Biological Race Realism and the Legacy of Racial Pseudoscience

As much contemporary work in biology and philosophy has shown, disagreements between biological race realists and biological race anti-realists are primarily normative. Yet despite the well-recognized normative nature of the debate, contemporary versions of biological race realism continue to be built on empirically questionable background assumptions that are centrally motivated by historical ideologies of racial pseudoscience rather than by pragmatic or normative considerations. I consider the case studies of Andreasen’s (2000, 2004) and Spencer’s (2018) arguments, showing how some of their background assumptions stem from pseudoscientific racial ideologies. Even when philosophers and biologists purport to accept the normative nature of the question of race as a genetic population-level category, their views remain susceptible to the influence of said ideologies in ways that may continue to uphold their harmful legacies. The stakes of these positions are significant, as they connect to contemporary issues of racial equity in science and medicine.