In Defense of Transracialism

Abstract

Former NAACP chapter head Rachel Dolezal's attempted transition from the white to the black race occasioned heated controversy. Her story gained notoriety at the same time that Caitlyn Jenner graced the cover of Vanity Fair, signaling a growing acceptance of transgender identity. Yet criticisms of Dolezal for misrepresenting her birth race indicate a widespread social perception that it is neither possible nor acceptable to change one's race in the way it might be to change one's sex. Considerations that support transgenderism seem to apply equally to transracialism. Although Dolezal herself may or may not represent a genuine case of a transracial person, her story and the public reaction to it serve helpful illustrative purposes.

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“…A third case derives from an academic controversy concerning an essay authored by Rebecca Tuvel (2017) published in the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia. In her article, "In Defense of Transracialism," Tuvel, a white junior scholar in philosophy, compares the rationale behind the claims and circumstances of Rachel Dolezal, an American woman who misrepresented herself as Black, to the logic underlying transgender identity.…”

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“…In fact, the evidence shows the opposite. For example, legalizing sex change has not led to legalizing race change or age changedespite the existence of this article (or the article defending race change 13 ). The problem thus is that the legalization of sex change or age change does not cause the other.…”

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“…This reasoning is problematic not only because it produces the kinds of assumptions that guided Tuvel's original article (Tuvel ). More fundamentally perhaps, Haslanger's analytic definition of “race” rules out the possibility that there are genuinely different racial identities that are distinct from one another not merely in virtue of being different instantiations of the same concept (“race”), but because they are themselves structurally distinctive social phenomena—and because they are differently positioned vis‐à‐vis racist power relations.…”

“…Rarely has the academic community seen a controversy spread so quickly through its ranks. After Hypatia 's publication of Rebecca Tuvel's essay “In Defense of Transracialism,” which attempted to derive the philosophical legitimacy of “transracialism” from the “permissibility” of transgender identities (Tuvel ), the responses were many—and they were vehement: an open letter calling for the retraction of the article garnered a great number of signatories; Hypatia 's editorial board issued a public letter of apology, promising to swiftly review their peer‐review process; some of its editors resigned. Given the speed and violence of the debate, Tuvel very quickly became the target of a great deal of unwanted, hateful—and perhaps undeserved—attention.…”