Philosophy of Race

Many have argued that certain statues or monuments are objectionable, and thus ought to be removed. Even if their arguments are compelling, a major obstacle is the apparent historical value of those commemorations. Preservation in some form seems to be the best way to respect the value of commemorations as connections to the past or opportunities to learn important historical lessons. Against this, I argue that we have exaggerated the historical value of objectionable commemorations. Sometimes commemorations connect to biased or (...) distorted versions of history, if not mere myths. We can also learn historical lessons through what I call repudiatory honouring: the honouring of certain victims or resistors that can only make sense if the oppressor(s) or target(s) of resistance are deemed unjust, where no part of the original objectionable commemorations is preserved. This type of commemorative practice can even help to overcome some of the obstacles objectionable commemorations pose against properly connecting to the past. (shrink)

Peter Linebaugh, an acclaimed expert on eighteenth-century England, is unflinching in his ambitions for Red Round Globe Hot Burning: “This book in its quest for Edward and Catherine Despard, and in...

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue 2, Page 7-9, March‐April 2022.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article revisits the Frankfurt School’s reflections on race, anti-Semitism and fascism, focusing especially on the theory of race implicit in Dialectic of Enlightenment. It argues that this theory has the potential to be developed into a critical functionalist theory of race that avoids both class and race reductionism, offering a thoroughly intersectional competitor to currently dominant philosophies of race. The key to such a theory is the view that racialization plays a functional (...) role in sustaining capitalist exploitation. While Horkheimer and Adorno focus on the scapegoat function of racialization, I argue that this function, while important, does not exhaust the possible functionalities of racialization and neglects an especially crucial function: the maintenance of a specifically racial form of exploitation. (shrink)

When studying science contexts, scholars typically position charismatic authority as an adjunct or something that provides a meaning-laden boost to rational authority. In this paper, we re-theorize these relationships. We re-center charismatic authority as an interpretive resource that allows scientists and onlookers to recast a professional conflict in terms of a public drama. In this mode, both professionals and lay enthusiasts portray involvement in the scientific process as a story of suppression and persecution, in which only a few remarkable figures (...) can withstand scrutiny and take on challengers with dignity. Description and elaboration of these figures and the folklore surrounding them sets in motion the interpretive processes by which some actors become charismatic leaders and others charismatic followers within science, ultimately providing alternative symbolic resources for an embattled research agenda to accrue legitimacy. To illustrate, we use the case of Arthur Jensen – a deceased intelligence researcher and the intellectual father to contemporary texts like The Bell Curve – and the circles of hero worship that admirers inside and outside academia have created to praise him. Using this perspective to study Jensen and his admirers demonstrates how the perennial race and intelligence debates gain a kind of symbolic power, unrelated to their scientific merit or racist appeal, which enables such debates to thrive and persist in the public sphere. More generally, our approach identifies contemporary processes by which scientific ideas can gain public authority even when their intellectual merit has been deemed dubious. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S32-S34, March‐April 2022.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 5, May 2022.

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Some philosophers and activists have been sceptical about the relevance of pursuing animal justice to progress racial justice. Routinely, these sceptics have argued that allying animal and racial justice struggles is politically unfeasible, counterproductive, distractive and disruptive for the achievement of racial justice. The conclusion of these sceptics is that animal justice is either a barrier or irrelevant to racial justice and, as such, activists should not ally both struggles. In this article, I (...) wish to contest the arguments that forward the idea that these struggles should not be addressed together, especially in the case of addressing anti-Black racial injustices. I offer a negative argumentative strategy to forward my thesis; namely, I offer reasons to reject the arguments that are sceptical about the relevance of addressing animal justice to achieve progress in racial justice. I contend that racial injustice is partly fuelled by the capacity contract. The capacity contract, in turn, is intertwined with the way humans treat animals. Owing to the fact that speciesism fuels the contract that incites racism, then addressing speciesism is instrumentally relevant for overcoming racial injustices. Moreover, I demonstrate in this article that not only are there various ways that anti-racist and anti-speciesist struggles are interconnected, but also that the project of addressing them together is politically feasible and desirable. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. This article revisits the Frankfurt School’s reflections on race, anti-Semitism and fascism, focusing especially on the theory of race implicit in Dialectic of Enlightenment. It argues that this theory has the potential to be developed into a critical functionalist theory of race that avoids both class and race reductionism, offering a thoroughly intersectional competitor to currently dominant philosophies of race. The key to such a theory is the view that racialization plays a functional (...) role in sustaining capitalist exploitation. While Horkheimer and Adorno focus on the scapegoat function of racialization, I argue that this function, while important, does not exhaust the possible functionalities of racialization and neglects an especially crucial function: the maintenance of a specifically racial form of exploitation. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

