Kwame Anthony Appiah Race Culture Identity Analysis

The race question has always been an important topic in the United States. The word “ race” raises many issues because the ways people interpret it. Even if some people manage to get real meaning or interpretation of this word, the majority of the people does not, and still have misunderstood interpretations. In his educational article, Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections, Kwame Anthony Appiah considers this race question. He gives arguments and tries to explain the word “race”. His analysis results in three analytical conclusions through the entire article. He discusses on three analytical conclusions that are the result of his analysis. One of these conclusions is that there are no races in the American society. Appiah argues, “American social distinctions cannot be understood in terms of the concept of race ” (Appiah 102). The author introduces two mainstreams ways of understanding and interpreting the race issues: The ideational account and the referential account. The ideational account its self composed in two parts “ the criterial beliefs “ and …show more content…
Appiah asserts that the differences in biological, psychological and moral characteristics between different groups in America are caused by external factors such as the environment and the society. Moreover, Appiah also rely on some researches that shows the relation between race and IQ or other biological characteristics. However it turns that the reliability of the data cannot assess the fact difference or correlation is not only race. And, since there are too many biological characteristics that can be used as the standard of identifying people’s races, but there is no particular standard to be applied into all the ways of defining races. Therefore we shall say that no “biological races” exist in current world because the “vague criteria theory” does not work because too many classifying meet its