Philosophy of Race, Misc

(This is a revised version of the essay for the 8th edition of The Philosophy of Sex.) Halwani address three main arguments as to why someone with sexual racial preferences (sexual preferences for or against people on the basis of their ethnic of racial belonging) might be thought racist, and argues that they all fail. He then explains the steps that need to be taken before we can conclude that someone is racist from the mere fact that he or she (...) has racial preferences. In an appendix to this revised essay, Halwani explains and criticizes all the recent essays that have been published since 2017 on this subject. (shrink)

In his book, Romaphobia: The Last Acceptable form of Racism, Aidan McGarry gives a powerful analysis of anti-Roma racism in Europe. His aims in the book are to highlight the plight of European Roma and to anal- yse the underlying causes of their persecution. The quandary, as McGarry sees it, is that Roma persecution in Europe has persisted unabated for over six hundred years. As soon as Roma appeared in Europe in the late fourteenth century they were traded as slaves, (...) or targeted by laws calling for assimilation or death. Roma were targeted for mass extermination during the Holocaust, and even now, they face widespread persecution across Europe. Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, for instance, insists on compiling a “Gypsy Registry” and cleansing Italian neighbour- hoods of Roma camps. The French government targets Roma settlements for demolition and, in defiance of European laws, deports around twenty thousand Roma to other countries every year. Targeted murders of Roma in Hungary, Slovakia, and the Ukraine are encouraged, and ignored. Tabloid newspapers in the UK drum up anti-Roma sentiment. Indeed, the Daily Mail even cite former UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbin’s past attempts to protect Roma from eviction in London as a reason for his unsuitability to become Prime Minister—in modern Britain, compassion for Gypsies is a sign of questionable character. For McGarry, then, this persistence is central to the puzzle of Romaphobia—why does this form of racism remain unchallenged and acceptable? (shrink)

This paper argues that racism should not only be conceived as a moral concept whose main aim is to condemn severe wrongs in the domain of race. The paper advances a complementary interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept--one that plays a key role in explaining race-based social problems afflicting members of subordinate racialized groups. As an explanatory concept, the term 'racism' is used to diagnose and highlight the causes of race-related social problems. The project of diagnosing race-based social problems (...) contributes to the pragmatic anti-racist end of developing better political and policy strategies for solving these social problems. The paper defends this interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept through a critical engagement with Urquidez's moral-philosophical account of racism. (shrink)

The slogan that ‘the virus doesn’t discriminate’ has been belied by the emergence of stark and persistent disparities in rates of infection, hospitalisation, and death from Covid-19 between various social groups. I focus on two groups that have been disproportionately affected, and that have been constructed or designated as particularly ‘at-risk’ during the Covid-19 pandemic: racial or ethnic minorities and fat people. I trace the range of narratives that have arisen in the context of explaining these disparities, in both the (...) scientific literature and wider expert and public discourse. I show that the scientific and public narratives around these groups have differed significantly, revealing contested and competing conceptions of the basis of these categories themselves. These different conceptions have important impacts on the kinds of interventions that become possible or desirable. I show that in the case of racial or ethnic disparities, genetic narratives have been combatted by a strong focus on structural racism as a driver of pandemic inequalities. However, in the case of fatness, individualising and stigmatising narratives have dominated discussions. I suggest that, given racial or ethnic differences in prevalence of fatness, and scholarship casting anti-fatness as historically racialised, the stigmatisation of fatness disproportionately affects racial or ethnic minorities in terms of placing individual blame or responsibility for the increased burden of Covid-19 on these groups. Despite widespread acknowledgement of the role of structural racism in driving racial inequalities in the burden of Covid-19, anti-obesity rhetoric and research provides a ‘backdoor’ to placing blame on individuals from racial minorities. (shrink)

According to the mainstream narrative about race, all groups have the same innate dispositions and potential, and all disparities—at least those favoring whites—are due to past or present racism. Some people who reject this narrative gravitate toward an alternative, anti-Jewish narrative, which sees recent history in terms of a Jewish/gentile conflict. The most sophisticated promoter of the anti-Jewish narrative is the evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald. MacDonald argues that Jews have a suite of genetic adaptations—including high intelligence and ethnocentrism—and cultural practices (...) that lead them to undermine gentile society to advance their own evolutionary interests. He says that Jewish-designed intellectual movements have weakened gentile identity and culture while preserving Jewish identity and separatism. Cofnas recently argued that MacDonald’s theory is based on “systematically misrepresented sources and cherry-picked facts.” However, Cofnas gave short shrift to at least three key claims: Jews are highly ethnocentric, liberal Jews hypocritically advocate liberal multiculturalism for gentiles/gentile countries but racial purity and separatism for Jews/Israel, and Jews are responsible for liberalism and mass immigration to the United States. The present paper examines these claims and concludes that MacDonald’s views are not supported. (shrink)