The high rate of inequality in South Africa is rooted in colonial dispossession and racial exploitation, and still runs primarily along the racial divide. Policy initiatives taken to redress past economic injustices through the black economic empowerment have failed to bring economic transformation. Using the twin lenses of epistemic violence and racial capitalism, this study analyses how entangled interests aimed to co-opt the ruling party elite by the apartheid-era business elite led to the BEE impasse. The pervasiveness of cultural alienation (...) in BEE failure suggests that a shift to restorative justice is necessary to break from the impasse. (shrink)

Investigating the reality and significance of racial categories, Remapping Race in a Global Context examines the role of race in human genomics, biomedicine, and struggles for social justice around the world. In this book, biologists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers inspect critical questions around the biological reality of race and how it has been understood in different national and regional contexts. The essays also examine debates on the usefulness of race in medical and epidemiological studies. With focus on the fields of (...) human genomics and biomedicine, this book presents critical findings on whether and how race might be ethically and epistemologically justified in our age of personalized medicine, mass surveillance, and biased algorithms. The book will be of interest to researchers and advanced students in a broad range of scientific and humanistic disciplines, including biology, anthropology, geography, philosophy, cultural or community studies, critical race theory, and any field concerned with the deep racial dividing lines running across societies globally. (shrink)

This timely collection asks the reader to consider how society's modern notion of humans as rational, isolated individuals has contributed to psychological and social problems and oppressive power structures. Experts from a range of disciplines offer a complex understanding of how humans are shaped by history, tradition, and institutions. Drawing upon the work of Lacan, Fanon, and Foucault, this text examines cultural memory, modern ideas of race and gender, the roles of symbolism and mythology, and neoliberalism's impact on psychology. Through (...) clinical vignettes and suggested applications, it demonstrates significant alternatives to the isolated individualism of Western philosophy and psychology. This interdisciplinary volume is essential reading for clinicians and anyone looking to augment their understanding of how human beings are shaped by the societies they inhabit. (shrink)

Albinism is one of the foremost disability and public health issues in Africa today. It often makes headlines in local, national and international medias and forms the basis for intense advocacy at all levels. This is primarily due to the harmful representations of persons with albinism deeply entrenched in African traditions. These deeply rooted ideologies about albinism in African thought have largely promoted the continuous discrimination, stigmatization, harming, killing, commodification and violation of the human rights of persons with albinism in (...) African places. How has albinism emerged as a thick concept in African traditions? What are these deeply entrenched ideas about the ontology of albinism in African thought? What epistemic injustice has been done to persons with albinism in Africa places? Why do harmful beliefs about albinism still persist in modern African societies? How does the African communalistic ethic justify the harm done against persons with albinism? What is the duty to, and burden of, care for persons with albinism? What peculiar existential challenges do persons with albinism in general and females with albinism in particular face in African societies and how can they be overcome? What can be learnt from the education philosophy of reconstructionism and genetic engineering in improving the wellbeing of persons with albinism? African Philosophy and the Otherness of Albinism: White Skin, Black Race digs deep into these philosophical questions revealing fascinating but latent aspects of how albinism is understood in African places as a necessary step to take in improving the wellbeing and integrity of persons with albinism in Africa today. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of African philosophy, sociology, African studies and disability studies. (shrink)

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the (...) geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science. (shrink)

