Race: a philosophical introduction

In Race: A Philosophical Introduction, Second Edition, Paul C. Taylor provides an accessible guide to a well-travelled but still-mysterious area of the contemporary social landscape. As in the first edition, the book blends metaphysics and social philosophy, analytic philosophy and pragmatic philosophy of experience. In this thoroughly updated and revised volume, Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging the ideas of such important figures as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W.E.B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, Sally Haslanger, and Howard.

Part I. Theory. 1. What race thinking is. The language of race ; What we mean by "race": what do you mean, "we"? ; Modern radicalism: prehistory and background ; Power, racial formation, and method -- 2. Three challenges to race-thinking. The anti-racist challenge, take 1: isn't race-thinking unethical ; Classical racialism: history and background ; The challenge of human variation: isn't racial biology false? ; The challenge of social differentiation: isn't the race concept just in the way? -- 3. What races are: the metaphysics of critical race theory. After classical racialism: late modern racialism ; The US racial terrain today ; Varieties of racialism ; Ten questions and three alternatives accounts. -- Part II. Practice. 4. Existence, experience, elisions. Ethical eliminativism, for and against; or, the anti-racist challenge, take 2 ; Existence, identity, and despair ; In between: illusions of purity and interstitial peoples ; Experience, invisibility, and embodiment -- 5. The color question. Color and "courting": the ethic of miscegenation ; Color blindness and affirmative action.