Tommy J. Curry’s Another white Man’s Burden presents a rigorous intellectual history of Josiah Royce’s essays on race. Curry explains the several arguments that Royce made on this topic between 1900 and 1908, and he situates these within Royce’s social philosophy and some contemporaneous literatures on racism. The result is a comprehensive theory of cultural assimilation informed by an idealist metaphysics. Royce, namely, disdained segregation and rejected biological accounts of racial difference. But Royce scholars have wrongly taken these observations, Curry (...) argues, as evidence that their hero held progressive views on race. Royce rather began from the premise of Anglo-American cultural superiority, and... (shrink)

In a very short time, it is likely that we will identify many of the genetic variants underlying individual differences in intelligence. We should be prepared for the possibility that these variants are not distributed identically among all geographic populations, and that this explains some of the phenotypic differences in measured intelligence among groups. However, some philosophers and scientists believe that we should refrain from conducting research that might demonstrate the (partly) genetic origin of group differences in IQ. Many scholars (...) view academic interest in this topic as inherently morally suspect or even racist. The majority of philosophers and social scientists take it for granted that all population differences in intelligence are due to environmental factors. The present paper argues that the widespread practice of ignoring or rejecting research on intelligence differences can have unintended negative consequences. Social policies predicated on environmentalist theories of group differences may fail to achieve their aims. Large swaths of academic work in both the humanities and social sciences assume the truth of environmentalism and are vulnerable to being undermined. We have failed to work through the moral implications of group differences to prepare for the possibility that they will be shown to exist. (shrink)

Suppose a jury rejects a Black defendant’s testimony because they believe that Black people are often untrustworthy. Or suppose the male members of a board reject a female colleague’s suggestions because they believe that women are too often irrational. Imagine also a woman whose postpartum depression is dismissed by her doctor as mere ‘baby blues.’ All these three people suffer what contemporary English philosopher Miranda Fricker calls epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice refers to a wrong done to someone as a knower (...) or transmitter of knowledge: due to unjustified prejudice, someone is unfairly judged to not have the knowledge or reasonable beliefs that they actually have. Fricker identifies two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical. This essay explains these forms of epistemic injustice and surveys some suggestions for how to prevent them. (shrink)

Creepiness and the emotion of the creeps have been overlooked in the moral philosophy and moral psychology literatures. We argue that the creeps is a morally significant emotion in its own right, and not simply a type of fear, disgust, or anger (though it shares features with those emotions). Reflecting on cases, we defend a novel account of the creeps as felt in response to creepy people. According to our moral insensitivity account, the creeps is fitting just when its object (...) is agential activity that is insensitive to basic moral considerations. When, only when, and insofar as someone is disposed to such insensitivity, they are a creep. Such insensitivity, especially in extreme forms, raises doubts about creeps’ moral agency. We distinguish multiple types of insensitivity, respond to concerns that feeling the creeps is itself objectionable, and conclude with a discussion of epistemic issues relating to the creeps. (shrink)

Race theorists have been unable to reach a consensus regarding the basic historical question, “is ‘race’ modern?” I argue that this is partly because the question itself is ambiguous. There is not really one question that race scholars are answering, but at least six. First, is the concept of race modern? Second, is there a modern concept of race that is distinct from earlier race concepts? Third, are “races” themselves modern? Fourth, are racialized groups modern? Fifth, are the means and (...) methods associated with racialization modern? And sixth, are the meanings attached to racialized traits modern? Because these questions have different answers, the debate about the historical origins of “race” cannot be resolved unless they are distinguished. I will explain the ways in which “race” is and is not modern by answering these questions, thereby offering a resolution to a seemingly intractable problem. (shrink)

In ‘Cognition as a Social Skill’, Sally Haslanger enhances her theory of oppression with new concepts: ‘mindshaping,’ ‘doxa,’ ‘heterodoxy,’ and ‘hidden transcripts.’ This essay examines these new c...

