When an individual decides to take race into account, there are two modes by which he or she may do so. The first form is undeniably destructive ? for example, a shopkeeper keeping harsher surveillance over Black customers than White customers, or a real estate agent reserving nicer neighborhoods only for his White clients. The majority of Americans would concur that the first form of racism is unquestionably immoral. This method of taking race into account is generally identified as "racism" in contemporary usage, and for the purposes of this paper, will serve as our definition. The second form of taking race into account, called "racial kinship", is when members of a particular race treat members of his or her own race with more benevolence than he or she would treat someone outside of his or her own race. Although both forms of taking race into account involve treating people differently based on race, racial kinship, unlike (our definition of) racism, is not entirely destructive in practice. A prevalent question in the arena of Black philosophy is, "should Blacks treat Blacks with more benevolence than they do those who are not Black?" Philosophers like W.E.B. Du Bois reason that racial kinship is a morally acceptable practice because it is used for emancipatory purposes. Concurrently, scholars like Anthony Appiah completely reject taking race into account on the grounds that race is a social construct that lacks any real definition. Appiah's answer to racial kinship is "to be absolutely clear that race is a human invention and to resist granting race a life of its own" (Anna Stubblefield, 87). He rejects racial kinship because he finds that racial distinctions do not exist independently of human perception and belief, or in other words, race is not "real". In ...