The premise of this symposium is that the principle and ideal developed in Brown v. Board of Education2 and its successor cases lie at the heart of the rationale for affirmative action in higher education. The principle of the school desegregation cases is that racial segregation is an injustice that demands remediation. The ideal of the school desegregation cases is that racial integration is a positive good, without which “the dream of one Nation, indivisible”3 cannot be realized. Both the principle (...) and the ideal make racial integration a compelling interest. The Supreme Court recognized these claims in Grutter v. Bollinger. However, it failed to take full advantage of them. It thereby failed to answer crucial questions that must be answered by policies subject to strict scrutiny. In this essay, I shall display the links tying Grutter to Brown, discuss the vulnerabilities of Grut- ter in the absence of an explicit grounding in Brown, and demonstrate how the affirmative action policy upheld in Grutter, when explicitly grounded in Brown, survives strict scrutiny. To understand this argument, it is helpful first to explain the integrationist perspective that underlies it. (shrink)

Whiteness theorists argue that whiteness has two essential features. First, whiteness colonizes, appropriates and controls the Other. Whiteness is, then, racist.Second, whiteness is constructed unwittingly. Whites are, it is claimed, unaware of the harms they inflict on a genocidal scale because whiteness, like the air we breathe, is “invisible” to those who construct it and are constructed by it. Whiteness is, then, innocent. I think defining whiteness as innocent racism is troubling for two reasons. First, it leaves whites unaccountable for (...) the acts of racism they perpetuate. Second, I think that the claim that whiteness is invisible “like the air we breathe,” while a powerful and fascinating metaphor, is mistaken. I will argue that whiteness is closeted; and while the closet makes the acknowledgement of whiteness difficult, it does not make it impossible. Thus, though closeted, whites are morally accountable for the acts of racism they commit. (shrink)

In this paper I address a tension in Samantha Vice’s claim that humility and silence offer effective moral responses to white shame in the wake of South African apartheid. Vice describes these twin virtues using inward-turning language of moral self-repair, but she also acknowledges that this ‘personal, inward directed project’ has relational dimensions. Her failure to explore the relational strand, however, leaves her description of white shame sounding solitary and penitent. -/- My response develops the missing relational dimensions of white (...) shame and humility arguing that this strand, once visible, complicates Vice’s project by (1) challenging her unitary and homogenous view of white identity, and (2) demonstrating the important role vulnerability plays in our understandings of white shame. (shrink)

Overt racism and discrimination have been on the decline in the United States for at least two generations. Yet many American institutions continue to produce racial disparities. Sociologists and social critics have predominantly explained continuing disparities as results of continuing racism and discrimination, albeit in increasingly covert, anonymous forms; these critics suggest racism and discrimination have to be understood as historical, systemic problems operating at the level of institutions, culture, and society, even if overt forms are now rare. With increasing (...) reliance upon a proliferation of notions including “institutional racism,” “institutionalized discrimination,” and “glass ceilings,” however, scholars and critics alike have grown increasingly dependent upon statistical data on inequalities and institutional outcomes as grounds for theoretical and political inferences concerning collective motives or prejudices. In this crucial respect, insights from beyond studies of race and inequality, drawing especially on Wittgensteinian and Schutzian contributions to social thought, stand to illuminate the pragmatic, moral reasoning at work in the institutional racism argument and similar approaches. Such reflexive attention to a central conceptual resource of contemporary social criticism stands to bring attention back to the basic empirical and critical questions of how to study and engage with continuing inequalities in the post-civil rights era. These questions can certainly be addressed through theoretical stipulation and political claims-making, but a more viable conceptual and empiricalfoundation for both theory and criticism can be gained by attending more respectfully to foundational issues of meaning and interpretation in the human sciences and human relations. (shrink)