Discussions of non-racialism in South Africa and discussions of post-racialism in the United States are sufficiently similar to invite the question as to whether South African thinkers could help to develop new ways of thinking about post-racialism and its potential in the United States. Biko's ideas are rarely taken up in the United States, yet they are relevant to contemporary discussions in critical philosophy of race. This article begins with an evaluation of the typology of non-racialism provided by Rupert Taylor (...) and the historical study of non-racialism provided by Julie Frederikse, distinguishing different understandings of non-racialism. The second section presents Biko's understanding of non-racialism, arguing that Biko's understanding of which is embedded in his account of Black Consciousness, and not a variant of racial eliminativism. The final section focuses on the striking similarities between understandings of non-racialism and post-racialism using a distinction it introduces between principled and progressive forms of both these terms. Ultimately, this article makes the case for a progressive understanding of post-racialism, which has yet to be articulated and is too easily dismissed in the United States. (shrink)

Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, the civil rights advocate and the great rhetorician, has been the focus of much academic research. Only more recently is Douglass work on aesthetics beginning to receive its due, and even then its philosophical scope is rarely appreciated. Douglass’ aesthetic interest was notably not so much in art itself, but in understanding aesthetic presentation as an epistemological and psychological aspect of the human condition and thereby as a social and political tool. He was fascinated by the (...) power of images, and took particular interest in the emerging technologies of photography. He often returned to the themes of art, pictures and aesthetic perception in his speeches. He saw himself, also after the end of slavery, as first and foremost a human rights advocate, and he suggests that his work and thoughts as a public intellectual always in some way related to this end. In this regard, his interest in the power of photographic images to impact the human soul was a lifelong concern. His reflections accordingly center on the psychological and political potentials of images and the relationship between art, culture, and human dignity. In this chapter we discuss Douglass views and practical use of photography and other forms of imagery, and tease out his view about their transformational potential particularly in respect to combating racist attitudes. We propose that his views and actions suggest that he intuitively if not explicitly anticipated many later philosophical, pragmatist and ecological insights regarding the generative habits of mind and affordance perception : I.e. that we perceive the world through our values and habitual ways of engaging with it and thus that our perception is active and creative, not passive and objective. Our understanding of the world is simultaneously shaped by and shaping our perceptions. Douglass saw that in a racist and bigoted society this means that change through facts and rational arguments will be hard. A distorted lens distorts - and accordingly re-produces and perceives its own distortion. His interest in aesthetics is intimately connected to this conundrum of knowledge and change, perception and action. To some extent precisely due to his understanding of how stereotypical categories and dominant relations work on our minds, he sees a radical transformational potential in certain art and imagery. We see in his work a profound understanding of the value-laden and action-oriented nature of perception and what we today call the perception of affordances (that is, what our environment permits/invites us to do). Douglass is particularly interested in the social environment and the social affordances of how we perceive other humans, and he thinks that photographs can impact on the human intellect in a transformative manner. In terms of the very process of aesthetic perception his views interestingly cohere and supplement a recent theory about the conditions and consequences of being an aesthetic beholder. The main idea being that artworks typically invite an asymmetric engagement where one can behold them without being the object of reciprocal attention. This might allow for a kind of vulnerability and openness that holds transformational potentials not typically available in more strategic and goal-directed modes of perception. As mentioned, Douglass main interest is in social change and specifically in combating racist social structures and negative stereotypes of black people. He is fascinated by the potential of photography in particular as a means of correcting fallacious stereotypes, as it allows a more direct and less distorted image of the individuality and multidimensionality of black people. We end with a discussion of how, given this interpretation of aesthetic perception, we can understand the specific imagery used by Douglass himself. How he tried to use aesthetic modes to subvert and change the racist habitus in the individual and collective mind of his society. We suggest that Frederick Douglass, the human rights activist, had a sophisticated philosophy of aesthetics, mind, epistemology and particularly of the transformative and political power of images. His works in many ways anticipate and sometimes go beyond later scholars in these and other fields such as psychology & critical theory. Overall, we propose that our world could benefit from revisiting Douglass’ art and thought. (shrink)

For many decades, race and racicsm have been common areas of study in departments of sociology, history, politcal science, English, and athropology. Much more recently, as the historical concept of race and racial categories have faced signifcant scientific and politcal challenges, philosophers have become more interested in these areas. This changing understanding of the ontology of race has invited inquiry from researchers in moral philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of language, and aesthetics. The Routlege Companion to Philosophy of (...) Race offers in one comprehensive volume newly written articles on race from the world’s leading Analytic and Continental philosophers. It is, however, accessible to a readership beyond philosophy as well, providing a cohesive referencefor a wide student and academic readership. The _Companion_ synethesizes current philosophical understandings of race, providing 50 chapters on the history of philosophy and race as well as how race might be invesitaged in the usual frameworks of contemporary philosophy. The volume concludes with a section on philosophical approaches to some topics with broad interest outside of philosophy, like Colonialism, Affirmative Action, Eugenics, Immigration, Race and Disability, and Post-Racialism. By clearly explaining and carefully organizing the leading current philosophical thinking on race, this timely collection will help define the subject and bring renewed understanding of race to students and researchers in the humanities, social science, and sciences. (shrink)

We argue that generic generalizations about racial groups are pernicious in what they communicate (both to members of that racial group and to members of other racial groups), and may be central to the construction of social categories like racial groups. We then consider how we should change and challenge uses of generic generalizations about racial groups.

