ABSTRACT
Race is a mercurial concept: debates over its ontology, epistemological status, and legitimacy are necessary precisely because race is a moving target; its manifestations vary in history and geography. This chapter discusses some of these debates via a quick tour of the philosophy of race. It argues students of the global colour line which should consider using the categories racialisation and racialised identity over the category race. When it comes to onto-semantics, nearly all philosophers of race agree that race is a social kind as opposed to something that exists in nature. This chapter suggests the concept of racialisation which may be well equipped to incorporate the theoretical frameworks on racial habits and racial cognition in addition to assorted social and cultural structures. International Relation (IR) has good 'foundational' reasons to be reticent about exploring evolutionary explanations of the social and political world, but reticence should not turn into 'disregard', much less into a taboo.
