Topics in the Philosophy of Race

Charles Mills’ work was (and continues to be) extremely influential in political philosophy, political science, and philosophy of race, but few authors working in philosophical just war theory and military ethics have discussed his work. Yet, as this chapter demonstrates, Mills’ work on the Racial Contract and white supremacy as a political system has profound implications for just war theory. Recognizing the colonialist origins of many Western states challenges important jus ad bellum criteria, including legitimate authority, and the use of (...) ideal theorizing in just war thinking has masked yet replicated colonialist tropes about the nature of war and shaped the language of just war theory in ways that reflect histories of colonialism and white supremacy. (shrink)

In what follows, I will argue that racist ideology should be understood in terms of racist social norms that constitute certain incentive structures. To this end, I will motivate my position by examining two existing accounts of ideology: those of Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger. First, I will begin by reconstructing Shelby’s account of racism as ideology. After analysing three dimensions of ideology (epistemic, genetic and functional), I will argue that his view is too cognitivist. In this regard, Shelby’s view (...) is doxastic in viewing that racist ideologies consist in misguided beliefs. Rather, what is essential in ideology is its functional dimension. Here, ideologies persist because they function to stabilize and reinforce the unjust status quo of subordination and oppression. Then, I will turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology as cultural technēs. Her view is more functional than Shelby’s since the former is based on the account of social practice and culture. While Haslanger is right about her critique of Shelby’s cognitivist view of ideology, I argue that what she calls nonideal moral epistemology weakens her overall insight. The problem is that without considering how to intervene in concrete social mechanisms, merely knowing certain moral truths may not practically motivate subjects under ideologies. Taken together, both Shelby and Haslanger narrowly understand ideology in terms of epistemic deficiency. Even though Shelby and Haslanger deal with the discursive superstructure of ideology, both underestimate the functional substructure of ideology such as social and psychological motives, desires and needs. Ultimately, I will argue that ideology is better understood in terms of a racist social norm. This account is explanatorily superior to Shelby and Haslanger’s views in its stress on the nonepistemic, nonmoral and functional aspects of ideology. (shrink)

Due to a mistake of mine the review does not contain my acknowledgements. Thus, I want to take the space here to thank Prof. Dwight K. Lewis and Prof. Peter West for their insightful and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this review.

Data increasingly drive our lives. Often presented as a new trajectory, the deep immersion of our lives in data has a history that is well over a century old. By revisiting the work of early pioneers of what would today be called data science, we can bring into view both assumptions that fund our data-driven moment as well as alternative relations to data. I here excavate insights by contrasting a seemingly unlikely pair of early data technologists, Francis Galton and W.E.B. (...) Du Bois. Galton, well known for his contributions to eugenics, was first and foremost a tinkering technician of measure. There are numerous domains of science over which Galtonian conceptions retain considerable influence, presumably without his pride in racial inequality. A more viable, because more egalitarian, alternative for the present can be found in the early data work of Du Bois. (shrink)

Theories about what a mind is entail views about who (or what) has a mind and vice versa. This chapter reframes the classic problem of how the mind interacts with the body in terms of the question of mental attribution: Which bodies have minds? Critical social theorists’ descriptions of mental attribution associated with the bodies of women, Black people, colonized people, laborers, and others, reveals three metaphysical components of mental attribution that are respectively associated with experiences of immanence and non-being, (...) dehumanization, and objectification and hypermateriality: (1) the ratio component, (2) the comparison component, and (3) the constitution component. A theory’s approach to each of these components collectively forms its “attribution pattern.” Physicalist panpsychisms provide ready examples of attribution patterns that apply to the set of all bodies that exist. Russellian panpsychism illustrates a “selective” attribution pattern that attributes minds (or mentality) only to certain bodies, while Cavendishian panpsychism exhibits an “unrestricted” attribution pattern that attributes a mind to each and every body. These contrary views help to establish a taxonomy of mental attribution patterns that promises to inspire fresh theories of mind and liberatory configurations of the social. (shrink)

Developing World Bioethics, Volume 21, Issue 4, Page 211-226, December 2021.