Some prominent scientists and philosophers have stated openly that moral and political considerations should influence whether we accept or promulgate scientific theories. This widespread view has significantly influenced the development, and public perception, of intelligence research. Theories related to group differences in intelligence are often rejected a priori on explicitly moral grounds. Thus the idea, frequently expressed by commentators on science, that science is “self-correcting”—that hypotheses are simply abandoned when they are undermined by empirical evidence—may not be correct in all (...) contexts. In this paper, documentation spanning from the early 1970s to the present is collected, which reveals the influence of scientists’ moral and political commitments on the study of intelligence. It is suggested that misrepresenting findings in science to achieve desirable social goals will ultimately harm both science and society. (shrink)

For decades, intelligence and achievement tests have registered significant differences between people of different races, ethnicities, classes, and genders. We argue that most of these differences are explained not as reflections of differences in the distribution of intellectual virtues but as evidence for the metacognitive mediation of the intellectual virtues. For example, in the United States, blacks typically score worse than whites on tests of mathematics. This might lead one to think that fewer blacks possess the relevant intellectual virtues, or (...) that they possess them less fully. However, research on stereotype threat shows that when blacks are not reminded of their race, they do much better on these tests than when they are. Simply raising to salience the race of the student triggers the activation of the stereotype, which in turn leads to poorer performance. However, learning about stereotype threat to a large extent immunizes people against it. This suggests that the psycho-social dimension of intelligence that recognizes the possibility of effects like stereotype threat is a crucial mediating variable in the development and expression of the intellectual virtues. The Socratic, “Know thyself” needs to be expanded to, “Know thyself and thy society.” Self-knowledge and knowledge of relevant stereotypes are a necessary condition for optimal development and expression of the other intellectual virtues. (shrink)

Quayshawn Spencer (2014) misunderstands my treatment of racial naturalism. I argued that racial naturalism must entail a strong claim, such as “races are subspecies”, if it is to be a substantive position that contrasts with anti-realism about biological race. My recognition that not all race naturalists make such a strong claim is evident throughout the article Spencer reviews (Hochman, 2013a). Spencer seems to agree with me that there are no human subspecies, and he endorses a weaker form of racial naturalism. (...) However, he supports his preferred version of ‘racial naturalism’ with arguments that are not well described as ‘naturalistic’. I argue that Spencer offers us an unnaturalised racial naturalism. (shrink)

I argue that what’s so bad (qua film fiction) about the cinematic practice of actor-character race-mismatching—be it the historically infamous and intuitively repugnant practice of blackface or one of its more contemporary kin—is that the extent to which film-fictions employ such practices is typically the extent to which such film-fictions unrealistically depict facts about race. More precisely, I claim that race-mismatching film fictions—understood as a species of unrealistic fiction—are prima facie inconsistent fictions with the capacity to mislead their audiences about (...) certain morally relevant actual-world states-of-affairs and thus, prima facie aesthetically, epistemically, and morally defective. (shrink)

Marguerite Clark as Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1918). Charlton Heston as Ramon Miguel Vargas in Touch of Evil (1958). Mizuo Peck as Sacagawea in Night at the Museum (2006). From the early days of cinema to its classic-era through to the contemporary Hollywood age, the history of cinema is replete with films in which the racial (or ethnic) background of a principal character does not match the background of the actor or actress portraying that character. I call this actor-character (...) race-mismatching. In this paper, I mainly explore whether a coherent and plausible account can be given of race-matching in terms of purely aesthetic considerations, i.e., an account that absent moral considerations can nevertheless coherently and productively answer the following questions: can race-mismatching itself ever be an aesthetic defect of a film, and if so, under what conditions can race-mismatching be such an aesthetic defect. I claim that once we have in place a precise account of the nature of race-matching, it becomes clear that films for which race-mismatching appears to constitute an aesthetic defect are actually films with which properly engaging requires audiences to satisfy inconsistent epistemic conditions. In such cases, I claim, race mismatching constitutes an aesthetic defect for the film-fiction because—in virtue of the inconsistency underwritten by the race-mismatching—that film-fiction undermines the very uptake it prescribes. I then argue that if what’s defective about race-mismatching aesthetically is predicated on something being defective about race-mismatching epistemically, then if there is nothing in principle defective about race-mismatching epistemically, then so too for mismatching aesthetically (and so too for mismatching morally). From this I conclude that reasons stemming only from race-matching/mismatching itself lack the normative force sufficient to warrant the claim that film-fictions ought not race-mismatch. (shrink)

