Is cladistic race a genuine kind?

This dissertation enters a decade-old debate about a new and provocative biological conception of race called, "the cladistic race concept". The race concept is new because it has been developed in a relatively new scientific research program, cladistics, and it is provocative because, since cladistic classifications are supposed to be objective, the cladistic race concept is supposed to be an objective biological definition of 'race'. Thus, the cladistic race concept supports biological racial realism (the view that race is a biological kind), and can be used to support human biological racial realism (the view that humans have biological races). So far, the cladistic race concept has only been critiqued on semantic grounds and according to whether it is a natural kind. However, in this dissertation, I propose a "genuine kind" approach for evaluating scientific kinds, such as cladistic race. The approach involves evaluation of scientific kinds in terms of validity in their respective scientific research programs. A substantive conception of genuine kind is developed, and defended as the most appropriate standard for judging good scientific classification. Finally, I ask and answer whether cladistic race is a genuine kind. The answer is that cladistic race is not a genuine kind. Given the result, I recommend that philosophers evaluate whether a biological race concept is a genuine kind first, before debating about whether it supports biological racial realism.