Topics in the Philosophy of Race

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 exa...

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)

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.

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.

I assess representations of black women's derrières, which are often depicted as grotesque, despite attempts by some black women artists to create a black feminist aesthetic that recognizes the black female body as beautiful and desirable. Utilizing a black feminist disability theory, I revisit the history of the Hottentot Venus, which contributed to the shaping of this representational trope, and I identify a recurring struggle among these artists to recover the "unmirrored" black female body.

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._.

_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)

In this paper, questions regarding the cultural understanding of mixed race are explored, which have the ability to complicate the accepted portrayal of race in society as a black/white binary system. Thus, the acknowledgement of something other than this binary system offers new ways of theorizing about race, particularly concerning the sociopolitical implications of mixed-race designation. This paper argues that the visually mixed-race person has a certain direct ability to challenge the binary and its racist logic. Furthermore, this paper goes (...) on to offer a unique interpretation of where power for working against a racially oppressive system lies within critical mixed-race theory. (shrink)

This book addresses “containment” as it relates to interlocking discourses around the “War on Terror” as a global effort and its link to race and sexuality within the United States. The project emerged from the recognition that the events of 11 September 2001, prompted new efforts at containment with both domestic and international implications.

This study reports on the current stereotypes of ten ethnic groups. Black college students, 38 males and 49 females enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses at a black religiously affiliated college in the southeast, indicated traits they felt were typical of each of ten ethnic groups. The traits were selected from a list of 84 adjectives originally used by Katz and Braly in a study of racial stereotypes. Clear stereotypes emerged for six ethnic groups; all were relatively positive except one, whites, (...) which was extremely negative. The most favorable stereotypes were of Chinese and Jews. The stereotype of blacks ranked third in favorableness, followed by Italians and Germans. Interracial relations have focused primarily on decreasing white prejudice and stereotypes of blacks. (shrink)

The paper presents a novel interpretation of the function of the word "human.".

_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)