Race: Part II

How does geography build up knowledge that is not just about the world but is critical of it and suggests possible trajectories for amendment? Taking a clear side in an age-old philosophical debate, about how we know the world, this chapter will argue that geography has to be a realist science if it is to be critical of racism. Epistemological realism distinguishes itself traditionally from idealism and nominalism by granting a full reality to things and physical processes independent from human minds. This chapter hypothesizes that race has for some six decades increasingly been approached through epistemological idealism. To the traditional and still-hegemonic statement "there are races and they are unequal," antiracism replies "humans are equal and race is only an idea." Racism' s belief that human worth can be read immediately from bodily differences is countered by the antiracist view that human worth has nothing to do with inherited characteristics of the body.