Race Matters, Animal Matters challenges one of the grand narratives of African American studies: that African Americans rejected racist associations of blackness and animality through a disassociation from animality. Analyzing canonical texts written by Frederick Douglass, Charles Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, and James Weldon Johnson alongside slaughterhouse lithographs, hunting photography, and sheep "husbandry" manuals, Lindgren Johnson argues instead for a critical African American tradition that at pivotal moments reconsiders and recuperates discourses of animality weaponized against both African Americans and animals. (...) Johnson articulates a theory of "fugitive humanism" in which these texts fl ee both white and human exceptionalism, even as they move within and seek out a humanist space. The focus, for example, is not on how African Americans shake off animal associations in demanding recognition of their humanity, but on how they hold fast to animality and animals in making such a move, revising "the human" itself as they go and undermining the binaries that helped to produce racial and animal injustices. Fugitive humanism reveals how an interspecies ethics develops in these African American responses to violent dehumanization. Illuminating those moments in which the African American canon exceeds human exceptionalism, Race Matters, Animal Matters ultimately shows how these black engagements with animals and animality are not subsequent to efforts for racial justice -- a mere extension of the abolitionist or antilynching movements-- but, to the contrary, are integral to those efforts. This black- authored temporality challenges widely accepted humanist approaches to the relationship between racial and animal justice as it anticipates and even critiques the valuable insights that animal studies and posthumanism have to offer in our current moment. aking such a move, revising "the human" itself as they go and undermining the binaries that helped to produce racial and animal injustices. Fugitive humanism reveals how an interspecies ethics develops in these African American responses to violent dehumanization. Illuminating those moments in which the African American canon exceeds human exceptionalism, Race Matters, Animal Matters ultimately shows how these black engagements with animals and animality are not subsequent to efforts for racial justice -- a mere extension of the abolitionist or antilynching movements-- but, to the contrary, are integral to those efforts. This black- authored temporality challenges widely accepted humanist approaches to the relationship between racial and animal justice as it anticipates and even critiques the valuable insights that animal studies and posthumanism have to offer in our current moment. (shrink)

For bell hooks, the best cultural criticism sees no need to separate politics from the pleasure of reading. Yearning collects together some of hooks's classic and early pieces of cultural criticism from the '80s. Addressing topics like pedagogy, postmodernism, and politics, hooks examines a variety of cultural artifacts, from Spike Lee's film Do the Right Thing and Wim Wenders's film Wings of Desire to the writings of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison. The result is a poignant collection of essays (...) which, like all of hooks's work, is above all else concerned with transforming oppressive structures of domination. (shrink)

Originally published: Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press, 1992.

History reveals how civilisations can be decimated by changes in climate. More recently modern methods of warfare have exposed the vulnerability of the artefacts of civilisation. Bringing together a range of subjects - from science, energy and sustainability to aesthetics theory and civilization theory - this book uniquely deals with climate change and the ensuing catastrophes in relation to cultural factors, urbanism and architecture. It links the evolution of civilisation, with special emphasis on the dynamics of beauty as displayed in (...) architecture and urbanism, to climate change. It then considers both the historic and predicted impacts of climate change and the threat it poses to the continued viability of human civilisation when survival is the top priority. This book gives students, researchers and professionals in architecture and sustainable design as well as anyone interested in the threat of global warming to civilisation, new insights as to what could be lost if action is not taken at a global level. (shrink)

What are the conditions needed for our nation to bridge cultural and racial divides? By "writing beyond race," noted cultural critic bell hooks models the constructive ways scholars, activists, and readers can challenge and change systems of domination. In the spirit of previous classics like Outlaw Culture and Reel to Real, this new collection of compelling essays interrogates contemporary cultural notions of race, gender, and class. From the films Precious and Crash to recent biographies of Malcolm X and Henrietta Lacks, (...) hooks offers provocative insights into the way race is being talked about in this "post-racial" era. (shrink)

'The sheer range of West's interests and insights is staggering and exemplary: he appears equally comfortable talking about literature, ethics, art, jurisprudence, religion, and popular-cultural forms.' - Artforum Keeping Faithis a rich, moving and deeply personal collection of essays from one of the leading African American intellectuals of our age. Drawing upon the traditions of Western philosophy and modernity, Cornel West critiques structures of power and oppression as they operate within American society and provides a way of thinking about human (...) dignity and difference afresh. Impressive in its scope, West confidently and deftly explores the politics and philosophy of America, the role of the black intellectual, legal theory and the future of liberal thought, and the fate of African Americans. A celebration of the extraordinary lives of ordinary Americans, Keeping Faithis a petition to hope and a call to faith in the redemptive power of the human spirit. (shrink)

Originally published in 1998, Neighbourhood Jobs, Race, and Skills argues that race is a powerful and persistent barrier to employment. Analysing existing literature, this book outlines how racial discrimination in hiring against African Americans appears to remain a contributor to high unemployment rates in black neighbourhoods. The book also discusses how issues such as poor schools and physical and social isolation compound employment problems, as well as changes in policy on skill requirements and the location of jobs. The book argues (...) that combined, this is a major contributor to concentrated urban employment and poverty. (shrink)

