Race as Phenomena: Between Phenomenology and Philosophy of Race

This book introduces and explores the relation between race and phenomenology through varied African American, Latina, Asian American, and White American perspectives. Phenomenology is best known as a descriptive endeavor to more accurately describe our experience of the world. These essays examine the ways in which this relation between phenomenology and race acts as a site of racial meaning.

Philosophy of race conceives race as a social construction. Because of the sedimentation of racial meaning into the very structure and practices of society, the socially constructed meanings about features of the body are mistaken as natural. Hence although racial meaning is theoretically recognized as socially constructed, during an every-day interaction, racial meaning is mistaken as inevitable and natural. Phenomenology facilitates precisely understanding this confusion of a social construction as natural. Race is a phenomenon.

Ideal for advanced students in phenomenology and philosophy of race, this volume pushes phenomenological method forward by exploring its relation to questions within philosophy of race.