White Supremacy

Lucius Outlaw and Shannon Sullivan have argued for the preservation of racial distinctiveness and the necessity of racial separatism. This paper articulates and challenges this push for racial separatism and the particular conception of race evoked therein. The author points out that the multiplicity, the multiculturalism, the intersectionality within these communities of resistance is typically belittled, fragmented, or erased. Recognizing the practical use of racial coalitions, the author articulates an alternative conception of coalitional agency, one that allows for multiplicitous identities, (...) opening avenues to intercultural communication and impure coalitions of resistance. (shrink)

This is my reply essay (1000 words) to Travis Timmerman's "A Case for Removing Confederate Monuments" in Bob Fisher's _Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us_ volume. In it, I explain why I think the mere harm from the racial offense a monument may cause does not justify removing it.

Many historically-influential philosophers had profoundly wrong moral views or behaved very badly. Aristotle thought women were “deformed men” and that some people were slaves “by nature.” Descartes had disturbing views about non-human animals. Hume and Kant were racists. Hegel disparaged Africans. Nietzsche despised sick people. Mill condoned colonialism. Fanon was homophobic. Frege was anti-Semitic; Heidegger was a Nazi. Schopenhauer was sexist. Rousseau abandoned his children. Wittgenstein beat his young students. Unfortunately, these examples are just a start. -/- These philosophers are (...) famous for their intellectual accomplishments, yet they display serious moral or intellectual flaws in their beliefs or actions. At least, some of their views were false, ultimately unjustified and, perhaps, harmful. -/- How should we respond to brilliant-but-flawed philosophers from the past? Here we explore the issues, asking questions and offering few answers. Any insights gained here might be applicable to contemporary imperfect philosophers, scholars in other fields, and people in general. (shrink)

In this chapter I sketch a rightist approach to monumentary policy in a diverse polity beleaguered by old ethnic grievances. I begin by noting the importance of tribalism, memorialization, and social trust. I then suggest a policy which 1) gradually narrows the gap between peoples in the heritage landscape, 2) conserves all but the most offensive of the least beloved racist monuments, 3) avoids recrimination (i.e., “keeps it positive”) and eschews ideological commentary in new monuments or revisions to old ones, (...) 4) as much as politically feasible, recognizes only the offense of willing tribemates, and 5) responds to aesthetic and other “irrational” offenses more than to “objective” historical or philosophical critiques. (shrink)

In recent years, campaigns across the globe have called for the removal of objects symbolic of white supremacy. This paper examines the ethics of altering or removing such objects. Do these strategies sanitize history, destroy heritage and suppress freedom of speech? Or are they important steps towards justice? Does removing monuments and renaming schools reflect a lack of parity and unfairly erase local identities? Or can it sometimes be morally required, as an expression of respect for the memories of people (...) who endured past injustices; a recognition of this history's ongoing legacies; and a repudiation of unjust social hierarchies? (shrink)

In this chapter we focus on the debate over publicly-maintained racist monuments as it manifests in the mid-2010s Anglosphere, primarily in the US (chiefly regarding the over 700 monuments devoted to the Confederacy), but to some degree also in Britain and Commonwealth countries, especially South Africa (chiefly regarding monuments devoted to figures and events associated with colonialism and apartheid). After pointing to some representative examples of racist monuments, we discuss ways a monument can be thought racist, and neutrally categorize removalist (...) and preservationist arguments heard in the monument debate. We suggest that both extremist and moderate removalist goals are likely to be self-defeating, and that when concerns of civic sustainability are put on moral par with those of fairness and justice, something like a Mandela-era preservationist policy is best: one which removes the most offensive of the minor racist monuments, but which focuses on closing the monumentary gap between peoples and reframing existing racist monuments. (shrink)

Aanerud's project is to develop an account of white antiracist mothering, using a model of maternal duty to raise antiracist white children. The author sets this project in the context of historic constructions of white mothering in the twentieth century and then contrasts the need for an exploration of white mothers raising white children against the literature of white mothers' raising children of color and mothers of color raising their own children, Once this distinction is made, Aanerud uses Collins's account (...) of racial ethnic mothering as a springboard into her discussion of antiracist white mothering of white children. (shrink)

