Way back in 2015 the internet exploded over Rachel Dolezal, the former leader of Spokane’s NAACP chapter. Ms. Dolezal had claimed to be African-American, Native American and white. She also claimed that her father is black. Reporters at KXLY-TV, however, looked up her birth certificate and determined that her legal parents are both white. Her parents asserted that she is white.

While the specifics of her case were certainly interesting to many, my concern is with more general issues about race and identity. While this situation was the best-known case of a white person trying to pass as black, passing as another “race” has long been a common practice in the United States, although this has usually been people trying to pass as white. Since being accepted as white enables a person to avoid many disadvantages, it is clear why people would attempt to pass as white. Since being accepted as black generally does not confer advantages in the United States, it is not surprising that Dolezal drew so much attention. These matters raise some interesting questions and issues about race.

Borrowing language from metaphysics, one approach to race could be called race realism. This is not being realistic about race in the common use of the term “realistic.” Rather, it is accepting that race is a real feature of reality. That is, the metaphysics of the world includes categories of race. As such, a person could be objectively black or white (or a mix). Naturally, even if there are real categories of race, people could be wrong about them.

One alternative is race nominalism. This is the idea that racial categories are social constructs and do not line up with an underlying metaphysical and physical reality. This is because there is no underlying metaphysical and physical reality that objectively grounds racial categories. In this case, a person might engage in self-identification in regard to race and this might or might not be accepted by others. A person might also have others place them into a race category, which they might or might not accept.

Throughout history, some people have struggled to find an objective basis for categories of race. Before genetics, people had to use appearance and ancestry. The ancestry was, obviously, needed because people did not always look like the race category that some people wanted them to be in. One example of this is the “one drop” rule once popular in some parts of the United States: one drop of black blood made a person black, regardless of their appearance.

The discovery of genes provided some people with a new foundation for race categories as they believed that there would be a genetic basis for their racism. The idea was that just as a human can be distinguished from a cat by genes, humans could be divided into races by their genetic make-up. While humans show genetic variations that are often linked to the geographical migration and origin of their many ancestors, race genes were not found. That is, humans (not surprisingly) are all humans with some minor genetic variations. The variations are not sufficient to objectively ground race categories.

In general, the people who quested for objective foundations for race categories were (or are) racists. These searches typically involved trying to find evidence of the alleged superiority of one’s race and the inferiority of other races. That said, a person could look for foundations for race without being a racist. They could be engaged in a scientific or philosophical inquiry rather than seeking to justify social practices and behaviors.

Given the failure to find a real foundation for race categories, it makes sense to embrace race nominalism. On this view, the categories of race exist only in the mind, they designate  how people think about the world rather than how reality is carved up. Even if it is accepted that race is a social construct, there is still the matter of the rules of construction: how the categories are created and how people are placed in them

One approach, which is similar to that sometimes taken for gender, is that people can self-identify. That is, a person can declare their race and this is sufficient to be in that category. If race categories are essentially made up, this does have a certain appeal. If race is a fiction, then anyone can be the author of her own fiction.

While there are some who do accept this view, the outrage over Ms. Dolezal showed that most people reject the idea of self-identification at least when a white person endeavors to self-identify as black. Interestingly, some of those who condemned her did defend the historical passing as white by some black people. The defense is appealing since blacks endeavoring to pass as white were doing so to escape oppression and this can be justified as a form of self-defense. In the case of Ms. Dolezal, the presumption seemed to be that the self-identification was both insincere and aimed at personal gain. Regardless of her true motivation, insincere self-identification aimed at personal gain seems to be wrong on the grounds that it is a malign deception. Some might, of course, regard all attempts at passing to gain an advantage as being immoral.

Another approach is that of the social consensus. The idea is that a person’s membership in a race category depends on the acceptance of others. This could be a matter of majority acceptance (one is, for example, black if most people accept one as black) or acceptance by a specific group or social authority. The obvious problem is working out what group or authority has the right to decide membership in race categories. On the one hand, this very notion seems linked to racism: one probably thinks of white supremacists and Nazis setting race categories. On the other hand, groups also seem to want to serve as the authority for their race category. Consistency might indicate that this would also be racist.

The group or authority that decides membership in race categories might make use of a race credential system to provide a basis for their decisions. That is, they might make use of appearance and ancestry. So, Ms. Dolezal would not be black because she looks white and has white parents. The concern with this sort of approach is that it was also used by racists, such as the KKK and Nazis, to divide people by race. A more philosophical concern is the basis for using appearance and ancestry as the foundation for race categories, for what justifies their use?

This discussion does show an obvious concern with policing race categories as it seems like doing so uses the tools of racism and would thus seem to be at least a bit racist. However, arguments could be advanced as to why the policing of race categories is morally acceptable and not racist.