphasizing the discontinuities between racial classifications and genetic traits, between raciclassifications and physical characteristics, and between racial classifications and moral traits.


8/30




First, Appiah summarizes current scientific work on genetic variations among members of different racial classifications. As hexplains, to the extent*760 that physical morphology is “genetically determined ... by sequences of DNA in the chromosome,

we might expect racial differences to be observable at the chromosomal level.59 Citing the work of biologists Masatoshi Neiand Arun Roychoudhury, Appiah points out that the genetic variation between two individuals of the same race can be great

than that between two individuals of different races because most of each individual's genetic makeup is unrelated to race.60Two “white” people will share the same genetic characteristic at a certain locus on a chromosome 85.7 percent of the time, whi

any two people selected at random will share the characteristic 85.2 percent of the time.61 Genetics largely fails to distinguishmembers of one race from members of another. If we know only a person's genetic characteristics, we cannot determine heracial classification. Conversely, if we know only a person's morphological features, we cannot predict much at all about heother genetic characteristics. Therefore, what we commonly identify as “race” has no nontautological genetic, hence biologicabasis.

Second, Appiah explores the lack of correspondence between racial categories and physical characteristics. He argues thaclassifying people into racial categories based solely on physical characteristics is either fruitless or tautological. As he poinout, “trying to classify people into a few races is like trying to classify books in a library: you may use a single property-- sizsay--but you will get a useless classification, or you may use a more complex system of interconnected criteria, and then yo

will get a good deal of arbitrariness.”62 This task is complicated by the fact that many people do not easily fit into identifiableracial categories, leaving us with the dilemma of adding infinitely many racial categories or placing people into racial categoricapriciously. Further, in some racial systems, racial classifications have little to do with physical characteristics. In the UniteStates, racial classifications have been defined not just by visible physical characteristics, but also by known descent from Black ancestor. In one infamous case, a forty-eight-year-old woman discovered that she had been classified as Black only afte

applying for a copy of her birth certificate to secure her passport.63 Similarly, census classifications have a “White (not of Hispanic origin)” category, acknowledging that those who identify as Hispanic may look white.

I believe that Appiah has another reason for probing the divergences of racial categories from physical traits. Too often, the fa

of physical differences leads inexorably to the conclusion that distinct races exist. Rather than examining how these specifiphysical differences came to be regarded as racial*761 ones,64 differences in skin, hair, and bone are viewed as permanentfeatures of our racial landscape. However, to assume that certain physical traits automatically dictate certain racial categorieis to overlook the process of interpretation through which these traits are construed.

As Appiah astutely points out, “[w]e could just as well classify people according to whether or not they were redheaded, oredheaded and freckled, or redheaded, freckled, and broad-nosed too, but nobody claims that this sort of classification is centr

to human biology.”65 In other words, while the classification of races on the basis of physical traits may reflect the color, hairand bone of those it classifies, it cannot tell us how these particular features came to be thought of as “racial,” and thus o

social significance.66 In fact, this physical notion of race is circular: It classifies people who possess certain physical featureas members of a particular race, but predicates membership in that race wholly upon possession of those physical features. Thnormative conclusion that always enters into racial designation hides itself in the guise of an empirical description. Morphologbecomes ontology. Because it reifies a classification based on physical characteristics, this biological notion of race naturalizeracial difference, making race appear self-evident rather than constructed.

Third, Appiah investigates the correlation of racial classifications with moral traits. Historically, people have been categorizeinto different races, not just to emphasize heritable physical differences, but to refer to an array of moral and cultural trait

with which these physical differences were associated.67 Different races became associated with different heritable moral andcultural traits. Appiah observes that “[t]o say that biological races existed because it was possible to classify people into a sma


9/30




number of classes according*762 to their gross morphology [of skin, hair, and bone] would be to save racialism in the letter

but lose it in the substance.”68 By racialism, he refers to “the essential heritable characteristics of the ‘Races of Man’ [that]account for more than the visible morphological characteristics--skin color, hair type, facial features--on the basis of which w

make our informal classifications.”69 According to Appiah, racial classifications do their most important work not as objectivearrangements of physical differences, but as loci for a series of beliefs, and judgments about the nature of the people withithose categories. The notion of heritable physical traits becomes an abbreviation for heritable moral and cultural qualities.

In everyday life in the United States, these associations between racial designations, physical characteristics, and moral ancultural traits create a discursive framework in which members of races are assumed to look and act in certain predictable wayAs sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant explain, “[w]e utilize race to provide clues aboutwho a person is .... Without

a racial identity, one is in the danger of having no identity.”70 We expect people with a specified racial identity to exhibit aparticular appearance. When we meet someone whose physical characteristics do not easily “fit” our expectations for that racial

category, we experience a “crisis of racial meaning.”71 Omi and Winant point out that “[c]omments such as, ‘Funny, you don't

look black,’ betray an underlying image of what black should be.”72 Not only do we associate racial categories with physical

characteristics, we associate physical characteristics with moral and cultural traits. Within the discursive framework of race“[d]ifferences in skin color and other obvious physical characteristics supposedly provide visible clues to differences lurkinunderneath. Temperament, sexuality, intelligence, athletic ability, aesthetic preferences and so on are presumed to be fixed an

discernible from the palpable mark of race.”73 As Omi and Winant reveal, we also experience a crisis of racial meaning when“people do not act ‘black,’ ‘Latino,’ or indeed ‘white.’ The content of such stereotypes reveals a series of unsubstantiated belie

about who these groups are and what ‘they’ are like.”74 In our everyday experiences, we do not simply employ racial categoriesto signify physical differences, but invoke an entire array of beliefs and judgments about the nature of those so designated.