Protests and counter-protests seek to draw and direct attention and concern with confronting images and slogans. In recent years, as protests and counter-protests have partially migrated to the digital space, such images and slogans have also gone online. Two main ways in which these images and slogans are translated to the online space is through the use of emoji and hashtags. Despite sustained academic interest in online protests, hashtag activism and the use of emoji across social media platforms, little is (...) known about the specific functional role that emoji and hashtags play in online social movements. In an effort to fill this gap, the current paper studies both hashtags and emoji in the context of the Twitter discourse around the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

Talk of ‘robustness’ remains vague, despite the fact that it is clearly an important parameter in evaluating models in general and game-theoretic results in particular. Here we want to make it a bit less vague by offering a graphic measure for a particular kind of robustness— ‘matrix robustness’— using a three dimensional display of the universe of 2 x 2 game theory. In a display of this form, familiar games such as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, Stag Hunt, Chicken and Deadlock appear (...) as volumes, making comparison easy regarding the extent of different game-theoretic effects. We illustrate such a comparison in robustness between the triumph of Tit for Tat in a spatialized environment (Grim 1995, Grim, Mar, and St. Denis 1998) and a spatialized modeling of the Contact Hypothesis regarding prejudice reduction (Grim, et. al 2005a, 2005b). The geometrical representation of relative robustness also offers a possibility for links between geometrical theorems and results regarding robustness in game theory. (shrink)

There are many social psychological theories regarding the nature of prejudice, but only one major theory of prejudice reduction: under the right circumstances, prejudice between groups will be reduced with increased contact. On the one hand, the contact hypothesis has a range of empirical support and has been a major force in social change. On the other hand, there are practical and ethical obstacles to any large-scale controlled test of the hypothesis in which relevant variables can be manipulated. Here we (...) construct a spatialized model that tests the core hypothesis in a large array of game-theoretic agents. Robust results offer a new kind of support for the contact hypothesis: results in simulation do accord with a hypothesis of reduced prejudice with increased contact. The spatialized game-theoretic model also suggests a deeper explanation for at least some of the social psychological phenomena at issue. (shrink)

This essay is about the loss of voice. It is about the ways in which the act of writing philosophy often results in an alienating and existentially meaningless experience for many budding philosophers, particularly those who wish to think from their racialized and gendered identities in professional academic philosophy.

There are many commonalities between the goals of transitional justice and domestic redress movements. We look at the movement for reparations for enslavement and Jim Crow in the United States as an example of a domestic reparations movement, and argue for the usefulness of the concept of transitional justice. We are particularly interested in showing that a future democratic transition – the end of mass incarceration – could animate a renewed push for reparations and a formal investigation into America’s legacy (...) of racial injustice. (shrink)

What makes #BlackLivesMatter unique is the implication that it isn’t only some black lives that matter, that is, not only the most commonly referenced male lives. Rather, the hashtag suggests that all black lives matter, including queer, trans, disabled, and female. This movement includes all those black lives who have been marginalized within the black liberation tradition, as well as in greater society. The movement highlights the ways in which black people have been traditionally deprived of dignity and human rights. (...) State racism and state violence are sustained together. The law creates a “subrace” out of those whom white society fears and holds in contempt. This leaves not only black Americans but all citizens vulnerable. A way to fight this form of racism is not only to create a solidarity among the oppressed members of the subrace but to create a solidarity with all members, in “vulnerable solidarity.”. (shrink)

Elizabeth A. McGibbon and Josephine B. Etowa, Anti-racist health care practice, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 2009, reviewed by Kathryn L. Mackay.

Equality before the law is one of the fundamental guarantees citizens expect in a just and fair society. We argue that recent trend toward mass incarceration, which has had vastly disproportionate impact on African Americans, is undermining this claim to fairness and raises a serious legitimacy problem for the legal system as a whole. Using original data from the Race, Crime and Public Opinion study we show that African Americans view the 'War on Drugs" as racially biased in its implementation. (...) This perception of bias consequentially undermines legal system legitimacy by lowering blacks' expectations for police performance in their communities and encouraging receptivity to appeals for jury nullification based on race. (shrink)