In order to arbitrate conflicting propositional knowledge claims—such as when two individuals claim to know the height of a tree in the yard—there is a “fact of the matter” about who is correct. Experiential, non-propositional knowledge, on the other hand, is not so obviously mediated. For one, experiential knowledge is—at least partially—subjective; one of its virtues is that it matters what a person’s background is, socially, etc., when determining the legitimacy of their claims. But this suggests a question: How do (...) we decide whose experience of an event is right, when two individuals differ in their accounts of a single event?In this paper I present the concept of experiential knowledge, asserting that this knowledge is frequently nonpropositional. I argue that accepting experiential knowledge is fundamental to issues of social justice, specifically when it is precisely the claims of those who have the least social or political “authority” who are in danger of having their experiences and the knowledge gained from those experiences, discounted. I address worries over the arbitration of experiential knowledge, and conclude that in cases where necessary, arbitration is both possible and often morally required. (shrink)

"In her essay "Choosing the Margin," bell hooks draws attention to the way uncritical celebrations of difference and otherness often act as an alibi for progressive politics. The recent proliferation of discourses on alterity, particularly with the growth of Levinas studies, makes hooks's critique all the more relevant for ethical and political theory today. To what extent has this emphasis on alterity affected the dynamics of philosophical and political life? Does it fall into the trap that hooks identifies here as (...) a mask with which privileged subjects present themselves as critical thinkers, while failing to listen to the diverse voices of concrete others gathered under the rubric of "the Other"? It is one thing to affirm one's infinite responsibility for the Other, and quite another thing to make good on that responsibility in specific contexts, especially in a political landscape where some faces are more visible than others, and some voices more likely to be heard. Unless we can flesh out Levinas's ethical project with a political project of resisting oppression, his ethics risks a level of abstraction that covers over its own blind spots. And unless we can distinguish rigorously between otherness as a sign of political exclusion and otherness as a source of ethical command, we risk repeating the conflation of certain others with a position of weakness and victimhood, where "we" can feel responsible for "them" without having to listen to anyone but ourselves.". (shrink)

"Draws on philosophers, political theorists, activists, and poets to explain how unspoken and unspeakable knowledge is important to racial and gender formation; offers a usable conception of implicit understanding"--Provided by publishers.

More than forty years have passed since Congress, in response to the Civil Rights Movement, enacted sweeping antidiscrimination laws in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. As a signal achievement of that legacy, in 2008, Americans elected their first African American president. Some would argue that we have finally arrived at a postracial America, butThe Imperative of Integration indicates otherwise. Elizabeth Anderson demonstrates that, despite progress toward racial (...) equality, African Americans remain disadvantaged on virtually all measures of well-being. Segregation remains a key cause of these problems, and Anderson skillfully shows why racial integration is needed to address these issues. Weaving together extensive social science findings--in economics, sociology, and psychology--with political theory, this book provides a compelling argument for reviving the ideal of racial integration to overcome injustice and inequality, and to build a better democracy. -/- Considering the effects of segregation and integration across multiple social arenas, Anderson exposes the deficiencies of racial views on both the right and the left. She reveals the limitations of conservative explanations for black disadvantage in terms of cultural pathology within the black community and explains why color blindness is morally misguided. Multicultural celebrations of group differences are also not enough to solve our racial problems. Anderson provides a distinctive rationale for affirmative action as a tool for promoting integration, and explores how integration can be practiced beyond affirmative action. -/- Offering an expansive model for practicing political philosophy in close collaboration with the social sciences, this book is a trenchant examination of how racial integration can lead to a more robust and responsive democracy. (shrink)