Given the oncoming demographic changes—which are primarily driven by the growth in the Latinx community—the United States is predicted to become a minority-majority country by around 2050. This seems to suggest that electoral strategies that employ “dog-whistle” politics are destined for the dust-bin of history. Following the work of critical race theorists, such as Ian Haney-Lopez and Derrick Bell, I want to suggest that pronouncing the inevitable demise of dog-whistle politics is premature. This is because there are reasons to suspect (...) that certain segments of the Latinx community—much like the Southern and Eastern Europeans in the early part of 20th Century—might be co-opted into American whiteness. (shrink)

What would it look like for a college, white in its history and predominantly white in its present reality, to create a program that responds to, and works in support of, the agenda Du Bois proposes for the “Negro university” of the 1930’s? How can a white college cease to be an obstacle to the liberation of African Americans? That is, how can a persistently white college become actively antiracist and pursue a goal of educating antiracist white students—students who could (...) work in solidarity with Black students educated in the ways Du Bois envisions? This essay sketches a project for white institutions that genuinely seek to address white racism, a system that still manifests “the determination…to keep the black world poor and make [whites] rich” (99, EBP), even now, seventy years after Du Bois published his essay. (shrink)

Abstract The paper considers the way in which white teachers and students make sense of ?race? in a multiracial college of further education. It argues that within white cultural forms there are two main ways of comprehending race, the ?nationalistic? and ?liberal?. It suggests however that these two forms are interrelated and that paradoxically the nationalistic may feed in and support a white ?liberalism?. It is argued that the liberal form's denial of structure serves to sustain a white racism. On (...) a more positive note it is argued that teachers? concerns with equal opportunities provide an important resource in the development of an anti?racist education. (shrink)

I address the problem of how to locate "traitorous" subjects, or those who belong to dominant groups yet resist the usual assumptions and practices of those groups. I argue that Sandra Harding's description of traitors as insiders, who "become marginal" is misleading. Crafting a distinction between "privilege-cognizant" and "privilege-evasive" white scripts, I offer an alternative account of race traitors as privilege-cognizant whites who refuse to animate expected whitely scripts, and who are unfaithful to worldviews whites are expected to hold.

Imperialism rarely receives discussion in mainstream philosophy. In radical philosophy, where imperialism is analyzed with some frequency, European expansion is the paradigm. This essay considers the nature and specificity of American imperialism, especially its racialization structures, diplomatic history, and geographic trajectory, from pre?twentieth century ?Amerasia? to present?day Eurasia. The essay begins with an account of imperialism generally, one which is couched in language consistent with left?liberalism but compatible with a more radical discourse. This account is then used throughout the rest (...) of the essay to illumine, through consideration of US foreign policy, structures of American dominion in Latin America, the Pacific, and Asia?and subsequently Eurasia. The overall analytic and geographic portrait offers critical context for both philosophy of race, which tends to be domestically oriented, and just war theory, which tends to ignore wider structures of diplomatic domination. (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)

I am interested in looking at Krumpin’ through what I am calling the “politics of submergence.” If my world is chaotic, if my Blackness is my murderer, can I be expected to create beauty? Can my art be transformative? My paper argues that Krumpin’ is in fact transformative, not to the extent that it perpetuates hope, but maintains its social pessimism. In accepting both the conditions that have sustained the racial marginalization of African descended people, and the impotence of this (...) marginalized group to change the systemic social structures that continue racial subordination in the United States, Krumpin’ announces a reflective mode of racial identity and cultural existence that attends to the suffering of African-descended people in American ghettos. (shrink)

