The usual arguments against the reality of race are full of fallacies. These logical defects may betoken a lack of clarity about what is in dispute. Consider the following seven hypotheses.
• The word race has irrelevant connotations of superiority and inferiority.
• For many scientific purposes, the concept of race is poorly defined.
• Racial distinctions do not cut very deep in explaining human variability.
• Racial distinctions are limited to unimportant physical characteristics.
• Racial distinctions have no use except to foster racism.
• Racial distinctions are unreal; races are as mythical as fairy godmothers.
• The concept of race is without meaning; it is gibberish mixed with falsehood.
The five authors whose work I have considered here all blur the distinctions among these statements. Each of them argues that because one of the first three statements is true, so must be one or more of the last four. However, although the first three can be defended, the fourth is disputable and the last three are plainly false.
Yes, the workaday concept of race is too crude either to have much value for the science of molecular biology or to serve as the basis of preferential government policies, which are unjust in any case, but it does not follow and it is not true that the concept of race is either meaningless or devoid of objective basis. Tempting though the stratagem may appear, to deny the reality of races will not solve the social problem of race. I do not know how to solve that problem. I do not even know whether it can be solved, but I am sure that making race the basis of official policy will cause more trouble. Because preferential government policies affect everybody but are premised on attitudes and beliefs that are not shared by everybody, they should be abandoned; but because the concept of race is rooted in objective reality, it is probably here to stay.
(Max Hocutt, "Is the Concept of Race Illegitimate?," The Independent Review 7 [summer 2002]: 115-28, at 127)