Appiah's dismantling of biological race must be seen in the context of how these ideas historically have justified racia

oppression.75 As we have seen, racial designations as mere proxies for sheer physical differences are at best tautological. Forexample, if the racial labels of white, African-American, Latino, Native-American, or Asian-American were merely shorthanfor certain *763 physical characteristics, then they would be useless. Instead, it is the association of the racial categories andphysical characteristics with moral and cultural traits that performs most of the work of “race.” In the conventional grammof racial discourse, physical differences are invoked to refer to moral qualities that are coupled to them. It is through its selevident visibility that biological race accomplishes its most damaging work. Because race seems to function as a descriptiowe fail to question its work as a normative judgment. Appiah's point is that biological race is not just a false construction: It a dangerous construction that has been used to oppress racial minorities since the nineteenth century.

C. Historical Race

Appiah's levelling of the biological bases for race is not, taken alone, particularly controversial. After all, in the past centur

it has been customary to attack the biological justifications that rationalized unequal treatment. The new controversy appearswhen Appiah goes beyond the critique of biological race to deconstruct the notion of sociohistorical race.76 Appiah argues thatattempts to revive the notion of race by attributing to it sociohistorical content fail as certainly as do biology-based theories.Examining W.E.B. DuBois' autobiography,The Dusk of Dawn , Appiah analyzes DuBois' invocation of common history. In hisbook, DuBois moves away from biological or physical marks of race and posits common history, traditions, and geography apotential bases for racial identification. Answering the question “What is Africa to me?,” Du-Bois refers to a common histor

shared by all people of African descent.77 But what is this common history? DuBois emphasizes that


10/30




the physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant save as a badge; the real essence of this kinship is isocial heritage of slavery; the discrimination and insult; and this heritage binds together not simply the children of Africa, b

extends through yellow Asia and into the South Seas.78

Even in this historical account of race, however, Appiah believes a biological framework dominates DuBois' analysis.79 Afterall, those linked by Du Bois' common history share “not insult but thebadge of insult, and the badge, without the insult, is just

the very skin and hair and bone that it is impossible to connect with a scientific definition of race.”80 Once again, Appiah'spoint is that biology cannot explain race, that instead society's need for race explains the construction of biological differenceFor, although DuBois' historical conception of race tracks the effects of the tragic legacy of racism, it still fails to question whrace has been constructed as it has in the first place. Describing*764 the experiences of the wearers of the badge of insulttells us neither how the badge led to the insult, nor how the insult led to the badge.

Fundamentally, Appiah rejects as tautological DuBois' use of common history to define race. Examining DuBois' essay,TheConservation of Race , Appiah analyzes DuBois' definition of “race” as a “vast family of human beings, generally of commonblood and language,always of common history, traditions and impulses , who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving

together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life.”81 Although traces of biological raceremain, by focusing primarily on the common history and traditions that identify race, DuBois moves toward a sociohistoricbasis for race. In this conception of race, common histories unite members of a race, and different histories distinguish membeof different races. Appiah lists DuBois' typology of eight races: “Slavs, Teutons, English (in both Great Britain and America

Negroes (of Africa and, likewise, America), the Romance race, Semites, Hindus, and Mongolians.”82 According to DuBois,these races can be differentiated from each other because the members of the same race share a common history with each oththat they do not also share with those of members of different races.

The problem, however, with DuBois' historical conception of race is that unless the notion of shared race precedes that o

shared history, we cannot derive the notion of race from a group's history. As Appiah notes, “when we recognize two events abelonging to the history of one race, we have to have a criterion of membership of the race at those two times, independently

the participation of the members in the two events.”83 In other words, to make a common history out of African and African-American pasts, there must be some common criterion of identity connecting Africans and African-Americans, but this criterioitself cannot be racial. As Appiah points out, “sharing a common group history cannot be acriterion for being members of

the same group, for we would have to be able to identify the group in order to identify its history.”84 But what is the groupidentifier in DuBois' conception if not race? DuBois' historical conception of race necessarily relies on fundamentally ahistoric

assumptions about race.85 Instead of explaining how racial categorizations*765 are made in the first place, DuBois merelyconducts a circular inquiry: Races are different because they have different racial histories.

