Their grounding in a racial substance ontology binds their theories to the systems of racism that produced oppression to begin with—turns case and kills solvency. Only a pivot away from ontology can solve.

Race functions much like the concept of a metaphysical substance. Substance is characterised, among other things, by determinism, hypostatization, and reification. In hypostatization (or reductionism), partly random, large-scale, and irreducibly complex phenomena is explained through the deterministic behaviour of a smaller, constituent part. In reification, an abstract concept is converted into a hard, material, but hidden entity. Instead of complex, observable relationships serving to explain a phenomenon, explanation is attributed to a single material, but hidden source. We can call this, following Alfred North Whitehead, the fallacy of the simple location and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. (Whitehead, 1925: 48–49, 51) As the philosophers of science John Dupré and Daniel J. Nicolson write in their “Manifesto for a Processual Philosophy of Biology,” under Aristotelian substance ontology, the essence of particular substances, “sets unbreachable limits on the kinds of changes on the kinds of changes that an individual substance can undergo” (Dupré & Nicolson, 2018: 5). The kind of thing that something is, its essence, determines what changes it can undergo while still being what it is. Under a substance view, there is also no direct correspondence between a thing's essence (substance) and appearance or secondary properties. As John McCumber explains in reference to Aristotle's ousia, “ousiodic structure does not exhibit itself directly in our experience. If it did, it would be immediately evident which things are ousiai, and further investigation would be unnecessary” (McCumber, 1999: 46). Race, it will be argued, is the philosophical concept of substance applied to biological reality and theory. By race, I refer to the concept that there are inborn characteristics which defines a person, which cannot be changed through her personal efforts. Race is the substantial essence of a person which cannot be changed. One's race—one's substance— defines one's telos and one's becoming. Like substance, the secondary properties that one displays—one's work/achievements—has a negligible impact on one's essence. Under this logic, a person's essence is assumed to be a priori, and her empirical manifestation, such as cultural competence and moral actions, are subordinated to this essence.2 Instead of complex relationships such as a person's education, upbringing, and historical experiences serving to explain why that person is as they are, explanation is attributed to a single, material, hidden thing; causal efficacy inheres in the thing itself. In Anti-Semite and Jew, Jean-Paul Sartre explains the fundamental nature of antiSemitism in terms of substance ontology: “the principle underlying anti-Semitism is that the concrete possession of a particular object gives as if by magic the meaning of that object” (Sartre, 1995: 16–17). No matter if the Jew manifests all the signs of French civilization, it has no bearing on the essence of the Jew. Sartre makes the same point again when he says that the anti-Semite's sense of superiority over the Jew is not due to anything the anti-Semite himself has achieved, it is his essence, his substance, a “thing” which renders him superior: By treating the Jew as an inferior and pernicious being, I affirm at the same time that I belong to the elite. This elite, in contrast to those of modern times which are based on merit or labour, closely resembles an aristocracy of birth. There is nothing I have to do to merit my superiority, and neither can I lose it. It is given once and for all. It is a thing. (Sartre, 1995: 18) Like Sartre's anti-Semite, Arthur de Gobineau—one of the most representative racial theorists of the European tradition—resorted to the same (racist) logic in explaining how a race such as the Chinese, who, according to his racial logic, are a priori incapable of culture, seemed to exhibit such a rich culture. Given the strength of the a priori principle, Gobineau comes to the conclusion that Chinese culture was not the work of the Chinese people, and that Chinese civilization had, in fact, been created by a group of Aryan conquerors from India (de Gobineau, 1915: 212). Gobineau thinks much the same for the American and African continent, as whenever and wherever we find civilisation, we must be on the lookout for the white man. For this kind of metaphysical determinism, only a particular race of human beings is the cause of culture. Like the idea of substance, the idea of race cannot be refuted through empirical evidence in the way that a scientific theory would be if it encountered enough anomalies. Substance is instead taken a priori and so takes precedence over empirical reality.