More Race, Not Less
A New (but Responsible) Rebellion Against Mono-Racialism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25365/jso-2026-8848Keywords:
Mixed-Race Identity, Mono-Racial Ideology, Social Justice, Conceptual EngineeringAbstract
I argue for expansionist conservationism: conserving racial classification while adding new identity-categories where justice demands. The case for expansion arises most urgently with mixed-race people, whose lived experiences are obscured by monoracial taxonomies. I show how the absence of such mixed-race identity-categories produces distinct injustices: absent-identity hermeneutical injustice and ontological oppression. To deal with this problem, I advance a novel approach to conceptual engineering that is community-first, which provides guidelines for mixed-race communities to construct their own identity-categories in a way that is genuinely emancipatory. My framework reimagines racial taxonomy in a way that centres the voices of those most affected while resisting the reification of unjust racial hierarchy.
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