Ice Cube "What's a brother gotta do to get a message through to the Red, White, and Blue?" Ice-T Rap music has emerged as one of the most distinctive and controversial music genres of the past decade. A significant part of hip hop culture, [1] rap articulates the experiences and conditions of African-Americans living in a spectrum of marginalized situations ranging from racial stereotyping and stigmatizing to struggle for survival in violent ghetto conditions. In this cultural context, rap provides a (...) voice to the voiceless, a form of protest to the oppressed, and a mode of alternative cultural style and identity to the marginalized. Rap is thus not only music to dance and party to, but a potent form of cultural identity. It has become a powerful vehicle for cultural political expression, serving as the "CNN of black people" (Chuck D), or upping the high-tech ante, as their "satellite communication system" (Heavy D). It is an informational medium to tune into, one that describes the rage of African-Americans facing growing oppression, declining opportunities for advancement, changing moods on the streets, and everyday life as a matter of sheer survival. In turn, it has become a cultural virus, circulating its images, sounds, and attitude throughout the culture and body politic. (shrink)

Literature on moral education has contributed surprisingly little to our understanding of issues of race and education. The creation of inter-racial communities in schools is a particularly vital antiracist educational goal, one for which public support in the United States has weakened since the 1970s. As contexts for antiracist moral education, such communities should involve racially plural groups of students learning about, and engaging in, common aims, some of which must be distinctly antiracist: an explicit concern to institute racially just (...) norms within the community (reflecting, yet going beyond, Kohlberg's own communitarian justice focus in his Just Community schools) and to foster social justice in society generally; and an appreciation of distinct cultural and racial identities within a community. Popular culture has an important role to play in providing salient cultural imagery of inter-racial co-operation and antiracist activity. In this regard, several films of Stephen Spielberg, a film-maker who takes his responsibilities as moral educator seriously, are promising yet ultimately disappointing. (shrink)

This paper is a story of personal learning. I locate its beginning in my early, comfortable adoption of liberalism as the preferred perspective for my work as a philosopher of education. I then trace how and why I became disaffected with this perspective. I describe how learning from students, feminism and critical race theory led to an acceptance of the fact that my particular social locations as a white, upper-middle-class, educated, heterosexual man are not politically neutral as liberalism would have (...) it, but aspects of social relations that are oppressive to others. I illustrate how this development and its implications took shape in my work, leading me to the unpleasant implications of my unavoidable complicity in these relations, even down to the level of my very subjectivity. I worry, then, about an apparent conundrum that ?I? experience when I address the question of how ameliorative change might be initiated, and end with some injunctions to myself. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper the authors examine the nature and significance of the interface between race, culture and morality and the implications for the classroom teacher in relation to schooling generally and moral education in particular. They argue that morality is circumscribed by the culture(s) from which it derives and within which it operates. It is therefore, impossible to consider one without the other. The same applies in relation to race and culture and similarly to the holism of race, culture (...) and morality. Having argued that culture in Britain has been increasingly racialized, they make the case for an anti?racist approach to moral education which debunks the racial baggage from contemporary conceptions of morality. They finally argue that since teachers, like pupils, bring their own values and perceptions with them to school, teachers need to acknowledge this and respond positively within the context of a ?multi?ethnic? Britain. (shrink)

Diversity scholars have emphasized the critical role of corporate leaders for ensuring the success of diversity strategic initiatives in organizations. This study reports on business school leaders’ attributions regarding the causes for and solutions to the low representation of U.S. faculty of color in business schools. Results indicatethat leaders with greater awareness of racial issues rated an inhospitable organizational culture as a more important cause and cultural change and recruitment as more important solutions to faculty of color under-representation than did (...) less racially aware respondents. Aware leaders also rated individual minority-group member responsibility for performance a less important solution than did less racially aware respondents. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

Recent work in social psychology suggests that people harbor “implicit race biases,” biases which can be unconscious or uncontrollable. Because awareness and control have traditionally been deemed necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility, implicit biases present a unique challenge: do we pardon discrimination based on implicit biases because of its unintentional nature, or do we punish discrimination regardless of how it comes about? The present experiments investigated the impact such theories have upon moral judgments about racial discrimination. The results (...) show that different theories differ in their impact on moral judgments: when implicit biases are defined as unconscious, people hold the biased agent less morally responsible than when these biases are defined as automatic (i.e., difficult to control), or when no theory of implicit bias is provided. (shrink)

