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What problem does Holmes try to resolve by using the term “ethnorace”? Do you think he is successful? Explain why or why not.
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Notes on Holmes, chapter 3
In this chapter Holmes considers “the history of Hispanics in the United States … the question of whether they constitute a race or an ethnic group, and in so doing look at the importance of ‘naming’ — the choice of labels for groups [and] anti-Hispanic discrimination as it relates to social justice.”
Are Hispanics a race or an ethnic group? To answer this question we need to distinguish between two kinds of meaning for terms:
De facto = literal or common-sense meaning of a term
Prescriptive = the meaning you think a term should have
Holmes settles for a hybrid term, ethnorace = “a term for a group of people who have a common identity but can’t accurately be characterized as either a race (however understood) or an ethnicity, though they share some of the characteristics often associated with each.”
Holmes distinguishes between predominantly descriptive and predominantly emotive ways of naming racial or ethnic identities. Which words should be used to name a group? Arguably, it should be members of that group itself.
But what would be a good definition of the term “Hispanic”? Here Holmes distinguishes between denotation (“the particular things to which a word refers”) and connotation (“the properties common to all the things to which a term refers”)
He next explains what is meant by a Socratic Definition, which specifies:
• Properties common to all the things the term being defined denotes, that is, the term’s connotation.
• Properties unique to all the things the term denotes, that is, properties that distinguish them from other things.
• Properties essential to the thing being defined; that is, properties that make it what it is.
He concludes that there cannot be a good Socratic Definition that is possible for the term “Hispanic” and that we should instead make use the idea — borrowed from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein — that some group words don’t have common (and unique) properties, e.g., the term “game.”
Holmes moves on to discuss the issue of immigration in terms of the bad argument that the United States should try to preserve the culture and values of its “founders.” Here is a really bad argument, for example:
1. The founding fathers were overwhelmingly white, British, and Protestant.
2. Therefore, those represent the highest values.
3. Therefore, America ought to perpetuate and foster those values as part of its identity.
The argument wrongly tries to derive values from facts without supporting argument. (COULD SUCH ARGUMENT BE PROVIDED?)
Holmes concludes the chapter by looking at discrimination and school segregation against Hispanics/Latinos by reference to the idea of what constitutes the best theory of distributive justice, whose basic principles regulate social benefits or builders along the following lines:
• “From each (in sacrifices) according to ___________.”
• “To each (in benefits) according to ____________.”
Different theories of distributive justice fill in these blanks differently, as we’ll see in chapter eight.
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