While there has been much discussion regarding Appiah's dismissal of DuBois's concept of sociohistorical race, it seemed prudent to analyze whether the concept of sociohistorical race is somehow achievable in a manner that truly detaches it from biology. DuBois offered that a people are not coupled as a race as a result of color, hair type, or other physiological similarities, but rather as a group who shares a common history, who have experienced the same strife and goals and who have, as a group, moved forward. He also offers that this sociohistorical concept helps to establish the function of race, namely that G-d intended for each of the eight races to contribute something unique to all of mankind, and that together, these contributions would advance each and every race. The question though, is whether there is any context in which one can divorce social history from biology.
In order to find such a context, one must take a rather unorthodox view of social history. Instances such as World War II, which brought many minorities together in a common fight against extinction as the result of Nazi aggression could feasibly have created entirely new sociohistorical races with regard to a common history, strife, and goal. While this would require an entirely new formation of the various “races” that DuBois identifies, it seems as though a dynamic system that allows for the introduction of new “races”, might be able to legitimize a sociohistorical approach to a race.
One primary problem with this redefinition is that many groups would lack the depth of history that it seems that DuBois requires, but this too is easily solved by a simple redefinition. What seems more troubling is whether the spirit of the social history discussed by DuBois is lost by such a definition. While there is some negative value in allowing for the dynamic introduction of races as the result of current events, there is quite a lot of positive value to be gained as well. Under the system of eight races proposed by DuBois, each race is assumed to have made its contribution with the exception of blacks. Under this system, each group could be expected to make a true contribution and given that it does not seem that the world could be made complete with only one additional racial contribution, a system in which races are able to emerge and make their own contribution seems more consistent with the imperfect world we live in.
This topic is incredibly liberal in terms of taking DuBois’s arguments and warping them to fit a context that does not require a biological history, so I’m interested to see the comments.
-Steven
I flirted with this topic a bit in my "To What Extent Is Race essential to one's identity" post, trying to unpack and apply it is both extremely interesting and frustratingly difficult.
ReplyDeleteI think a sociohistorical conceptions based predominately on notions of a common history are possible, but I do think, like you said, it has to acknowledge that over time racial categories can blend together, newly form, or change direction. Without a biological essence, it seems to me that racial ideals, strivings, etc. have to be much more fluid over time, largely because they have to reflect the historical process itself. I thought this part your post was dead-on.
I do think is sociohistorical bond is to mean anything though, that the bond has to be fairly strong. That is why I'm disinclined to embrace Du Bois's idea of a Pan-African race deriving from a common historical memory of white oppression and slavery, since that alone probably isn't strong enough to only bind together the black diaspora and leave out some people of other identities such as Native Americans, Asians, etc. So for example, I don't think the struggle against Nazism would be sufficient to fundamentally band various minority groups together, although it did align them. (Actually, I say that but it likely did stronger unite Jewish identity, and in some important alter what it meant to be a Jew...although I still I doubt that other heavily Nazi-oppressed groups like gypsies became subsumed under a new Jewish identity as a result, even though they were both ruthlessly put into concentration camps and the Nazi laws against gypsies were basically as harsh as the laws for Jews.) Whereas, I do think slavery, Jim Crow, the importance of the black church, the struggle for equality, and interpersonal and structural racism in America are together strong enough to meaningfully unite African-Americans as a sociohistorical category.
I am skeptical though that any sociohistorical attempt to define race will be able to conserve the categories as we try to use them today. It looks more likely to me that this sort of rationale will give us a lot more racial categories than less, which begs a version of Locke's question "should we speak of civilizations instead of races?"