Quayshawn Spencer asks a simple question about race with a not-so-simple answer: what kind of thing is it? Spencer, the Robert S. Blank Presidential Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn, poses the question to undergraduates in his Philosophy of Race course. As a specialist in the philosophies of science, biology, and race, his course examines the very nature and reality of race, beginning with early theories put out by European thinkers including Francois Bernier and Immanuel Kant. Kant’s 18th century essay, “Of the Different Human Races,” provided a scientific definition of race that would influence a long tradition of scholars using science to reinforce negative racial stereotypes—a tradition that Spencer’s course investigates alongside more contemporary philosophical, social, and political questions about race and racism.

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