Teaching Ethics

Volume 21, Issue 1, Spring 2021

Killing Races and Witches

Since the concept of race is scientifically nonreferential, it is tempting to think that we can simply eliminate it right away from our lexicon, from our statistical categories, from our lives. But those of us who are eliminativists about race in the long run need to take a more roundabout path in killing off this concept. Through the painstaking work of teaching our students that race, though biologically nonreferential, remains part of various systems of oppression, and engaging in open dialogue and political organization in order to make racial categories economically and politically irrelevant, the concept of race must die a slow and painful death.