Race

The third edition of Race: A Philosophical Introduction continues to provide the definitive guide to a topic of major contemporary importance. In this thoroughly updated and revised volume, Paul Taylor outlines the main features and implications of race-thinking, while engaging with the ideas of important figures such as Linda Alcoff, K. Anthony Appiah, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michel Foucault, and Sally Haslanger. The result is a comprehensive but accessible introduction to philosophical race theory and to a non-biological and situational notion of race, which blends metaphysics and social epistemology, aesthetics, analytic philosophy, and pragmatic philosophy of experience.

Taylor approaches the key questions in the philosophy of race: What is race-thinking? Don’t we know better than to talk about race now? Are there any races? What is it like to have a racial identity? And how important, ethically, is colour blindness? On the way to answering these questions, he takes up topics such as mixed-race identity, white supremacy, the relationship between the race concept and other social identity categories, and the impact of race-thinking on our erotic and romantic lives. The concluding section explores the racially fraught issues of policing, immigration, and global justice, and the implications of the political upheavals of the past decade, from the election of Donald Trump to the global upsurge in anti-immigrant populism.

Updated throughout, Race remains a vital resource for the educated general reader as well as for students and scholars of ethnic studies, philosophy, sociology, and related fields.