After Charlottesville attack, 'Huffington Post' republishes interview with UNE philosopher David Livingstone Smith on the delusion of race
A previous interview with philosophy Professor David Livingstone Smith, Ph.D., from May of 2016 was recently republished in light of the Charlottesville tragedy.
On August 17, the Huffington Post reposted a May 2016 interview with Smith, titled “Race Delusion: Lies That Divide Us.” In the interview, Smith makes the argument that race is a social construct rather than a biological distinction. He also explains how categorizing people along racial lines is often a precursor to dehumanizing them. To allow ourselves to enslave or exterminate other humans, we must first separate them from ourselves by viewing them as racially alien, Smith says. This often leads to dehumanization, the conception of others are actually subhuman. “Racism very easily transforms into dehumanization,” states Smith. “When this happens, members of the oppressed group are no longer seen as inferior human beings, but rather as counterfeit human beings -- beings that look like humans, but which aren’t really human at all.”
Smith suggests that society adopt a three- pronged approach to casting out racial categorizations from our thinking by dealing with the psychological forces that drive racial thinking, by removing race-affirming cultural practices from our social and political institutions, and by educating ourselves about the fact that there is no scientific bases for the concept of race.
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