Table of Contents

Preface ix

Acknowledgments xiii

Part I Theory 1

2 Three Challenges to Race-Thinking 27

3 What Races Are: The Metaphysics of Critical Race Theory 70

Part II Practice 119

4 Existence, Experience, Elisions 121

5 The Color Question 156

Further Reading 184

Notes 188

Index 193

About the Author

Paul C. Taylor is associate professor and acting chair at Pennsylvania State University.

Reviews

"An exemplary text - the second edition deserves to be widely readand adopted in classrooms." South African Journal of Philosophy "Taylor has succeeded at introducing a wide audience to a timelyand rich topic with considerable purchase on the American socialdiscourse he targets." LSE Review of Books "What makes the witty and clearly-written Race: A PhilosophicalIntroduction such a valuable book is that Taylor not onlythoroughly dissects the concept of race to show its inner workingsbut also provides a cogent and rational argument for the continuedemployment of race as a category for both describing our presentsocial reality as well as serving to undo the harm inflicted byever-evolving forms of racialism." Marx and Philosophy "Paul Taylor may only, as he says, 'gently recommend' the approachhe develops here, but he offers compelling arguments that raise thelevel of discussion on all sorts of race matters. This new editionextends the discussion to more recent topics, such as the demise ofaffirmative action and new work on the metaphysics of race, makingthe book more useful than ever. And it is still the mostentertaining philosophy book I have ever read." Linda Martin Alcoff, Syracuse University "Moving fluidly and wittily between high theory and popularculture, Paul Taylor s book is, quite simply, the bestphilosophical introduction to race I know. I have made it arequired text every time I have taught race, whether at theundergraduate or graduate levels. This welcome new edition updatesthe 2003 original to include Barack Obama s election,controversies around undocumented immigration, and the ominouspattern of growing securitization all shaped by racein a very much non-post-racial world." Charles Mills, Northwestern University