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Notes -
Objection 4 is just circular. "Defining race biologically is a mistake because that's not how race is defined [in the dictionary]" is just a premise being repeated as a conclusion.
The other objections are fine, I guess, but only insofar as your professor also objects to, like, the idea of a "species," or a "breed," or even the term "life." This is classic postmodern language games: if you can't be perfectly correct 100% of the time, then you must have no idea what you're talking about! But this is an isolated demand for rigor; there are likely no terms that withstand this level of demand (with the possible exception of mathematical terms, but even these have been called into question).
On #1, if you need to draw precise lines between groups of people, then "race" is going to be of somewhat limited use (though probably not no use). But how often do you actually need to do that? On the other hand, there are a number of fuzzy lines that are nevertheless useful. If you want to screen people for sickle cell anemia, for example, but you don't have infinite resources for doing so (who does?), then you should prioritize black people. Yeah, you might get overbroad or underinclusive in some cases, but eyeballing "race: black=increased risk of sickle cell anemia" is going to absolutely get you most of the way.
On #2, "scientists" (which scientists?) do talk about race, sometimes, but even when they don't they are often just using a different term that capture the concept of race without using the word. If for some reason you don't like the word race, fine? I guess? But when you tell someone you're interested in the comparative prevalence of sickle cell anemia among the American descendants of enslaved sub-Saharan Africans, at some point someone tired of saying that many words is going to just say "black" and no one is going to be confused by that.
On #3, okay, but some horses are brown and some are dapple and some are gray, and yet somehow we can still tell a horse from a donkey even if sometimes people get that wrong.
On #5, there is no "essence" of race because (per #3!) the biological underpinnings of race are fuzzy-bounded trait clusters. What counts as an "adequate scientific account?" Asians tend to be lactose intolerant. But how do you know any particular Asian is lactose intolerant? Doing a complete genetic screening would be more accurate than looking at someone and guessing that, based on their apparent race, they might be lactose intolerant, but "hmm, this patient appears Asian and complaining of stomach problems, I should ask about dairy consumption" seems perfectly scientifically "adequate" in the scientific context of medical care.
I get the impression that your philosophy professor--as someone teaching philosophy of race, specifically--has a somewhat predictable agenda. These particular arguments show that agenda to be prioritizing the burying of race-as-biology without ever clearly explaining the benefit of doing so. Objection #2 hits closest to the mark--in many sociological or anthropological contexts, "race" is unlikely to be a better concept than fine-grained ethnographic categorization. Discussing the descendants of American slaves and the aborigines of Australia as both being "black" conflates two extremely different populations, separated by thousands of miles over thousands of years. But this doesn't mean race is not a biological concept at all, it means that some contexts demand greater particularity than others, and race is not a very high-particularity concept. In many biological contexts, however, it clearly serves; objecting to its use in those contexts is not philosophically warranted, it's just an attempt to police wrongthink.
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