Historically, for Black writers, literary fiction has been a site for transforming the discursive disciplinary spaces of political oppression. From 19th century “slave narratives” to the 20th century, Black novelists have created an impressive literary counter-canon in advancing liberatory struggles. W.E.B. Du Bois argued that “all art is political.” Many Black writers have used fiction to create spaces for political and social freedom—from the early work of Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig; or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black (1859)—to (...) the enduring works of the Harlem Renaissance (Toomer, Hurston, and Schuyler)—to the great revolutionary Black literature after WWII (Wright, Baldwin, Williams)—to contemporary Black writers (Toni Morrison, Edward Jones, Samuel Delany)—Black fictive space continues to be a necessary site for resistance. Black literary fiction is a vast counter-canon to mainstream literature which unquestioningly reinforces global white supremacy, capitalistic political oppressions, and the dominance/subordinance relations upon which they depend. (shrink)

: Aanerud's project is to develop an account of white antiracist mothering, using a model of maternal duty to raise antiracist white children. The author sets this project in the context of historic constructions of white mothering in the twentieth century and then contrasts the need for an exploration of white mothers raising white children against the literature of white mothers' raising children of color and mothers of color raising their own children, Once this distinction is made, Aanerud uses Collins's (...) account of racial ethnic mothering as a springboard into her discussion of antiracist white mothering of white children. (shrink)

: Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays (that's the work of 'heterosexism' and 'homophobia') but to better understand consequences of institutionalizing a particular relationship between men and women. In this essay, Hoagland takes up the claim from a number of women of color that women are not all the same gender.

My project is to explain why the question ‘How does it feel to be a white problem?’ cannot be answered in the fluttering grammar of white talk. The whiteness of white talk lies not only in its having emerged from white mouths, but also in its evasiveness—in its attempt to suppress fear and anxiety, and its consequential [if unintended] reinscription and legitimation of racist oppression. I White talk is designed, indeed scripted, for the purposes of evading, rejecting, and remaining ignorant (...) about the injustices that flow from whiteness and its attendant privileges. I want to suggest a new point of entry—a way to flip the script, so to speak. -/- I begin with some observations about the basic advantages and disadvantages of using white talk as a route into the white problem. My account develops an expanded version of Alice MacIntyre’s definition of white talk that is attentive to the racialized bodily scripts that accompany white talk. I argue that white talk persists because it has an enduring and powerful moral, ontological, and epistemic pay off for white folks. I explore each payoff with an eye towards clarifying how white talk functions to maintain the illusion that we are invulnerable beings. Next, I pause to reply to the popular objection that this particular critique of white talk silences white people in conversations on race. If we cannot address the question ‘how does it feel to be a white problem’ in the fluttering grammar of white talk, then how shall we begin? In closing, I suggest that we might reduce fluttering by replacing white talk with a discourse of vulnerability, where vulnerability is defined not as weakness, but as a condition for potential. I offer some brief guidelines for how we might start this conversation. (shrink)

In "Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?" Donna Gabaccia provides an illuminating account of the origin of the United States' claim to be a "Nation of Immigrants." Gabaccia's endeavor is motivated by the question "What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile or an illegal or clandestine?" . This question is very important to the immigration debate because, as Gabaccia goes on to show, "[t]o ponder (...) this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagination of nations" . In this paper, I am going to delve deeper into . (shrink)

In 1934 Heidegger offered an account of what a Volk is in terms of the existential analytic of Dasein set out in Being and Time , but soon after he abandoned this framework as he began the task of overcoming metaphysics. Integral to this new task was a confrontation with the racial policies not just of the Nazis but also of the Allies because he believed that the Western philosophical tradition was deeply implicated in these policies. Against this background, this (...) paper explores Heidegger's attempts—hitherto unrecognized—in the late 1930s to sketch another way of thinking what his contemporaries called "race" using the conceptual resources he had introduced in "The Origin of the Work of Art." The paper also includes some criticisms of Emmanuel Faye's recent study, Heidegger: The Introduction of Nazism into Philosophy. (shrink)

The unchanging realities of race relations in the United States, recently highlighted by the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina, demonstrate that Black Americans are still not viewed, treated or protected as citizens in this country. The rates of poverty, disease and incarceration in Black communities have been recognized by some Critical Race Theorists as genocidal acts. Despite the appeal to the international community’s interpretation of human rights, Blacks are still the most impoverished and lethally targeted group in America. Given the “white (...) racial framing” that stems from “white habitus,” and enforced systemically, the situation of Black Americans is best described through a racial realist perspective, in which racial equality is merely an illusion. Under such dire colonial circumstances, I argue that there should be a renewed discussion on the role that violence and decolonization can play in the American context. (shrink)

