Papers and Presentations
Publications
Washington, Y. (2025). Bio-Social Race as a Socially Salient Conception of Race. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 55(2), 127 145. https://doi.org/10.1177/00483931241299883
In this manuscript I argue that a Bio-Social conception of “race” is a socially salient conception within the United States. This conception is “socially salient” in the sense that is demonstrative of public understanding and public use of the race concept within context of the United States and its member institutions. This conception is “Bio-Social” in the sense that a set of biological and social properties form the necessary conditions for “race” and “racial group membership.” I explain that these biological and social properties are the social interpretation of ancestral relations to geographically and culturally specified groups.
Washington, Y. (forthcoming). A Tale of Two Conceptions: Global-Hegemonic and Provincial Anti-Blackness. American Philosophical Quarterly.
This paper calls for the development of two conceptions of Anti-Blackness (Global Hegemonic Anti-Blackness and Provincial Anti-Blackness). Global Hegemonic Anti-Blackness (GHAB) refers to the global networks of social/political entities that facilitate and/or profit from the exploitation of Black or African-descendant peoples. Provincial Anti-Blackness (PAB) refers to activities of a specific set of social entities within a particular country that perpetuates harm and/or exploitation of Black people. I argue that when we attend to how these two conceptions of Anti-Blackness exist, we can see how “Blackness” can be an ontologically and politically distinctive grouping even if there is heterogenous social standings within said grouping.
Papers in Progress/Under Review
“Racism, Ontological Individualism and Reparative Racial Justice”
In this paper I describe a “structure-first” view of group-based oppression, that I argue that best explains the relationship between interpersonal and institutional racism. Previous attempts to explain this relationship, have either relied on untenable versions of ontological and methodological individualism or placed too strong an emphasis of “systems” and “structures” that it obfuscates the role individual agency and volition play in perpetuating racism. The “structure-first” approach argues that group-based oppression, such as racism, are instantiated by a “structure of relations” in which membership to particular social group/identity augments and/or constrains individuals and groups of individual’s agency to act according to their volitional states. These augmentations/constraints can be facilitated via numerous different mechanisms, such as institutional operations, public policy, economic states of affairs, and the various spatiotemporal constraints of various social systems.
“One Realism to Rule them All: Bio-Social Realism as the Sole Realist View”
In this developing manuscript I call for philosophers of race to pay greater attention to the metaphysical relation, “ontological dependence”, the relation by which some objects/entities derive its existence from the existence of some other entity. I argue that once we consider what “Race” ontologically depends on in both Social Constructivist and Biological Racial Realist accounts of race, we see that all the extant racial realist views are in fact Bio-Social accounts of race. To support this claim, I go through the details of both Biological Racial Realism and Social Constructivism accounts of "race" and explain how each of their accounts ontologically depends on a generative interaction between biological and social mechanisms, and therefore is a Bio-Social entity. Thus, if the metaphysical question at hand is over what kind of entity is "race", then the answer should be univocal, it is a Bio-Social entity.
Selected Presentations/Talks
“Metaphysics Remodel-Philosophy of Social Science as Defense for Analytic Metaphysics”
Emory University, Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable, March 2025
In this talk I argue that “analytic “or “a priori” metaphysics has home in within the contemporary issues of Philosophy of Social Sciences. I argue for this thesis on the basis that metaphysical concepts as we explore them in physics cannot be straightforwardly generalized to other scientific domains, especially the social sciences, thereby making some a priori approaches to metaphysical theorizing necessary.
“Two for One Kind: Bio-Social Reality and Race”
28th Biennial Meeting of Philosophy of Science Association, November 2022
In this talk I argue that a Bio-Social conception of race, is the account of race that is most aligned with our understanding of our understanding of mechanistic explanation in philosophy of science. Specifically I call attention to what I call “Bio-Social Reality”, those entities and features of the world that exist due to generative interaction between biological and social mechanisms. Examples of Bio-Social Reality are entities such as “Families”, “Ancestral Groups” and “Race”. I end the talk by stating that Bio-Social conceptions of race, combine the strengths and avoids the weakness of both Biological Realist and Social Constructivist accounts of “race”.
“Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Reparations”
Princeton University, Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) Speaker Series, October 2023
In this talk I outline the social metaphysics that ground the legitimacy of reparations claims. I argue that legitimacy of reparative justice claims are often hinge on the persistence of both the wronged and wronging party. I then explain how the legal norms of wrongful death claims, the initial wrong (the death of a person) co-instantiates two wronged parties: 1.) the deceased person and 2.) their descendants/familial network. The reparative justice claim of the deceased person persists via their descendants and/or familial network, due to the harm that the initial wrong has caused on the persisting party. I argue that reparations for slavery have same metaphysical structure that ground wrongful death claims, as the wronging party (US Government and its member institutions) and wronged party (descendants of enslaved peoples).
Institutional Racism, Ontological Individualism and Interventions for Corrective Racial Justice
Ninth Annual Meeting of the PPE Society, November 2025
In this talk I analyze how various accounts of institutional racism assume ontological individualism, the view that actions, intentions and operations of marco-entities (such as institutions, markets, etc.) are reducible to the actions and intentions of individuals that are a part of the macro-entities. In particular, I focus on “Infection Models” advocated by (Garcia, 1997) (Shelby, 2002) and (Peebles, 2024) and “Racial Structure Models” advocated by (Hall, 1980) and (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). I discuss how each model’s reliance on/relation to ontological individualism affects the approaches and interventions toward racial justice through corrective and reparative means.
“Global and Provincial Anti-Blackness and the Case for Reparations”
North American Society for Social Philosophy Session at the Pacific APA 2025, April 2025
This paper calls for the development of two conceptions of Anti-Blackness (Global Hegemonic Anti-Blackness and Provincial Anti-Blackness) and explores the im portance that these two conceptions have on various cases and arguments for reparations for slavery. Global Hegemonic Anti-Blackness (GHAB) refers to the global networks of so cial and political entities that facilitate and/or profit from the exploitation of Black or African descendant peoples. Provincial Anti-Blackness (PAB) refers to activities of a specific set of social entities within a particular nation-state that perpetuate harm and/or exploitation of Black people. The paper argues that distinguishing these forms provides greater clarity concerning the social metaphysics and political obligations that ground reparations for slavery.