In this paper I explore some possible reasons why white feminists philosophers have failed to engage the radical work being done by non-Western women, U.S. women of color and scholars of color outside of the discipline. -/- Feminism and academic philosophy have had lots to say to one another. Yet part of what marks feminist philosophy as philosophy is our engagement with the intellectual traditions of the white forefathers. I’m not uncomfortable with these projects: Aristotle, Foucault, Sartre, Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, (...) and countless others have provided us with some very powerful conceptual tools.. However, as Sandra Harding observes, conventional standards for what counts as “good science” (or in this case “good philosophy”) always bear the imprint of their creators. So, I think about whether the tools my discipline hands me ever serve as strategies for exclusion. -/- My conversation begins with intersectionality, which for feminists working outside of philosophy, is a predictable point of departure; but as a white feminist philosopher I have specific reasons for starting here. The fact that intersectionality is, at once, such a widely recognized strategy for making visible women of color’s issues and concerns in academic and policy discussions, and so neglected by philosophers is telling. I want to invite philosophers to think more seriously about intersectionality and other pluralist approaches as strategies for calling attention to whiteness of philosophy in general and feminist philosophy in particular. I want us to consider what feminist philosophy would be like if women of color’s writing, experiences, and communities drove philosophical inquiry. -/- Since most philosophers are unfamiliar with intersectional methodologies, I begin with a basic explanation of the foundational claims of this approach. Next, I explore some reasons why white feminists working in philosophy may be resistant to this method. I identify both disciplinary and personal reasons for this hesitancy and argue that intersectionality serves as a useful strategic tool for examining white authority in the emergent feminist canon. Finally, I explore the role intersectional thinking might play in creating a feminist critical race philosophy by outlining four projects that I think will challenge and enrich feminist work in the discipline. (shrink)

In this paper I respond to three commentaries on Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. In response to Alcoff, I primarily defend my conception of how an individual hearer might develop virtues of epistemic justice. I do this partly by drawing on empirical social psychological evidence supporting the possibility of reflective self-regulation for prejudice in our judgements. I also emphasize the fact that individual virtue is only part of the solution – structural mechanisms also have an essential role (...) in combating epistemic injustice. My response to Goldberg principally concerns my perceptual account of the epistemology of testimony, which I defend as being both well-motivated and best categorized as a species of non-inferentialism. I also explain its relation to the reductionism/non-reductionism contrast, and defend my resistance to casting it as any kind of default view. In response to Hookway, I contrast discriminatory with distributive forms of epistemic injustice, and defend the basic taxonomy I present in the book, which casts testimonial and hermeneutical injustice as the two fundamental discriminatory forms of epistemic injustice. (shrink)

Charles Mills has critiqued of the whiteness of the discipline of Philosophy by showing how ideal theorizing dominates Anglo-American philosophy and functions there as ideology, while it is non-ideal theorizing that can better attend to the realities of racialized lives. This paper investigates how idealization within the subfield of ethics leads mainstream ethical theorizing to fail to reflect moral life under racial and other forms of domination and oppression. The paper proposes recognizing the dilemmaticity that moral life tends to exhibit (...) under certain non-ideal conditions. (shrink)

In this collection, white women philosophers engage boldly in critical acts of exploring ways of naming and disrupting whiteness in terms of how it has defined the conceptual field of philosophy. Focuses on the whiteness of the epistemic and value-laden norms within philosophy itself, the text dares to identify the proverbial elephant in the room known as white supremacy and how that supremacy functions as the measure of reason, knowledge, and philosophical intelligibility.

I argue that representations of the Muslim woman in the Western imaginary function as counter-images to the patriarchal ideal of Western woman. Drawing upon the work of Frantz Fanon (and supplementing it with a consideration of the role of gender), I show how the image of the veiled, Muslim woman is both othered and racialized. This “double othering,” I argue, serves: (i) To normalize Western norms of femininity. The social control of women and their bodies by liberal society is hidden. (...) Gender oppression is rather projected onto Muslim women, and identified with their societies, while remaining invisible within Western society. Western womanhood is taken to be “free” of such oppression. (ii) To deflect attention away from Western patriarchy, and promote complicity on the part of Western women with this society rather than other women. (iii) To represent Western femininity as an ideal that solicits women’s complicity universally. The attempt is to establish the superiority of Western society and its gender norms and morally justify the domination of other societies (in the name of civilization and the liberation of women). (shrink)

What is the norm of Americanness today, how has it changed, and how pluralistic is it in reality? from the Introduction In this volume philosophers and social ...