The assumption that a “family of common history” inexorably leads to a common race obscures the complexities of raciaidentity and racial alliances. After all, like the relationship between race and biology, the relationship between race and historhas always been one we have constructed. Drafting a hypothetical family tree for the Queen of England, Appiah explains thif we base her claim to the throne on a single line from an ancestor who lived nine hundred years ago, we find billions of suc

lines.86 No single line can establish descent. Instead, we must choose the determinative line. Appiah argues that even DuBoiown racial identity was not dictated by a “family of common history.” Since DuBois is “the descendant of Dutch ancestors,”Appiah asks, “why does not the history of Holland in the fourteenth century (which he shares with all people of Dutch descen

make him a member of the Teutonic Race?”87 According to Appiah, “[t]he answer is straightforward: the Dutch were not

Negroes, DuBois is.”88 Ultimately, it was not a common history that determined DuBois' race; DuBois had many common


11/30




histories that might have led to any number of racial affiliations. Rather, it was DuBois' choice to identify with a certain racthat determined which common history out of the many possible ones would be defining.

Appiah's insight is that our racial identity is not dictated by our history but is always constructed. As he observes, “Histor

may have made us what we are, but the choice of a slice of the past in a period before your birth as your own history is alwayexactly that: a choice.”89 Of course this does not mean that we can choose to identify with one racial branch of history oneday, and another the next. What it does mean is that racial identity is never a pre-existing given. It is something that we alwayconstruct, something that we always achieve at great effort, and something with which we struggle daily. In the theories o

racial subjectivity, there must always be room for agency, a place for choice,90 a margin for intention, and many possibilitiesfor change. For Appiah, our fate lies in our intentions and actions, not in our race.

*766 D. Essential Race

Appiah not only dismantles biological and historical definitions of race; he also dissects DuBois' appeal to racial essence.91

He suggests that Pan-African appropriations of racial essence, as a form of resistance, are false and may be just as dangerouas their racist counterparts.92

In his essay The Invention of Africa , Appiah maps the unique content of nineteenth century racism. The definition of race

during the early decades of the nineteenth century shifted dramatically.93 From the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, the

predominant notion of race had referred to lineage, groups united through common descent.94 This paradigm of race as lineagedid not require that descendants share common physical characteristics. Rather than a biological basis, race as lineage seemed have a religious one: The primary intellectual dispute arose over monogenesis, whether all humans had descended from Ada

and Eve and had then diversified.95 In the early nineteenth century, the definition of race shifted from lineage to type. Thisdefinition of race assumed polygenesis: that races arose from different racial stocks, corresponding to different physical type

possessing heritable biological characteristics and moral and cultural traits.96 These racial types were ranked hierarchically.Appiah describes three separate doctrines that fell under the rubric of nineteenth century racisms: racialism, extrinsic racismand intrinsic racism.

Appiah defines racialism as the belief that members of our species possess heritable characteristics that make it possible to

separate us into different races.97 These characteristics--distinctive “traits and tendencies” in addition to visible physical

features--are exclusive to each group and constitute a “racial essence.”98 The crucial aspect of racialism, as discussedpreviously, is that it equates biological characteristics with moral and cultural qualities. As Appiah explains, “it is partof the content of racialism that the essential heritable characteristics of the ‘Races of Man’ account formore than thevisible morphological characteristics--skin color, hair type, facial features--on the basis of which we make our informa

classifications.”99

Appiah believes that, although the doctrine of racialism is false, it is not in itself harmful. The problem arises because racialisis a necessary premise of racism. Racism, unlike racialism, is an inherently dangerous doctrine. Appiah*767 identifies twoforms of racism: extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic racists discriminate between members of different races because they believthat differences in racial essence cause differences in morally relevant traits, and that a group's possession of these different trai

warrants different treatment.100 These associated character traits (intelligence or industriousness, for example) are commonlyaccepted as legitimate bases for treating people differently. Because extrinsic racism stems from a false belief that races differather than from sheer racial prejudice, Appiah argues that empirical evidence showing that no differences in morally relevan


12/30




traits exist among the races should persuade extrinsic racists to reject their beliefs.101 He qualifies this statement by pointingout that because extrinsic racists may have important stakes in the belief that races possess different traits, this evidence migh

not cause them to recant. At this level, extrinsic racists suffer from cognitive incapacity.102

Intrinsic racists make moral distinctions based solely on racial difference, whether or not race proves to affect moral traits.103

Race itself is the morally relevant trait. Intrinsic racists display not cognitive incapacity, but moral error.104

While Appiah distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic racism, he admits that it may be difficult to distinguish betweepractical applications of intrinsic and extrinsic racism. An individual may be both an extrinsic and intrinsic racist, and the sam

action might be motivated by both mechanisms.105 Appiah suggests that the primary difference, if any, between extrinsic andintrinsic racism is found in the divergent uses to which the two forms have been put. Extrinsic racism has been invoked t

justify racial oppression; intrinsic racism has been employed to ground racial solidarity.106 Afrikaners and Nazis have invokedthe rhetoric of extrinsic racism, while Pan-Africanists and Zionists have appealed to that of intrinsic racism.