This study weaves Cold War Epistemology, critical multiculturalism, racial capitalism, and critical refugee studies to theorize how the Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity is related to Canadas national identity formation. Adopting a critical ethnography methodology and discourse analysis, this study asks: What are the conditions of community conflicts within the Vietnamese community and how are those conflicts related to the processes of Canadian national identity formation? The production and contestation of Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity in the making of Canadian national identity is traced (...) through three major sites of analysis. This first site is the debate on the Memorial to Victims of Communism as captured in the media. The second site is the parliamentary and community commemoration of the Fall of Saigon on April 30th, 1975 which includes debates on the Journey to Freedom Day Act and local community events. The final site is a Toronto community agency conflict of identity. This study reveals the logic of racial capitalist democracy underlying Canadian national identity as free, humanitarian, democratic, and peace-making. This is constructed through the production of Vietnamese Canadian subjectivity as a particular model minority and model refugee framed within Cold War neoliberal and multicultural discourse with significant consequences to the wellbeing of the community. (shrink)

Some, if not most, philosophy program admissions committee members assume that they can determine that one applicant will likely manifest a higher degree of philosophical skill than another applicant on the basis of differences between their materials. I challenge this assumption by explaining how applicants’ materials in significant measure reflect the racially unjust environment in which they manifest their philosophical skill. I explain how applicants’ racial-group membership in similar measure determines what these materials consist in.

How does one categorize Cornel West? He describes himself on multiple occasions as a "neo-Gramscian pragmatist," a "Jesus-centered intellectual bluesman," and a "card-carrying Kierkegaardian—with a strong Chekhovian twist—and a Marxist-informed radical democrat with a tragicomic sense of life." West seems intentionally cagy about being sorted into a particular school of thought. The resources he draws upon are too eclectic and the work he does with them too creative to treat him as a denizen of any one -ism. As he once (...) said in an interview, "I'm less interested in being situated within a philosophical tradition and much more interested in making sense of the world, pulling from whatever intellectual tradition I... (shrink)

This article offers a new, ironic reading of the false narrative of Orestes’ chariot accident in Sophocles’ Electra. It argues that the speech exploits an established connection between the ancestral evils of the Atreids and the thematic nexus of horses, chariot racing and disaster to evoke Orestes’ flight from the Erinyes following the matricide. Focusing on the language and structure of the narrative as well as drawing on other versions of the story, the article demonstrates, in contrast to previous readings, (...) that the speech is much more than an over-elaborate means to an end. Instead, in an ominous and profoundly ironic twist, the Paedagogus’ fictional narrative of the chariot race offers a possible vision of the trials awaiting the real Orestes. The matricide and murder, far from ending the ancestral woes of the Atreids, may well bring about Orestes’ pursuit by the Erinyes. (shrink)

Implementing equity principles in resource allocation is challenging. In one approach, some US states implemented race-based prioritisation of COVID-19 vaccines in response to vast racial inequities in COVID-19 outcomes, while others used place-based allocation. In a nationally representative survey of n=2067 US residents, fielded in mid-April 2021, we explored the public acceptability of race-based prioritisation compared with place-based prioritisation, by offering vaccines to harder hit zip codes before residents of other zip codes. We found that in general, a majority of (...) respondents supported the place-based approach, and a substantial proportion supported the race-based plan. Support was higher among Democrats compared with Republicans. All US residents became eligible for vaccines on 19 April 2021 but as of this writing, equitable uptake of vaccines remains urgent not only for first doses for adults but also for boosters and for children. Our findings also provide a benchmark for future pandemic planning that racial and social justice in vaccine allocation are salient considerations for the public. The findings may furthermore be of interest to policy makers designing vaccine allocation frameworks in countries with comparable health disparities across social, ethnic and racial groups, and more broadly, for those exploring ways of promoting equity in resource allocation outside of a pandemic setting. (shrink)

Media reflect and affect social understandings, beliefs, and values on many topics, including the lives of autistic and disabled people. Media analysis has garnered attention in the field of disability studies, which some scholars and activists consider a promising approach to discussing the experiences of – and for promoting social justice for – autistic people, who remain underrepresented on scripted television. Additionally, existing portrayals often rely on stereotyped representations of disabled individuals as objects of pity, objects of inspiration, or villains. (...) Television may also serve as a primary source of public knowledge about disabled people and the concept of disability. It is therefore essential that such portrayals avoid stigma and stereotyping. We take a disability studies lens to critically analyze and compare representations of diverse people, who may sometimes be conflated in the popular imaginary, across television series about autistic characters, those with cerebral palsy, and a character with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. We employ an intersectional analytic framework to problematize representations of autistic and disabled people, using television, feminist, and critical disability studies literatures. We analyze how the formal structure of television storytelling can either enable or disable its characters, as well as how portrayals of disability that display a sensitivity to concerns raised by critical disability discourse do not necessarily display the same sensitivity when they intersect with marginalized experiences of gender, sexuality, race, and class. (shrink)

