Eliminativism

When we were discussing Montagu, and the eliminativism versus conservation I felt pretty torn between the two. Now that “race” has basically been established for hundreds of years, I feel like we may never be able to “get rid of it.” It has had such an impact on history that it’s just too broad of a concept to do away with.

I believe that some people use eliminativism as colorblindness, basically. I think this would minimize all the things that minorities have accomplished. For example, when you all were discussing this I couldn’t help but think about how African Americans literally created Rock and Blues music. Every time I hear people refer to Elvis as the king of rock, I cringe because the African Americans were the first in rock ‘n roll and should be recognized for their contribution to music history. Minorities have also contributed to science, and of course, history, which we should celebrate.

 I also believe, like Dr. J said, crimes against minorities would not be recognized, as they should be. Of course, people still ignore crimes against minorities today, but completely erasing something that has been so relevant and detrimental to our history would give people even more of an excuse to eliminate the problems minorities face. Every time I get on the internet I see that there has been some act of violence towards a minority. Right now, I feel like the people who are trying to ignore the violence and the hate crimes towards minorities are trying to be “colorblind,” which they would most definitely be on the eliminativist side of this.

However, I like eliminativism in the fact that it states that race is not biological. It tries to eliminate the belief that some people have that races are hierarchical, which has, obviously, caused numerous catastrophes such as segregation, racism, and genocide, hate crimes, and cults.