Appiah argues that W.E.B. DuBois was both an extrinsic and intrinsic racist: extrinsic because he sought to revalue and reassigthe moral properties attributed to the Black race; intrinsic because his desire to find a homeland in Africa led him to exalt th

entire Black race without considering which attributes Blacks shared.107 According to Appiah, DuBois merely flips the terms

of debate in a classic dialectic argument, respondingto the negative difference with positive difference.108 DuBois' reasoningis that of the extrinsic racist. Maintaining that DuBois fails to transcend the biological conception of racial difference, Appia

asserts that DuBois merely reinscribes the legacy of scientific*768 racism.109 Race still refers to inherent Black qualities,

but in DuBois' version, positive traits replace negative ones.110

Appiah further argues that DuBois' naked preference for his own race, lacking convincing justification, shows that DuBois was

an intrinsic racist.111 Here it is helpful to refer to Appiah's critique of another African-American founder of Pan-Africanismdiscourse. Analyzing the rhetoric of Alexander Crummell, Appiah argues that Pan-Africanism is premised upon the distinctivracialist idea that “a ‘people’ ... has the basis for a shared political life in their being of a single race.”112 Appiah points out thatCrummell, an African-American, derived his authority to speak for the future of Africa by positing a common race. “Crummell's‘Africa’ is the motherland of the Negro race, and his right to act in it, to speak for it, to plot its future, derived--in his conception

from the fact that he too was a Negro.”113 Similarly, the positing of this common race allowed Crummell to refer toAfrica asa unified entity, ignoring the differences between tribes, ethnicities, and nations toemphasize the similarities of a race.Crummell held that there was a common destiny for the people of Africa-- by which we are always to understand the blacpeople--not because they shared a common ecology, nor because they had a common historical experience or faced a commo

threat from imperial Europe, but because they belonged to this one race.114

From its very inception, the discourse of Pan-Africanism was anchored by an “essential race” that united all of Africa, an

African-Americans with Africans. Because Crummell based Pan-Africanism on a common race, instead of common racicharacteristics, Appiah argues that Crummell was an intrinsic racist.

So what? What is wrong with intrinsic racism if it anchors liberating movements like Pan-Africanism? Appiah has two answerFirst, intrinsic racism is morally wrong. Second, it is politically dangerous. As he explains, intrinsic racism means using racitself, rather than any other morally relevant characteristic, to treat people differently. It would therefore be “a failure to applythe Kantian injunction to universalize our moral judgments” if we treated people differently when they shared all other mor


13/30




characteristics in common save*769 race.115 It would also be morally wrong to treat people similarly even if they sharedno moral characteristics, but only race.

This insight leads to Appiah's second criticism of intrinsic racism. Assumptions of a racial essence tempt us away from chartin

the landscape of our actual similarities and differences. If we refuse to presume an instinctive racial unity, we might find othealliances and coalitions possible. For example, on issues concerning women of color, civil rights groups might ally with femini

groups.116 Additionally, Appiah points out that “[r]ace disables us because it proposes as a basis for common action the illusio

that black (and white and yellow) people are fundamentally allied by nature ....”117 Appiah's insight is striking. Attributingprior unity to members of a race may in fact hinder antiracist efforts. Efforts to unite become symptoms of a racial essenceinstead of acts of struggle, endurance, courage, and love. If we reject biological or essentialist grounds for racial solidaritywe must instead articulate political affinities. Race itself would not ground group identity; our stances on race, justice, anequality--our politics--would become the basis for definitions.

This distinction between essential and political bases for racial identity becomes crucial when we face dilemmas likneoconservatives of color. As Toni Morrison explains, the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Clarence Thomas created double bind for African-Americans.Many blacks were struck mute by the embarrassing position of agreeing with Klansmen and their sympathizers; others leapeto the defense of the candidate on the grounds that he was “no worse than X,” or that any candidate would be a throwback,

that “who knows what he might do or become in those hallowed halls?”118

Supporting the Thomas nomination meant opposing much of the historical struggle against racism; opposing his nominatiomeant supporting racist stereotypes about the intellectual ability of African-Americans. According to Cornell West, this dilemm

meant that “no black leader could utter publicly that a black appointee for the Supreme Court wasunqualified ....”119 JusticeThomas compounded this dilemma by appealing to his racial identity during the confirmation hearings. To the extent that raciidentity is defined biologically and essentially, Justice Thomas is obviously “black.” However, when racial identity is definepolitically, as a firm commitment to antiracist struggles, Justice Thomas's claim to racial authenticity founders. Cornell Wes

argues that we must replace “racial reasoning with moral reasoning, to understand the black-freedom struggle not as an affaof skin pigmentation and*770 racial phenotype but rather as a matter of ethical principles and wise politics ....”120 In thisway, we can start to move from a racial identity that is premised on our biology and racial essence to one that is based oour political stances.

III. THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF RACIAL RESISTANCE

A. Race Versus Culture

Not only does Appiah conclude that biological and essential conceptions of race are falsehoods, but he also determines ththey are useless at best and dangerous at worst:

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. Aswe have seen, even the biologist's notion has only limited uses, and the notion that DuBois required, andthat underlies the more hateful racisms of the modern era, refers to nothing in the world at all. The evil that

is done is done by the concept, and by easy--yet impossible-- assumptions as to its application.121

Appiah asserts that “[t]alk of ‘race’ is particularly distressing for those of us who take culture seriously. For where race works--places where ‘gross differences' of morphology are correlated with ‘subtle differences' of temperament, belief, and intention,”


14/30




succeeds only “as an attempt at metonym for culture, and it does so only at the price of biologizing whatis culture, ideology.”122

In other words, any conception of race that is significant is really just culture in disguise.

Just what is this culture that Appiah urges us to substitute for race? It is “[w]hat exists ‘out there’ in the world--communitie

of meaning, shading variously into each other in the rich structure of the social world ....”123 One of Appiah's earlier essayssuggests that these “communities of meaning” are groups of people anchored by ethnic identities. Appiah maintains that in

truly nonracist world, ethnic identities based on racial differences would “entirely wither away.”124 On the other hand, ethnic

identities described as “something an African-American identity could become ,” seem to Appiah “likely to persist.”125 In anideal world, what we now call a racial identity would become an ethnic identity. Appiah suggests that this notion of ethnic ocultural identity already underlies a progressive view of ostensibly “racial” identity. He points out, for example, that for thoswho identify themselves as African-American,what matters ... is almost always not the unqualified fact of that descent, but rather something that they suppose to go with i

the experience of a life as a member of a group of people who experience themselves as--and are held by*771 others to be--a community in virtue of their mutual recognition--and their recognition by others--as people of a common descent.126

Since any meaningful notion of racial community is really one of cultural community, Appiah believes that culture can anshould substitute for race.

The benefits of substituting the notions of an ethnic or cultural identity for a racial one are many. First, we can move awayfrom the notion that race is a biological attribute possessed only by people of color. Second, we can undermine the racialipremise that, like physical traits, moral and intellectual characteristics too are inherited. Third, we can counter the belief thanature, not effort, binds together members of a race. Fourth, we can rebut the idea that the ways in which we act, think, and pla

are inherited, rather than learned. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has instructed us, “[o]ne mustlearn to be ‘black’ in this society,precisely because ‘blackness' is a socially produced category.”127

The problem, however, with this ethnic or cultural identity is precisely what Appiah cites as its advantage--its independencfrom race. As Michael Omi and Howard Winant have noted, theories that reduce racial identities to ethnic ones fail to accounfor the centrality of race in the histories of oppressed groups. Such theories also underestimate the degree to which traditionnotions of race have shaped, and continue to shape, the societies in which we live. In doing so, these reconceptualizations o

race as ethnicity may actually hinder our ability to resist entrenched forms of racism.128 Although this criticism of ethnicitymay apply more to the particularities of American society, it is also pertinent to African societies. After all, the history ocolonialism in Africa cannot be mapped simply through cultural identities. We need race to fully understand what happeneRacial domination, not simply cultural oppression, explains imperialism.

Returning to the American context, when race becomes just another ethnic identity, and African-Americans, Latinos, AsianAmericans, and Native Americans become ethnic groups, there is a real danger that the oppression faced historically by thegroups will not be fully understood or appreciated. The racial experience is not justquantitatively different from the ethnic one,

as Ronald Takaki explains; the racial experience isqualitatively different.129 For example, the “immigration experience” wasdramatically distinct for white ethnics and African-Americans: The majority of the latter group were brought to this countrin chains and enslaved for 200 years. Analogously, during World War II, German-Americans and Italian-Americans were notinterned as were Japanese-Americans. To the extent that ethnicity models take the white ethnic experience as the norm, thes


15/30




theories “blame the victim” when they fail to measure up to this norm.130 For example, conservative observers wonder whyAfrican-Americans have not progressed socially and economically in the*772 United States as have “similarly situated” white

ethnic groups, such as Italians and Irish.131 Most seriously, ethnicity theories fail to account for the ways in which race hasalready been formalized in our institutions, particularly the law.

B. Races

The most important weakness of Appiah's dismissal of race is that in declaring biological and essential conceptions of racuseless and dangerous, he fails to recognize that race is defined not by its inherent content, but by the social relations thaconstruct it. If race is always dangerous, regardless of its meaning within a specific historical and social context, the result isan abstract and unitary conception of race. Basically, Appiah's conception of race fails to acknowledge that meanings changdramatically with social context. For Appiah, once a conception of race is constructed, the possibility of contesting, redef ining,and reappropriating it is limited. Because the meaning of race is so constrained, resistance on racial terms becomes difficulOur best hope is to abandon “race” for “culture.”

Whether extrinsic or intrinsic, to Appiah these attitudes are both labelled “racism.” In designating all uses of race variants oracism, rather than recognizing their potential to be altogether different phenomena, Appiah may presuppose his conclusionthat all uses of race are hazardous. Paradoxically, by casting both uses of race as racisms, Appiah's conception of race fails treflect the changing social contexts that produce race, and through which race can be redeployed as a tool of antiracist strugglWhile whites have historically used conceptions of “race” to subordinate people of color, some communities of color havsuccessfully reappropriated the categorizations and united around them. They have redeployed “race” as an affirmative categoaround which people have organized to assert the power of their group and its identity. To deny the term “race” any content, asAppiah would have it, is to deny a powerful metaphor to “racial” groups and to preclude valuable modes of resistance.