Ethnic-racial socialization serves as a protective factor in the development of minority children. However, few studies have focused on mixed-status Latinx families to include the broad expression of their ethnic-racial socialization practices centering on their immigration experiences as they teach their children the risks and restrictions of having undocumented status. These parents adapt their ERS in accordance with their experiences of stress, fear, and discrimination, all of which shape the type and frequency of their socialization messages. Through documentation status socialization, (...) Latinx parents forewarn their children of the inequities associated with their ethnic-racial group and undocumented status, including possible family separation. They also teach children about nativity differences and the attendant privilege of having documented status. This manuscript highlights insights to be gained by considering documentation status socialization as an ERS dimension within Latinx families. Learning about the specific ERS practices of such an understudied group is a social justice issue with important implications for understanding how these families might adapt and respond to their social context, especially amidst a political environment that engenders fear and isolation throughout their community. Including documentation status socialization in the ERS literature is a crucial step towards developing a deeper understanding of how the structural and social forces operating within the lives of undocumented immigrants impact normative family processes that ultimately exert an influence on their children’s development. A discussion on implications for practitioners and service providers working with this population is also included. (shrink)

Understanding and empathy on the part of those in privileged positions are often cited as powerful tools in the fight against oppression. Too often, however, those in positions of power assume they know what it is like to be less well off when, in actuality, they do not. This kind of assumption represents a thinking vice we dub synecdoche epistemic arrogance. In instances of synecdoche epistemic arrogance, a person who has privilege wrongly assumes, based on limited experiences, that she can (...) know what it is like to experience a particular form of oppression. We argue two main points. First, synecdoche epistemic arrogance can lead to a variety of moral harms. Second, synecdoche epistemic arrogance is often tied to other troubling epistemic patterns, which we discuss in the context of disability and race simulations. Overall, the essay helps demonstrate how synecdoche epistemic arrogance can contribute to injustice. (shrink)

This article contends that an adequate investigation of the role and effects of race in the history of philosophy requires an elucidation of the ways in which the history of philosophy functions as a “territorial” structure. This argument is developed through an extensive cross-examination of Peter Park's Africa, Asia and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon 1780–1830 and Catherine König-Pralong's La colonie philosophique. Écrire l'histoire de la philosophie aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. I show (...) that although the two studies inquire into the fixation of the history of philosophy on Europe that took place in German and French philosophy at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, they do so via different explanatory frameworks, highlighting diverging critical strategies in the dismantling of Eurocentrism in the discipline. In the final part I contrast three broad critical strategies against the Eurocentric orientation of the historiography of philosophy based on opposite problematizations of the territoriality of the history of philosophy: the territory as jurisdiction, relational field, and space of address. (shrink)

This article is motivated by a concern about the increasing embrace of apolitical and ahistorical notions of racial “mixedness” and “impurity.” It draws on recent examples from the United States and South Africa in order to direct attention to the difficulties of identifying logics that, on the face of it, seem to evade conventional claims of racism, but nevertheless, as it will argue, rely on racist notions that must be challenged. These include examples in the United States and South Africa (...) of individuals self-identifying as a stand-alone mixed race category as well as white Afrikaners in South Africa uncritically appropriating claims to mixed heritage. This article is critical of these phenomena because of what it finds to be a lack of politically and historically situated understandings of the notions of purity and impurity and their relation to racism. (shrink)

This article approaches Judith Butler as herself a theorist of race and racism by exploring her unacknowledged and often problematic reading of Frantz Fanon and his concept of the historico-racial schema. It first traces Butler's uses of Fanon's thinking across her work, outlining the different ways that she draws on Fanon in theorizing race and racism. The article then shows how that theorizing stems from Butler's reading of the historico-racial schema, focusing on her insertion of words that do not appear (...) in either the translation she cites or in the original French text into a key quotation. This article argues that this systematic misreading of the historico-racial schema in Black Skin, White Masks problematically restricts Butler's understanding of the lasting effects and ethical consequences of racism and colonialism as they appear in her readings of that text and of The Wretched of the Earth. (shrink)