The Goal?

This post will be a response, or rather a exploration, of Taylor's last question in the chapter. He asks, "should we abolish races"? In other words, "even if races are social constructs, might they not be problematic constructs? And shouldn't we strive for the eliminativist's ultimate aim?" (118)

Before thinking about these questions, I think it is important to note that Taylor makes an argument about the usefulness of race-thinking that is, simply, right. Race-thinking allows us to see how people are treated based on their race and more importantly, how systems of power operate racially. Essentially, what race-thinking allows us to do is to take a certain social phenomenon, let's say poverty, and see it as racialized. So instead of thinking, "Shit, there are a lot of people under the poverty line", with race-thinking we can think, "Shit, 20% of Latinos, African Americans, and Native Americans under the poverty line". In fact, this example illustrates that not thinking in terms of race is, in fact, dangerous. It might cause us to become blind to the role race plays in determining one's socioeconomic status (or other things like relationship capital).

So, now that we have established that race-thinking is useful and necessary because we live in a racialized society, we are left with what to do about a post-racialized society. In other words, are we using race-thinking in order to move past a racialized society? It's usefulness is directly related to the fact that systems of power exist that affect different races hierarchically. So what if these systems of power ceased to exist? What would be the usefulness of race-thinking? Would it still be necessary or useful? More importantly, would it be ethical or desirable? And in the midst of thinking about these questions, we are also left with the seemingly unanswerable question. Is it even possible?

So, in thinking about Taylor's question, it is obvious that I have simply aroused more questions. Although it seems like I have accomplished nothing, being that from one question I've given birth to many more, these questions have led me to a new, you guessed it, question (a more important one). Because, at first glance, it may seem that these questions are unimportant. I mean, why focus on the future? Isn't the fact that race-thinking currently helps us tackle racial inequality enough? Who cares about what the "ideal" is, as long as we know this is helping us right now? (Taylor's writing seems to be rubbing off on me. I'm asking myself questions and answering them)

But I do think these questions are important. And I do think that looking into the future is important (not that it should be our main focus). But in looking into the future, we are essentially asking ourselves, "what do we want? What is our goal?" And although this goal doesn't have to be concrete, in the sense that it cannot change or be flexible, having some kind of goal gives us direction. And it gives us the sense that we are moving somewhere. Without it (and by it I mean a rough sense of what the goal is), we might lose direction and we might not now what we want or what we're fighting for.