In this paper, I differentiate “two Enlightenments,” the mainstream Enlightenment and what I call the “radical Enlightenment,” that is, Enlightenment theory (rationalism, humanism, objectivism) informed by the fact of social oppression. Marxism can be seen as the pioneering example of radical Enlightenment theory, but it is, of course, relatively insensitive to gender and race issues, so we also need to include Enlightenment versions of feminism and critical race theory. I defend the radical Enlightenment against (on one front) the mainstream Enlightenment (...) criticism that it is either already included in the latter, or if excluded, justifiably so, and (on the other front) against anti-Enlightenment criticisms (poststructuralism and some multiculturalists) that in whatever form, Enlightenment theory cannot adequately address social oppression. (shrink)

This general discussion asks just what social identity is and to what extent race, gender, and ethnicity contribute to it—the answer being, basically, very little. Social identity is how we are seen and classified by others, involving, in part, classifications that are empirically checkable; but there are also attitudes at work that are not wholly subject to testing. A major concern here is respect for and maintenance of human dignity, which in turn is analyzed into a fundamental “core” notion, and (...) a more “special” notion. It is argued that the core notion stems from general humanity and that respecting it is basic to all good social relations. The “special” notions, on the other hand, are more variable and we need to be careful not to subordinate the core conception to special ones; doing this might have the ill effect, say, of taking it that someone’s right not to be murdered is due to race or gender. (shrink)

Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: The Big Questions is a welcome addition to the crop of anthologies on “contemporary issues.” In the past, the tag “contemporary issues” meant abortion, pornography, euthanasia, affirmative action, and the other usual suspects. Anthology after anthology dealt with these same life-and-death issues, often reproducing the same articles. But that has changed in the last couple of years as interest in topics such as sexuality, gender, race, nationalism, and multiculturalism has reanimated the field.

The regulation of Native identity has been central to the colonization process in both Canada and the United States. Systems of classification and control enable settler governments to define who is "Indian," and control access to Native land. These regulatory systems have forcibly supplanted traditional Indigenous ways of identifying the self in relation to land and community, functioning discursively to naturalize colonial worldviews. Decolonization, then, must involve deconstructing and reshaping how we understand Indigenous identity.

After defining a hate crime as an offense in which the criminal selects the victim at least in part because of an animus toward members of the group to which the victim belongs, this essay surveys the standard justifications for state punishment en route to defending the permissibility of imposing stiffer penalties for hate crimes. It also argues that many standard instances of rape and domestic battery are hate crimes and may be punished as such.

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

The epidemic of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has led to many ethical problems. Most studies have focused on the ethical issues faced by nurses who provide care to persons with AIDS (PWA), rather than the ethical issues faced by PWAs themselves. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the ethical issues faced by five HIV/AIDS-infected African-American women. An analysis of interview data revealed that these women deal with four broad categories of ethical issues: (...) diagnosis; disclosure; treatment by, and of, others; and future pregnancies. The results of this study provide an initial description of the ethical issues faced by HIV/AIDS-infected African-American women, and begin to lay the foundation necessary for nurses appropriately to facilitate and support their decisions. (shrink)

_Philosophers consider race and racism from the perspective of lived, bodily experience._.

_Critical Pedagogy and Race_ argues that a rigorous engagement with race is a priority for educators concerned with equality in schools and in society. A landmark collection arguing that engaging with race at both conceptual and practical levels is a priority for educators. Builds a stronger engagement of race-based analysis in the field of critical pedagogy. Brings together a melange of theories on race, such as Afro-centric, Latino-based, and postcolonial perspectives. Includes historical studies, and social justice ideas on activism in (...) education. Questions popular concepts, such as white privilege, color-blind perspectives, and race-neutral pedagogies. (shrink)

_Philosophers on Race _adds a new dimension to current research on race theory by examining the historical roots of the concept in the works of major Western philosophers.

