antipuppygirlism without the bullshit

what's wrong with transracialism? (introduction)

Why can’t someone identify as black, and thereby become black? This question is particularly pressing for us who think that one can identify as a woman, and thereby become a woman. There is a pertinent (even if ultimately poor) parity between the two; any satisfying response to the transracial question, it seems, can just be word-swapped into transphobia. ‘Your race is determined by this-and-this biological property,’ for example, becomes ‘your gender is determined by this-and-this biological property.’ In the absence of a compelling asymmetry, it seems that we’re committed to the validity of transracial identity just as much as we’re committed to the validity of transgender identity.

Philosophers Robin Dembroff and Dee Payton, in an enlightening 2020 article titled “Why We Shouldn’t Compare Transracial to Transgender Identity,” attempt to provide such a symmetry breaker. The most important piece of their argument, and the part which I find unobjectionable, is their methodology: Dembroff and Payton take it that our gender and race concepts are historically contingent and socially variable, and thus, depend on us (as opposed to the world) for their meaning. There are no robust, mind-independent racial or gendered essences which fill in the content of our race or gender concepts. What counts as a ‘woman,’ or as ‘black,’ is for us to determine. (For Dembroff and Payton, the failure to appreciate this fact is what makes the sort of symmetry breaker considered prior fail).

With this approach in the background, Dembroff and Payton argue that, since these concepts are up to us, we should engineer them for our aims. That is, inasmuch as our traditional systems of racial and gender-based classification are insufficient for our goals, the meanings of their constituent concepts should be revised. One of our goals, one to which our race and gender concepts seem particularly suited, is the identification and elimination of racism and misogyny respectively. So, for Dembroff and Payton, we should (1) modify our race and gender concepts to ensure that they are fruitful for use in antiracist and feminist projects, and (2) ensure that these concepts, inasmuch as they are currently fruitful for these projects, retain the features that make them so.

The important part comes after their exposition of this ameliorativist position. For Dembroff and Payton, a crucial aspect of racial oppression is that it accumulates intergenerationally. They are best quoted at length:

Central to this argument, then, is the observation that in the case of Blackness, inequality accumulates intergenerationally. For example, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women born in the United States are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women. What explains this? Arline T. Geronimus, public health researcher and professor at the University of Michigan’s Population Studies Center, has argued using a series of empirical studies that the intergenerational effects of racism explain a number of decreased health outcomes for Black Americans, including lower birth weights and higher rates of pregnancy-related complications for Black women... In addition to gaps in health outcomes, wealth gaps between Black and white households also widen intergenerationally. As taxation scholar Lily Batchelder has noted, “White households are twice as likely as black households to receive an inheritance. Moreover, receipt of an inheritance is associated with a $104,000 increase in median wealth among white families, but only a $4,000 increase among black families.” Economists Darrick Hamilton and Sandy Darity argue that such intra-familial, non-merit transfers of wealth “account for more of the racial wealth gap than any other demographic and socioeconomic indicators.” While many white families accumulate wealth across generations, Black families... full post