This article analyses letters to the editor written on or about Muslims printed in a British broadsheet newspaper. The pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation is applied as a model for explaining and understanding the arguments employed in the sampled letters. Our presentation of pragma-dialectical theory focuses on argumentative reasonableness. More specifically, we introduce the four dialectical stages through which any argument must pass and explain the ten rules of critical discussion that participants must follow throughout if they are to resolve the (...) argument. The article focuses in particular on the letter writers' use of argument schemes-that is, the manner in which these writers use arguments to support their standpoints. We conclude by highlighting the role that unreasonable arguments can play in perpetuating racialized inequalities and hence the importance of analyzing argumentation. (shrink)

I want to explore strategic expressions of ignorance against the background of Charles W. Mills's account of epistemologies of ignorance in The Racial Contract (1997). My project has two interrelated goals. I want to show how Mills's discussion is restricted by his decision to frame ignorance within the language and logic of social contract theory. And, I want to explain why Maria Lugones's work on purity is useful in reframing ignorance in ways that both expand our understandings of ignorance and (...) reveal its strategic uses. I begin with Mills's account of the Racial Contract, and explain how it prescribes for its signatories an epistemology of ignorance, which Mills characterizes as an inverted epistemology. I briefly outline his program for undoing white ignorance and indicate that retooling white ignorance is more complex than his characterization suggests. Making this argument requires an abrupt shift from the white-created frameworks of social contract theory to Lugones's system of thinking rooted in the lives of people of color. So, the next section outlines Lugones's distinction between the logic of purity and the logic of curdling and explains its usefulness in addressing ignorance. With both accounts firmly in place the third section demonstrates how the Racial Contract produces at least two expressions of ignorance and explains how the logic of purity underlying the Contract shapes each expression in ways that limit possibilities for resistance. I don't mean to suggest that the social contract theory's love of purity invalidates Mills's work, only that this framework limits prospects for long-term change by neglecting the relationship between white ignorance and non-white resistance. The final sections explain how people of color use ignorance strategically to their advantage , and argue that examining ignorance through a curdled lens not only makes strategic ignorance visible, but also points to alternatives for retooling white ignorance. (shrink)

Fricker shows that virtue epistemology provides a general epistemological idiom in which these issues can be forcefully discussed.

The renewed interest in the issue of black reparations, both in the public sphere and among scholars, is a welcome development because the racial injustices of the past continue to shape American society by disadvantaging African Americans in a variety of ways. Attention to the past and how it has shaped present-day inequality seems essential both to understanding our predicament and to justifying policies that would address and undermine racial inequality. Given this, any argument for policies designed to pursue racial (...) justice must be, at least in part, backward-looking, justifi ed partly as compensation for the effects of the wrongs of the past. However, some arguments about black reparations, both pro and con, are focused too far in the past. An unspoken assumption of much of the debate about black reparations is that these would be reparations for slavery. This, we argue, is a mistake. Racial inequality in the United States today may, ultimately, be based on slavery, but it is also based on the failure of the country to take effective steps since slavery to undermine the structural racial inequality that slavery put in place. From the latter part of the nineteenth century through the fi rst half of the twentieth century, the Jim Crow system continued to keep Blacks “in their place,” and even during and after the civil rights era no policies were adopted to dismantle the racial hierarchy that already existed. An important part of the story of racial inequality today is the history of housing and lending discrimination in the second half of the twentieth century (McCarthy 2002; 2004). Home equity, for many Americans, is a very important source of wealth, and the decades after World War II were ones of rapid home equity growth. They were the decades that saw the creation of a large, mostly suburban, middle class. But the middle class that was created was also mostly White, and this was due largely to government policies that (in many cases intentionally) excluded Blacks from the opportunities to get into the home market and benefi t from home equity growth. In this paper we argue that recent housing and lending discrimination constitutes an important basis for black reparations.. (shrink)

During the 1780s, as Kant was developing his universalistic moral theory, he published texts in which he defended the superiority of whites over non-whites. Whether commentators see this as evidence of inconsistent universalism or of consistent inegalitarianism, they generally assume that Kant's position on race remained stable during the 1780s and 1790s. Against this standard view, I argue on the basis of his texts that Kant radically changed his mind. I examine his 1780s race theory and his hierarchical conception of (...) the races, and subsequently address the question of the significance of these views, especially in the light of Kant's own ethical theory. I then show that during the 1790s Kant restricts the role of the concept of race, and drops his hierarchical account of the races in favour of a more genuinely egalitarian and cosmopolitan view. (shrink)

Ape to Apollo is the first book to follow the development in the eighteenth century of the idea of race as it shaped and was shaped by the idea of aesthetics.