: This essay examines the connections between ignorance and abjection. Chanter relates Julia Kristeva's notion of abjection to the mechanisms of division found in feminist theory, race theory, film theory, and cultural theory. The neglect of the co-constitutive relationships among such categories as gender, race, and class produces abjection. If those categories are treated as separate parts of a person's identity that merely interlock or intermesh, they are rendered invisible and unknowable even in the very discourses about them. Race thus (...) becomes gender's unthought other, just as gender becomes the excluded other of race. Via an exploration of Margaret's Museum and Casablanca, the author shows why the various sexual, racial, and nationalist dynamics of the two films cannot be reduced to class or commodity fetishism, following Karl Marx, or psychoanalytic fetishism, following Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan. Whether they are crystallized in Marxist or Lacanian terms, fetishistic currencies of exchange are haunted by an imaginary populated by unthought, abject figures. Ejected from the systems of exchange consecrated as symbolic, fragmented, dislocated, diseased body parts inform and constitute meaning. (shrink)

There are at least two approaches that assist students in understanding complexity and differing interpretations about human diversity and race. Because differing perspectives emerge from data perceived at different levels, different scales provide a tool for understanding relationships among perspectives and understanding the differential importance of specific factors. Constructivist listening, which assists students in examining their own experiences, feelings and understanding, provides a tool for digesting complex new material and learning emotional literacy. It can be applied to dialogue about race (...) and to classroom situations. These approaches can help students master the conceptual and interpersonal skills needed for successful scientific practice. (shrink)

Numerous studies indicate that racial minorities are both more likely to be executed for murder and that those who murder them are less likely to be executed than if they murder whites. Death penalty opponents have long attempted to use these studies to argue for a moratorium on capital punishment. Whatever the merits of such arguments, they overlook the fact that such discrimination alters the costs of murder; racial discrimination imposes higher costs on minorities for murdering through tougher sentences, and (...) it imposes lower costs on whites for murdering minorities by dispensing weaker sentences. These cost differentials constitute an injustice not simply to actual minority defendants in capital cases, nor simply to the actual minority victims of murder, but to all members of minority communities. I here offer two arguments for a moratorium on capital punishment: The first draws upon evidence of racial discrimination against minority defendants in capital cases, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy equal status under the law. The second draws upon the evidence regarding racial discrimination in relation to the race of victims, and claims that such discrimination modifies the costs of murder in such a way that minority individuals do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. Thus, by not assigning equal costs to murder, the American criminal justice system fails to provide racial minorities the equality under the law and discounts the value of their lives and liberties. A moratorium is the least unjust response to such a social injustice. I also reply to the criticism that a moratorium prevents us from executing deserving murderers. (shrink)

In dialogue with afro-caribbean philosophy, this book seeks in Cassirer's philosophy of symbolic forms a new vocabulary for approaching central intellectual and ...

Racial epithets are terms used to characterize people on the basis of their race, and are often used to harm the people that they target. But what do racial epithets mean, and how do they work to harm in the way that they do? In this essay I set out to answer these questions by offering a pragmatic view of racial epithets, while contrasting my position with Christopher Hom's semantic view.

I argue that science will be better, by its own criteria, if it pursues multiculturalism, by which I mean an ethnic- and gender-diverse set of scientists. I argue that minority and women scientists will be more likely to recognize false, prejudiced assumptions about race and gender that infect theories. And the kinds of changes that society will undergo in pursuing multiculturalism will help reveal these faulty assumptions to scientists of all races and genders.