Focusing on the different ways in which race is defined is more fruitful than concentrating on the common ways in whicrace is used. Since the meaning of race depends on the specific social contexts in which it is embedded, we will find as man

definitions of race as there are social contexts.132 With this in mind, we can navigate among different definitions of race

simultaneously: biological, social, cultural, essential, and political.133 Rather than determining *773 whether a definitionis oppressive based solely on its content, we can instead examine its effects. In perhaps the most penetrating account of thhistory of race, Michael Omi and Howard Winant explore the construction of racial identities, and trace how race has changeover time. They investigate the ways in which the sign of race has been appropriated and reappropriated, and how contesover definitions of race have shaped, and been shaped by, American social life and history. Omi and Winant argue that w

should stop thinking of race “as anessence , as something fixed, concrete and objective.”134 They suggest that we instead think

of “race asan unstable and ‘decentered’ complex of social meanings constantly being transformed by political struggle .”135

They high-light the contingent and changing nature of race and racism while recognizing its pervasive and systematic effeon our history. They trace the historical development of the category of race, labeling this process “racialization” to signif

“the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group.”136 Similarly, theydiscuss “racial formation,” or “the process by which social, economic and political forces determine the content and importan

of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings.”137 This theory of racial formation captures theconcept of race both as a means of analyzing and ordering the world and as a process of historical and social transformatioIn this way, Omi and Winant acknowledge that many definitions of race are possible, and acknowledge heterogeneous terrainof the racial landscape.


16/30


17/30




Writing for the majority, Justice O'Connor constructs a biological conception of race. She points out that the main purpose o

the Equal Protection Clause is to prevent states “from purposefully discriminating between individuals on the basis ofrace ” 148

and that “the individual is important, not hisrace , his creed, or his color.”149 While these references to race do not embody aspecific definition, when Justice O'Connor says “race,” she clearly means “skin color”: “ Racial classifications of any sort posethe risk of lasting harm to our society. They reinforce the belief, held by too many for too much of our history, that individuashould be judged by thecolor of their skin ”; 150 a “reapportionment plan that includes in one district individuals who belongto the samerace , but who are otherwise widely separated by geographical and political boundaries, and who may have little i

common with one another but thecolor of their skin , bears an uncomfortable resemblance to political apartheid.”151

In defining race, however, Justice O'Connor exploits the rhetorical power of unitary definitions of race and the either/or binaframework of biological and social definitions of race. She depends on a biological notion of race to argue that the law shounot recognize race. Tautologically, she defines race as skin color to prove that we should not recognize race since it meannothing more than skin color. For Justice O'Connor, to acknowledge the significance*776 of “skin color” is to attribute anarray of character traits on the basis of physical features that bear no relevance to those traits. In theShaw majority's conception,

recognizing the relevance of mere “skin color” is as irrational and insidious as assuming that all members of a racial groushare certain moral and cultural traits. For the majority, skin color represents racial essence and negative stereotypes, the racistassertion that the races possess different natures and moral characteristics and therefore should be valued differently. In itcritique of biological race, the majority legitimately objects to the notion that our skin color predicts who we are and whawe can be.

The problem, however, is that the Court does not simply reject this narrowly biological notion of race as a basis for disparatreatment; rather, the Court assumes that the invalidity of race so characterized leaves no alternative but to reject the politicalsignificance of race altogether:Classifications of citizens solely on the basis of race “are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions arfounded upon the doctrine of equality.” They threaten to stigmatize individuals by reason of their member ship in a racial grou

and to incite racial hostility. (“[E]ven in the pursuit of remedial objectives, an explicit policy of assignment by race may serve tstimulate our society's latent race-consciousness, suggesting the utility and propriety of basing decisions on a factor that ideal

bears no relationship to an individual's worth or needs.”).152

The Court limits race to a biological definition, and evokes the opposition between the biological and the social to underminthe validity of race-consciousness, and thus of race-conscious remedies. The Court accomplishes this by first recognizing thbiological definitions of race lead to racism. Acknowledging only a unitary definition of race, it then concludes that recognizinrace leads to racism. While I agree with the assertion that recognizingskin color has in some contexts caused stigmatic harm,I cannot agree with the conclusion that recognizingrace must also cause injury.