This work is the first volume of a projected two‐volume examination of the black experience with the practices and institutions of Western medicine from its earliest beginnings to the end of the twentieth century. As a reference source, W. Michael Byrd and Linda Clayton's history is certainly valuable: its thirty‐page bibliography and nearly one hundred pages of notes offer a rich field of information for anyone who wants to know the “what” and “how” of the intersection of black history and (...) Western medicine.Still, after having read the book, I have more questions—about the work itself: its purpose, its intended audience, and the apparent lack of editing . Further, in a quest for completeness Byrd and Clayton tend to introduce material that, for me, slows their story more than it advances what I believe is their central argument: that difference has a way of becoming deviance, which then produces long‐term consequences for those not a party to the original decision; that it becomes institutional racism.In their preface Byrd and Clayton explain how the book came to be; in the introduction they describe what it is intended to accomplish. Their principal objective, they say, was “to perform a history‐based descriptive and structured analysis of the U.S. health system from an African American perspective,” a point they will repeat elsewhere in a slightly different guise. Such an analysis is necessary, they argue, because although the American public has become more aware of the national crisis in health care and of the need for major reform of the health system, too many commentators appear to have overlooked the “older, more ominous, culturally driven health crisis afflicting African American and other poor populations” . To some extent this crisis “can be explained on the basis of a medical‐social culture hundreds of years old that is heavily laden and burdened by race and class problems compounding continued social and economic deprivation.” This contention is followed by a list of assumptions, beginning with “Poor health status and outcomes for Blacks and the poor are ‘normal’ and acceptable” and ending with “Racially and ethnically divided health professions have factions that are often contentious, conflicting, and contemptuous of each other.”In the introduction, too, Byrd and Clayton describe both the topics the book will cover and the many sources they consulted to substantiate their historical and structured analysis. The materials included and the need for close editing of the entire text leave one wondering who will read this book and what they might derive from it. Still, it is a thorough effort from start to finish.The book first undertakes “a history‐based examination and evaluation of the U.S. health delivery system from an African American perspective.” Second, it reassesses “the relationship between the medical profession and issues of race and racism in Western culture and the United States.” Third, it evaluates the impact of race and racism as key variables that must be factored into the complex equation necessary to resolve the “American health dilemma.” Fourth, the book offers “a series of explanatory hypotheses that clarify and help explain the results of the ongoing relationships between race, the biomedical and other life sciences, health, and healthcare delivery in the United States from their ancient Afro‐European beginnings” to 1900. The remainder of the book is divided into three sections: background, “Race, Medicine, and Health in the North American Colonies and the Early U.S. Republic,” and “Race, Medicine, and Health in the United States from 1812 to 1900.”The background section provides a reassessment of the relationship between race, biology, and health in the United States and establishes the groundwork for the remainder of the book—though the information on the evolution of race, science, and medicine in Western culture is perhaps more than the average reader can comfortably digest and assimilate. Part 2 and a portion of Part 3 track the health‐care experiences of Blacks under slavery and their importance in the evolution of a dual health system that will become more rigid with time. The balance of Part 3 reviews black health care and the evolution of health policy and practice alongside the maturation of the medical profession after the collapse of the peculiar institution to the end of the nineteenth century.Although health care for black people did improve after the Civil War and Reconstruction, African Americans and the poor in general still experience a kind of differential access that has been exacerbated by the fee‐for‐service system—that the system is not equal and is still bedeviled by prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behavior left over from days gone by is a given. The question that remains is, How do we improve it? Clearly this book, despite its flaws, is a step in the right direction. By providing a historical overview of how things evolved to be the way they are, the authors also provide insight into how to correct existing conditions. (shrink)

This essay explores how the social location of white traitorous identities might be understood. I begin by examining some of the problematic implications of Sandra Harding's standpoint framework description of race traitors as 'becoming marginal.' I argue that the location of white traitors might be better understood in terms of their 'decentering the center.' I distinguish between 'privilege-cognizant' and 'privilege-evasive' white scripts. Drawing on the work of Marilyn Frye and Anne Braden, I offer an account of the contrasting perceptions and (...) behaviors of white who animate one type of script and those who struggle to forge the other type. I use Maria Lugones account of identity and notions of 'world travel' and 'loving perception' and Aristotle's virtue theory to explicate the ways whites, and white feminists in particular, might cultivate a traitorous character conducive to an antiracist politics. (shrink)

The precise conceptions of race de­ployed by Mexican philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century have often been poorly understood. Consequently, the specifi­cally racial components in their work have been frequently dismissed on the grounds that they were unscientific, irresponsible, and/or sloppy. I hope to show that with a sufficiently rich understanding of at least the seminal works many of these criticisms can be blunted.