This article examines the practices of international business in the South Pacific island nation of Fiji. After an investigation of past practices of international businesses and the ways these have helped to shape the major social challenges confronting the nation today, the article turns to an exploration of those challenges, especially poverty and race relations. It is argued that there are two paramount responsibilities for international business operating in a context like Fiji: to conduct their business operations in ways that (...) genuinely add economic value locally; and to make a concerted and informed effort to avoid doing social harm. In order to meet these responsibilities, managers will have to do much better than their predecessors in terms of concern for and understanding of the unique social and cultural attributes of Fijian society. (shrink)

This collection of essays breaks new ground by providing an unparalleled snapshot of new work in political philosophy. The book brings together up-and-coming scholars from across the globe using such diverse methodologies as critical theory and social choice theory, historical analysis and conceptual analysis. The volume demonstrates the vibrancy of contemporary political theorizing not only when treating perennial topics—democracy, equality, legitimacy, liberty, patriotism, political freedom, rationality—but also when revivifying topics briefly out of favor—human needs, ideology, judgment, political aesthetics—and tackling topics (...) more recently put on the agenda—citizenship, collective agency, cultural contexts, feminism, identity, multiculturalism, social suffering, subjectivity. 'In this volume, a young generation of political theorists and philosophers successfully overcome the established paradigms of political philosophy. In leaving behind problems related to a heavily normative approach to politics, they return to classical problems in our political self-understanding, such as the conceptualization of ideology, engagement with questions of social suffering and human needs, and attention to the subject of politics.' - Axel Honneth, University of Frankfurt, Germany. 'Taken together, this selection of essays provides an in-depth glimpse at some of the key issues within political philosophy today.' - Political Studies Review. (shrink)

Abstract Current debate on race, culture, religion and moral education is often bogged down in abstract definition and theoretical arguments, leading away from, instead of towards, practical action. Sometimes the false formulation of abstractions leads to misplaced actions. Where moral education is concerned, the great need at present is to look at general moral standards and arguments first, and apply these to behaviour affecting racial inequality, rather than to start from a concentration on racism, working back towards morality. It is (...) seriously misleading to confuse ?race? and ?culture? or to see religion only as?an aspect of culture. But because these matters are already often confused with each other in the perceptions of people of all colours, religions and cultures in this country, one must be sensitive to the consequences of this confusion. (shrink)

Rosa Parks was arrested in 1955 for refusing to submit to Alabama law requiring racially segregated transport. Her arrest triggered the Montgomery bus boycott. Fred Gray, barely a year out of law school, represented her ? and for nearly half a century thereafter played a prominent role in almost every major civil rights case in the state. Gray?s key moral and legal commitment was grounded in opposition to segregation of every kind, based on the law in principle and the US (...) Constitution in particular. The early Gray was an idealist who advocated integration as the best means to break down segregation. The elder Gray, by contrast ? even while rejecting black?nationalist calls for separatism ? reflects an ideological shift away from untrammelled support for integration as such, to a more explicit focus on protecting the interests of the black community through the preservation of its institutions. (shrink)

Many philosophers have called for elimination of racial taxonomies in biomedical contexts, basing their arguments on one of two claims: that the use of racial terminology is unjust, and that the use of racial terminology in scientific contexts is inappropriate because race is scientifically meaningless. I argue that each of these claims is flawed, because justice sometimes demands the use of racial terminology, and because the utility of race in biomedical contexts makes it scientifically meaningful. I suggest a third argument (...) that eliminativists might utilize: in spite of its usefulness, we should forego racialized medicine because given our long history of racism, any use of race will tend to crowd out other relevant factors. So, instead of continuing to use race as a convenient proxy for unknown “x-factors,” we ought to forego race and insist that researchers name the x-factors. The result will be better science, both morally and epistemically. (shrink)

: Even as feminist analyses have contributed in important ways to discussions of how gender is raced and race is gendered, there has been little in the way of comparative analysis of the specific mechanisms that are at work in the production of each. Feder argues that in Michel Foucault's analytics of power we find tools to understand the reproduction of whiteness as a complex interaction of distinctive expressions of power associated with these categories of difference.

This book places under sustained scrutiny some of our most basic modern assumptions about inheritance, genealogy, blood relations, and racial categories. It has at its core a deceptively simple question, one too often taken for granted: what constitutes good bonds among humans, and what compels us to determine them so across generations as both a physical and a metaphysical attribute? Answering this question is complex and involves a foray into a seemingly disparate array of early modern sources: from adages, common (...) law, and literature about bloodlines and bastardy to philosophical, political, and scientific discourses that both confirm and confound the common sense of familial, communal, national, and racial identity. (shrink)