Introduction

This free course introduces you to the philosophy of race and explores the ways in which philosophy impacts our understanding of the social world.

You will explore answers to two central questions:

  1. What is race?
  2. What is racism?

Along the way, you will consider what the term ‘race’ means, you will critically examine the role of ancestry and power in determining someone’s race, and you will explore the idea of racial fetishes. You will also encounter the philosophical tools of thought experiments and representing argument structure.

Note:

This course deals with topics on race and contains terms and language that you might find upsetting. Please consider carefully how you might want to engage with this.

This OpenLearn course is an adapted extract from the Open University course DA223 Investigating philosophy.

OpenLearn - What can philosophy tell us about race?
ou logoCreative Commons non-commercial share alike icon Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.