Feminist scholars have done much to identify oppressive forces within transnational commercial contract pregnancy and its social context that may coerce women into becoming gestational laborers. Feminists have also been careful not to depict gestational laborers as merely passive victims of oppression, though there is disagreement about the degree to which contract pregnancy offers opportunities for agency. In this article I consider how women who sell gestational labor may be agents against their oppression. I make explicit connections between resistance and (...) judgment, which I will take to be a critically considered, intersubjective evaluative claim. Drawing on work by Jennifer Nedelsky and Hannah Arendt, my main argument will be that individual judgments can better enable oppressed persons to resist some aspects of their oppression, and that judgment helps to develop agential capacities, in particular, the capacity for a person to be self-constituting, to see herself as giving reasons for her own actions. I use Indian contract pregnancy as a case study to think through connections between resistance and judgment. (shrink)

For well over a decade, critical race theory—the school of thought that holds that race lies at the very nexus of American life—has roiled the legal academy. In recent years, however, the fundamental principles of the movement have influenced other academic disciplines, from sociology and politics to ethnic studies and history. And yet, while the critical race theory movement has spawned dozens of conferences and numerous books, no concise, accessible volume outlines its basic parameters and tenets. Here, then, from two (...) of the founders of the movement, is the first primer on one of the most influential intellectual movements in American law and politics. (shrink)

Can being, more specifically, black being, be thematized as visible from within the particularity of a given faith tradition, its practices and mode of being in the world? To narrow the question to one specific faith tradition, Christianity: Can blackness be visible within the visibility of the Christian factum---the incarnate God, Jesus of Nazareth? The first two chapters, drawing on the work of Albert J. Raboteau, Charles H. Long, and James H. Cone, show how African American religious scholarship, to varying (...) degrees, answers negatively, explicating the particularities of black being from a more fundamental genesis than the particularities of a given faith tradition itself. Various are the names of the fundament: Africanity, the religious consciousness, the ontological horizon of blackness, and so forth. Chapter 3 uncovers the Kantian philosophico-religious structure at work here, the very framework that spawned modernity's first thoroughgoing race theory. Chapters 4 and 5, drawing on Briton Hammon, Frederick Douglass, and Jarena Lee, offer a theological account of race. Black being is shown to be visible, iconically opaque, and, thus, theologically free as Christic and Paschal being. This theological transcription of being is coterminous with an emancipatory social arrangement of being: black being as 'Christified' is ecclesial being. This does not silence the historical cadences of black being; rather it dislodges the history of black being from the colonial gaze. ;The Proem on Irenaeus of Lyons , the Excursus on Gregory of Nyssa , and the Postlude on Maximos the Confessor indicate the Christology influencing this dissertation. Placing patristic Christology, as it culminates in Chalcedon I and refined in the neo-Chalcedonian debates, in conversation with the modern construction of race and being, I establish a vantage from which to criticize Immanuel Kant's supersessionistic Christianity, out of which emerged his race qua colonial theory. Yet, it also provides a vantage from which to articulate a non-supersessionistic Christianity of the embodiment of God in Jesus of Nazareth for the visibility of black being and, thus, speaks to a distressing aporia in African American religious studies and theology. (shrink)

In chapter one, the dissertation defines what exactly, is black power and what is peace. The remainder of the dissertation is dedicated to understanding the major theological categories in James Cone's work. Chapter two is an exploration of Cone's understanding of God and how exactly black power determines his particular understanding of God. The key argument to be observed is that black power impacts Cone's understanding of God in such a way as to place God squarely in the community of (...) the oppressed. In the community of the oppressed, God fights for the cause of black liberation. By depicting God this way, could this be in violation of peace? Then in chapter three, we turn to an investigation of Cone's understanding of Christology. The important issue before us here is to see how black power uniquely focuses Cone's understanding of Christ's message as being that of black power. That is, Jesus preaches the radical message of black power on behalf of oppressed black people who are seeking liberation from the bondage of white oppression. Is this radical interpretation a violation of peace? Chapter four deals with the notion of human being in Cone's theology. Here, black power encourages Cone to emphasize the blackness of humanity in disregard of humanity's whiteness. The argument in this regard is that blacks in America have been brainwashed to judge themselves in light of whiteness where their humanity is determined by how white one can become. Cone turns the matter around and emphasizes blackness as "beautiful" and as the litmus test to determine what it means to be black and human in America. Turning to chapter five, the investigation moves into an analysis of the black church and what role it plays in the struggle for liberation. By wedding black power with his understanding of ecclesiology, Cone defines the church as a liberating force in the black community where black power is preached and practiced. Then in chapter six, the dissertation discusses Cone's view of ethics. The importance of this discussion lies in whether or not black power ethics seeks reconciliation with white people. Cone's answer is "yes," but on black peoples terms. Finally, the conclusion answers the question if peace has been violated in Cone's radical reinterpretation of theology. (shrink)