The majority's argument that all racial classifications cause harm depends on the conflation of biology and race and the usof only one definition of race, and invites us to viewevery acknowledgment of race as racism. One way to undercut thispresumption is to assert, as Appiah has done, that race isnot simply biology. The two concepts are analytically unconnectedand unconnect-able. We might also argue that the attribution of race to skin color is always an act of interpretation. Skin colodoes not “equal” race unless society recognizes that it does. For example, in Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America , JohnLangston Gwaltney's collection of African-American narratives, Jackson Jordan, Jr., a ninety-year-old African-American madiscusses how people are identified as Black:

Now, you must understand that this is just a name we have. I am not black and you are not black either, if you go by the evidence of your eyes .... Anyway, black people are all colors. White people don't all look


18/30




the same way, but *777 there are many more different kinds of us than there are of them. Then too, thereis a certain stage at which you cannot tell who is white and who is black. Many of the people I see whoare thought of as black could just as well be white in their appearance. Many of the white people I see are

black as far as I can tell by the way they look.153

Race cannot be self-evident on the basis of skin color, for skin color alone has no inherent meaning.

Shaw epitomizes the gap between the Court's professed “color-blindness” and its undeniable role in the construction of raceThe opinion seems to rebuke the district court for taking judicial notice of the appellants' white race, “a fact omitted from [thei

complaint,”154 and emphasizes that the appellants “did not even claim to be white” in their pleading.155 Even in disclaimingthe significance of race, however, the majority writes its biologistic conception of race into the law. Because it does not recognizthe nonbiological dimensions of race, the majority must reject the possibility of a nonstigmatic use of “race.” Ironically, bdoing this, the Court adopts a stigmatic biologistic definition of race, and does not see its own power to recast the meaning orace into an affirmative use. The Court fails to recognize that it does, and how it could, shape the terrain of racial difference.

Another way to challenge the premise that race is skin color is to maintain, as do Omi and Winant, that race is not just morphology, but that the meaning of race derives from its social context and is thereby constantly shifting.156 Simply, thereare many different definitions of race. For example, Justice White evaluates North Carolina's reapportionment plan in light of the legacy of pervasive racial discrimination in the South:

[T]he notion that North Carolina's plan, under which whites remain a voting majority in a disproportionatenumber of congressional districts, and pursuant to which the State has sent its first black representativessince Reconstruction to the United States Congress, might have violated appellants' constitutional rights is

both a fiction and a departure from settled equal protection principles.157

By including the social context in which the state legislature acted, Justice White's dissent distinguishes between proper andimproper uses of racial difference, rather than assuming that the legitimacy of using racial difference is the same in all handThe dissent recognizes different definitions of race: uses that discriminate against racially identified persons and uses tha

try “to equalize treatment, and to provide minority voters with an effective voice in the political process.”158 For JusticeWhite, the Court has the power to consider history and social context in determining whether a use of race is constitutiona

*778 For example, he cites the Court's holding inWhite v. Regester 159 that “[t]he ‘historic and present condition’ of theMexican-American community, a status of cultural and economic marginality, as well as the legislature's unresponsiveness tothe group's interests, justified the conclusion that Mexican-Americans were ‘effectively removed from the political processes

and ‘invidiously excluded ... from effective participation in political life.”’160 Race, this passage implies, can be used not onlyfor racist purposes, but for antiracist purposes too.

Similarly, Justice Souter's dissenting opinion inShaw distinguishes the race-conscious reapportionment plan inSha w from

other constitutionally impermissible uses of race by reference to social context. Quoting Brown v. Board of Education , 161

Justice Souter finds it “utterly implausible to ... presume ... that North Carolina's creation of this strangely-shaped majorityminority district ‘generates' within the white plaintiffs here anything comparable to ‘a feeling of inferiority as to their statu

in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.”’162 Justice Souter hints that“race” means different things in different legal contexts:


19/30




Until today, the Court has analyzed equal protection claims involving race in electoral districting differentlyfrom equal protection claims involving other forms of governmental conduct .... [S]uch districting differsfrom the characteristic circumstances in which a State might otherwise consciously consider race ....[E]lectoral districting calls for decisions that nearly always require some consideration of race for legitimate

reasons ... [because] members of racial groups have the commonality of interest implicit in our ability totalk about concepts like “minority voting strength,” and “dilution of minority votes.”163

Souter notes the irony in the implication of the majority opinion's suggestion “that African-Americans may now be the onlgroup to which it is unconstitutional to offer specific benefits from redistricting. Not very long ago, of course, it was argued th

minority groups defined by race were the only groups the Equal Protection Clause protected in this context.”164 By referringto the remedial intent of race-conscious measures, Justice Souter implicitly acknowledges that there are affirmative definitionand uses of race.

Shaw makes clear the inadequacy of unitary and either/or binary models of racial difference, and suggests their potential to causaffirmative harm. Race and racism are fluid. In contrast to the 1960s, the concept of liberal “colorblindness” now undermineantiracist efforts. Therefore, rejecting all conceptions of biological race and embracing those of social race leaves open thpossibility of racist appropriation, and precludes the potential for antiracist struggle. Similarly, rejecting all notions of essentiarace may dismantle the grounds for affirmative racial solidarity. Because the meaning of race is constructed*779 by the socialcontexts in which it is located, there can be no consistent content to race. Race can always be defined in many different wayoften simultaneously. Because we cannot predict a racist practice from its definition of race, we can never determine beforehanwhether a practice will be racist or antiracist solely from its content. We can only examine the way race is being used and whatis being used to say. Only after examining the context and the effect can we determine whether the practice is racist or antiracisSometimes, as in the cases of Justices White and Souter, we may be surprised. If the practice reinforces the subordination oa historically oppressed group, we can label that practice racist. InShaw , the notion of color-blindness was used to underminean electoral plan designed to benefit a racial group that had historically been deprived of their right to vote. On the other hanif the practice alleviates subordination, we can label that practice antiracist. The constantly shifting topology of race requireus to acknowledge that “race” can be defined in many different ways, and that all of these ways, even biological and essenticonceptions of race, have their place in antiracist struggles. The best that we can do is to navigate this terrain.

