In this paper I reconstruct Spencer (2014)’s argument supporting the conclusion that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure. Then, I object to the argument by contesting three distinct key assertions in it. First, I contest the assumption that if a term t has a logically inconsistent set of identifying conditions but a robust extension, then it is appropriate to identify the meaning of t as just its referent. Second, I contest the thesis that ‘race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a specific set of five race categories. Third, I contest the thesis that the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure that Spencer identifies with the human population continental distribution, or ‘the Blumenbach partition’ as Spencer calls it, is biologically real in the sense Spencer needs. If even only one of my objections is convincing, Spencer’s “radical solution to the race problem” is seriously undermined.
In his 2014 paper entitled “A Radical Solution to the Race Problem”, Quayshawn Spencer claims to debunk the common view that folk racial classification has no biological basis. His argument is intended to show that the following conclusion is true:
The Radical Solution: ‘Race’, in its current U.S. meaning, is a rigidly designating proper name for a biologically real entity, specifically for the partition at the K = 5 level of human population structure.
What Spencer is referring to is the “geogenetic map” one can obtain by using a software like STRUCTURE, which investigates population structure by using multi-locus genotype data. The five unambiguous genetic clusters obtained for K = 5 (K being the number of clusters individuals are divided into, which is arbitrarily chosen in advance to each run of the algorithm) do correspond largely to…
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