Jodell Ulerie

My aim is to demonstrate that almost everyone writing in philosophy of race is an eliminativist. This follows from two claims I defend. The first is that eliminativism is best understood as a normative stance rather than a metaphysical or semantic view. The second is that we should understand the race debates monistically: participants articulate rival conceptions of the race concept rather than arguing past each other about different concepts entirely. Understood this way, nearly every theorist holds that some conception of race should be abandoned. Eliminativism, so understood, is ubiquitous and hardly worth marking as a distinct position. However, a position I call conception-insensitive eliminativism, the view that race under all of its conceptions should be eliminated, is substantive and earns its keep. This is not the last word on whether we should conserve or eliminate race, but it clarifies the state of the debate.