Roundtable on Race and Racism -An Interdisciplinary Conversation

Nov. 13, 2004

OSU Memorial Union Rm 209, 1-5 PM

Jonathan Kaplan, Philosophy

"When socially determined categories make biological realities"

It is widely accepted that so-called 'folk' racial categories -- those 'races' identified in social settings, on census forms, etc. -- do not correspond to biologically real categories. It is, however, equally uncontroversial that folk racial categories have important social implications; what folk racial category one belongs in has, in other words, important implications for how you will be treated in a wide variety of social situations and is strongly correlated with nearly every important measure of social success. As it is equally obvious that these measures of social success are strongly correlated (and causally wrapped up in) important aspects of biological health, it would seem that folk racial categories may well be associated with important biological distinctions--but only because social forces shape our health (and hence biology) just as surely as they shape our success on the job-market, in academics, and the like. The biological un-reality of folk racial categories, then, does not provide reason to think that the biological (especially epidemiological) study of folk-races will not prove fruitful; the social reality of folk races demands that we take seriously the health consequences of folk races, even as we recognize that folk races have no biological reality.