The primary objective of this thesis is to advocate for Black Nationalism's full inclusion in the academic field of political philosophy. By bringing the thinkers in the Black Nationalist tradition into this discourse, the field of philosophy stands to gain important insight into the prejudices and unexamined assumptions that plague academia. I will flesh out the nature of these assumptions using the works of Black Nationalists like Angela Davis, George Jackson and Joy James. This will show that reading Black Nationalists (...) as social theorists enables philosophers to unveil sources of knowledge about political economies by looking at the history of imperialism in a comprehensive manner. The second section is devoted to an examination of how the Black Panther Party's relationship to the state reveals the role of white violence in maintaining racial hierarchies. That the Black Panthers were targeted so systematically by the state indicates that they were perceived to be a threat to the white power structure, which gives us insight into how challenging state terror is a revolutionary act in intellectual and concrete ways. I show that the mainstream academic discourse on racism in American society assigns higher credibility to white philosophers even when Black thinkers have been producing relevant scholarship for centuries on the subject in question. The third section examines the philosophy of the Enlightenment in terms of how it relates to the domestic colonization of African Americans and to the abuse of people of color around the globe by European and American imperialists. The purpose of this section is to show how scholars' confidence in white canonized philosophers predisposes them to overlook Enlightenment philosophy's structurally racist approach to political societies. The fourth section provides a detailed overview of the key principles in Anti-Colonial and Critical Race Theory as they intersect with Black Nationalism. Important issues addressed in this section include the role of prisons in keeping African Americans in a state of neo-slavery. In order to situate Black Nationalist thought within a broader intellectual history, I will discuss how Black Nationalism represents the culmination of radical American and Anti-Colonial political theory. (shrink)

Darker skin correlates with reduced opportunities and negative health outcomes. Recent discoveries related to the genes associated with skin tone, and the historical use of cosmetics to conform to racist appearance standards, suggest effective skin-lightening products may soon become available. This article examines whether medical interventions of this sort should be permitted, subsidized, or restricted, using Norman Daniels's framework for determining what justice requires in terms of protecting health. I argue that Daniels's expansive view of the requirements of justice in (...) meeting health needs offers some support for recognizing a societal obligation to provide this kind of ‘enhancement,’ in light of the strong connections between skin tone and health outcomes. On balance, however, Daniels's framework offers compelling reasons to reject insurance coverage for skin-lightening medical interventions, including the likely ineffectiveness of such technologies in mitigating racial health disparities, and the danger that covering skin-lightening enhancements would undermine public support for cooperative schemes that protect health. In fact, justice may require limiting access to these technologies because of their potential to exacerbate the negative effects of racism. (shrink)

Critical race theorists have done much in recent years to show that contrived and repressive notions of racial purity have been central to the social identity of whiteness in the US. Similarly, feminists know that contrived and repressive notions of sexual purity (that is, chastity) have been central to the social construction of femininity, especially white femininity. While it may be clear that these abstract purity ideals have privileged certain subjects over others, what is even more interesting, and less documented, (...) are the ways in which everyday purity ideals bite their own tails, that is, they undermine their professed purpose in concrete ways. Thus, even the "privileged" subjects suffer. Looking around, we .. (shrink)

Philosophers often entertain positions that they themselves do not hold. This article is an example of this. While I do not advocate localized acts of violence to combat white supremacy, I think that it is worthwhile to explore why it might be theoretically justifiable for some African Americans to commit such acts of violence. I contend that acts of localized violence are at least theoretical justifiable for some African Americans from the vantage point of racial realism. Yet, I also contend (...) that the likely detrimental consequences of engaging in such violence on economically disadvantaged African Americans outweigh its possible benefits for them; hence, it should not be used by them to combat white supremacy presently. (shrink)