V. CONCLUSION

Returning to the themes that have motivated this review, I pose the following questions again: How can we recognize raciadifference without reinscribing racial stereotypes and subordination? How can we trace the historical construction of racwithout denying groups the power to define themselves racially? How can we critique dominant norms for excluding raciexperiences, without ghettoizing people of color by the very particularity that we have invoked? I argue that we can start b

recognizing that race is always defined by its social context, and never solely by its content. Additionally, we can recognize thrace is always multiplicitous because social contexts are multiplicitous. The use of race to stereotype and discriminate againpeople differs from the use of race as a basis for racial solidarity. Finally, we can refuse to adhere to the unitary and either/oframework that has constrained race discourse. We can have both biological and social definitions of race, we can have botessential and historical notions of race, we can have both race-neutral and race-conscious remedies, we can have both race andculture. Abandoning one set of definitions entirely may deprive us of useful tools in the struggle against racism.

In one of her essays, Barbara Fields suggests a way to start this transformation. She advises us to think of race as an ideologborn at a specific moment in history because of certain “rationally understandable historical reasons,” which can gain or lo


20/30




motivating force when society changes.165 She defines ideology as “the interpretation in thought of the social relations through

which [people] constantly create and re-create their collective being.”166 Although ideologies are as real as the social relationsthey reflect, they have no independent*780 existence. An ideology is “not a material entity, a thing of any sort, that you can

hand down like an old garment, pass on like a germ, spread like a rumor, or impose like a code of dress or etiquette.”167 Noris an ideology merely the sum of people's attitudes. Instead, it “is best understood as the descriptive vocabulary of day-to-da

existence, through which people make rough sense of the social reality that they live and create from day to day.”168

This notion of ideology helps explain how race is created and recreated. Fields suggests that the “ritual repetition of .

appropriate social behavior” sustains ideologies.169 She explains that “[h]uman beings live in human societies by negotiatinga certain social terrain, whose map they keep alive in their minds by the collective, ritual repetition of the activities they mu

carry out in order to negotiate the terrain.”170 Extending the metaphor, she asks us to imagine a physical landscape with variousdistinguishable features: trees, mountains, valleys, and quicksand. An observer on a satellite can see the people below, but not thfeatures of the terrain. When she sees people climbing over hills, moving around obstacles, or diving into tunnels, the observmight assume that certain people's “attitudes” prompt certain kinds of actions, while others might have attitudes that encourag

other types of movements.171 However, if the observer were to move closer, she would be able to see that understanding the

people's actions entails analyzing the terrain.172 And the observer would realize that changing people's behavior would entailcontouring the terrain differently. By analogy, race continues to exist as it does because we create and recreate it to fit our owsocial terrain, even as it becomes a part of that terrain.

I end with this image to suggest that the notion of race is not so overdetermined by past and current racial domination thawe cannot revive it. Instead of abandoning a terrain twisted by oppression and discrimination, we can try to reshape it witother tools. Instead of referring to the definition of race, we can refer to definitions of race. Instead of talking about racismwe can talk about racisms. Instead of abandoning certain definitions of race, we can employ each of them when necessaryBiological and essential definitions of race may have their place in this topography. Perhaps Appiah's greatest insight is thawe must always self-consciously analyze the tools that we use. Whether these tools harm or heal depends on what we do withem. The choice is always ours.

Footnotesa1 B.A., Yale University, 1986; J.D., University of California at Los Angeles School of Law, 1991; J.S.M., Stanford Law School, 199

I have benefited from many conversations on race, racism, and difference over past years. I am grateful to Paul Brest, who urged mto ask the hard questions, and to Janet Halley, who taught me how theory can inform politics. Most of all, I am indebted to KimberCrenshaw, who showed me that race is always political and that politics is always racial.

d1 Professor of Afro-American Studies, Harvard University.

1 W.E.B. DUBOIS, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK 13 (1903).2 BRUCE CHATWIN, THE SONGLINES 2 (1987). Although Chatwin's narrative reflects some of the problematic assumptions an

techniques common in travel writing, I will not analyze the variety of ways in which indigenous peoples have been portrayed excluded in these writings. A discussion of travel literature as the literature of empire and imperialism would occupy another essaltogether.See generally EDWARD W. SAID, ORIENTALISM (1978) (arguing that Orientalism was a discours

Documents

Navigating the Topology of Race, Jayne Chong-Soon Lee