This project makes new contributions to race-based affirmative action discourse. I engage interdisciplinary work on racial redress and racial healing concerns , and explore the relationship of race-based affirmative action to these movements. My concern is with the possibility of organizing affirmative action to promote African American rectificatory and "white" redemptive interests in racial healing. These interests point to the possibility of a more racially just future. Normalized "white" participation in racial injustice includes repressive forgetting and other collective deceptions about (...) America's racial history and performance of "white" identities amidst racialized commodification. I focus on two commodification practices, and resultant redress claims and obligations. The first is the commodification of what W. E. B. Du Bois marked as the "gift" of black labor . The second is participation in systems of "white" privilege undergirded by recognized property interests in "whiteness." At minimum, "white" participation occurs due to ascriptive racialization practices, embodied performance of racialized identities, and habituated assent to socially conditioned attitudes and beliefs . I look to the histories of racial redress programs and African American redress demands, and work within existing legal parameters to articulate complimentary new directions for race-based affirmative action to intersect recent redress and healing movements. Of particular importance is my discussion of interpersonal affirmative action practiced as "white" "gifts" of atonement. These "gifts" include developing new self-understandings and new attitudes toward redress responsibilities, promoting more just and healing ways to perform "white" identities and "white" culture-making, and supporting more thoroughgoing institutional redress. The project focuses on the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, contemporary and historical African American philosophy, interdisciplinary Critical Race Theory and Critical White Studies, and emerging scholarship on collective redress and healing processes. (shrink)

This dissertation proposes a reconsideration of the some of work of W. E. B. Du Bois from the period 1897 to 1915. The study reconstructs Du Bois's understanding of the so-called Negro question and considers his challenges to existing interpretations of this social problem. Methodologically the study proceeds by way of a close examination of three principal early texts of Du Bois's, "The Conservation of Races," "Strivings of the Negro People," and "The Study of the Negro Problems," all written or (...) published in 1897. The principal orientation of the study is toward the elucidation of the conceptual infrastructure of Du Bois's thought and practice, political and intellectual. The argument at the core of the study is that Du Bois formulated an original understanding of the Negro as both an ontological being and a social subject, one that bears implications for the social sciences, the humanities, theology, philosophy and other related fields. On the basis of the re-thinking of Du Bois's work developed through this examination, the dissertation points toward a reconsideration of the status of Du Bois in the history of thought. (shrink)

Despite the abolition of racial slavery and legal segregation, James Baldwin believed that African Americans were not recognized as free and equal citizens and that they would not be until Americans of all races examined the racial assumptions undergirding American society. His essays, which were written between the 1940s and the 1980s, provide a valuable guide for political theorists interested in the possibilities of democracy in a society where white supremacy has been discredited and yet the distinction between "white" and (...) "black" citizens resists eradication. Reading Baldwin's essays against contemporary works of political theory, this dissertation investigates the gap between democratic principles and American practices. It defends a contextualist approach to political life and aims to show how attention to race consciousness and to the specificity of black citizens' experiences reveals the hollowness of claims for race-blind theorizing. ;In the first chapter, I explore Baldwin's critique of "innocence" as a way of discussing contemporary political theorists' relative silence on matters of race. The second chapter challenges assumptions about the construction of cultural identity that overlook the complicated relationship between "white" and "black" in American experiences. In Baldwin's hands, W. E. B. Du Bois's metaphor of double consciousness becomes a critical tool, revealing how white Americans' identities, no less than those of black Americans, are bound up with race consciousness. Silence about the significance of race in defining political identity, citizenship, is addressed in the third chapter through a discussion of the public and private power of racial images. Comparing Baldwin's essays to Michael Walzer's work on social criticism, the fourth chapter identifies ways in which African Americans' American history is neglected even by a theorist who takes historical identity seriously. The concluding chapter addresses the difficulties of articulating experiences that have been excluded from the dominant discourse. What joins these chapters is a suspicion that matters of race are excluded precisely where they expose the limits of theorists' capacity to justify political principles in the face of the countervailing evidence of practice. (shrink)