Some critical philosophers of race have argued that whiteness can be understood as a technology of affect and that white supremacy is comprised partly of unconscious habits that result in racialized perception. In an effort to deepen our understanding of the affective and bodily dimensions of white supremacy and the ways in which affective habits are socially produced, I look to insights from situated affectivity. Theorists in this field maintain that affective experience is not simply a (...) matter of felt inner states, but rather socially and environmentally embedded and fundamentally relational. Jan Slaby presents the concept of an ‘affective arrangement’ as a way to approach affectivity in terms of relational dynamics unfolding within a particular setting. Applying this concept to the societal level, Paul Schuetze introduces the notion of ‘affective milieu.’ I argue that these notions of ‘affective arrangement’ and ‘affective milieu,’ together with an organicist account of habit, can help to illuminate the workings of white supremacy in the United States. My proposed account highlights the extent to which white supremacy is an affective, bodily phenomenon and how racist habits are formed over the course of learning and ongoing affective engagement, in the context of various social settings. Crucially, these affective habits are fully bound up with habits of appraisal, interpretation, and judgment, and therefore inseparable from how subjects come to see and understand their world. (shrink)

This chapter looks at the history of US citizenship and immigration law and argues that denying admission or citizenship status to certain groups of people is closely correlated to a denial of whiteness. On this account whiteness is not a fixed or natural concept, but instead is a social construction whose composition changes throughout time and place. Understanding whiteness in this way allows one to see how white supremacy is not limited merely to instances of racism or ethnocentrism, (...) but can also include instances of xenophobia. On this account, whiteness is more analogous to a braid of three interwoven strands: the racial strand (e.g., science, biology, or phenotypes), the ethnic strand (e.g., culture, customs, or heritage), and the national strand (e.g., territory, sovereignty, and citizenship). In emphasizing one or a combination of these strands, whiteness can be granted to social groups that previously were denied full white status, while at the same time it can be rescinded from groups that at different times and different places might have been considered (if only provisionally) white. Understanding whiteness in this way is important for dealing with issues of immigration and citizenship because it lets us see how nationality and xenophobia play a role in the construction of whiteness and thereby how terms like illegal help to reify the status of certain persons, including natural born citizens, as perpetual foreigners (i.e., non-whites). (shrink)

The objective of this article is to engage in a critical review of Roberto Esposito’s biopolitical account by including a thoroughgoing interrogation of racism and white supremacy through the lens of Black affect studies. It is argued that both white supremacy studies and Esposito’s framework could work side-by-side in ways that are productive for affirmative educational biopolitics. In particular, the analysis highlights two insights: first, engagement with white supremacy as a biopolitical category—in particular, (...) class='Hi'>white supremacy as an affective embodiment—is essential for the ability of education to interrogate the racialization of Black bodies; and, second, attentiveness to Black affect in biopolitical accounts is crucial for the decentering of white supremacy in education. These insights broaden the conceptual parameters of educational biopolitics by foregrounding the affective biopower of racism and white supremacy as central to affirmative educational biopolitics. (shrink)

There is a fundamental flaw in the Eurocentric epistemological foundation. Counter to the overwhelming ethos of the Enlightenment this epistemological bedrock shockingly does not seem to be an epistemology of the human being, but only of the white human being. I, as Western scholar, have to relativize my epistemological heritage, because it does not take into account the diversity of the human being. I will briefly explore the racist views of Voltaire, Hume and Kant and I will argue that (...) Western philosophy needs to (re)analyze its epistemological tradition with regards to the way the racist views of its protagonists corrupted their philosophical work. I suggest contextualization of the philosophical tradition and its desuperiorisation in order to foster ethical philosophical dialogue amongst global scholars. (shrink)

Rita Floyd’s "The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization" is an important and insightful book that delineates a theory of just securitization (modified from the jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria in just war theory) involving three sets of principles governing the just initiation of securitization, just conduct of securitization, and just desecuritization. This book is a much-needed addition to the security studies and just war scholarship. -/- Here, I explore the potential of Floyd’s just securitization (...) theory (JST) to provide insights into the moral justifiability of non-state groups that are not political entities engaging in resistance against forms of structural violence that pose an existential threat to those groups. Using the case study of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and the threat of white supremacy to African Americans as an illustrative example, I argue that structural forms of violence can meet Floyd’s definition of an objective existential threat, justifying the resort to securitization by groups such as BLM. (shrink)

It is widely known that Black people are significantly more likely to be killed by the police in the United States of America than white people. What is less widely known is that nearly half of all people killed by the police are disabled people. The aim of this paper is to better understand the intersection of racism and ableism in the USA. Contributing to the growing literature at the intersection of philosophy of disability and critical philosophy of race, (...) I argue that theories concerning white supremacy should take more seriously the ways in which it functions as a process and apparatus of making abled and disabled. I conclude by discussing how understanding white supremacy in this manner is a valuable coalitional tool in fights for social justice more generally. (shrink)

I apologize for not being William Connolly. You can get me any year, and I feel badly that Connolly had to cancel. I considered giving one of my Hegel and Whitehead talks, which would have been a poor substitute for the world of becoming that Connolly would have discussed. But nearly everyone who goes to AJTP gatherings has already heard me on things Hegelian and Whiteheadian, and I have a new book that means much more to me than those things. (...) So this is a page from my current work on the black social gospel. The social gospel movement of the Progressive Era is justly renowned. It established and legitimized liberal theology in American Protestantism. It created the ecumenical movement and the... (shrink)

Kevin M. Graham argues that political philosophy cannot fully understand race-related injustice without shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the pursuit of racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.

Drawing on the work of Charles W. Mills and considering the case of reparations to Black Americans, this article defends the “structural turn” in the philosophical reparations scholarship. In the Black American context, the structural turn highlights the structural and institutional operations of a White supremacist political system and a long chronology of state-sponsored injustice, as opposed to enslavement as a standalone historical episode. Here, the question whether distributive justice is more appropriate than reparative justice is particularly pressing, since (...) structural racial inequalities form part of the basis for reparations. Derrick Darby’s pragmatic argument for non-race-specific redistributive policies and Tommie Shelby’s principled defense of distributive justice are both considered, as well as the challenge to the structural turn that comes from Carlton Waterhouse’s argument for reparations for enslavement rather than “legacy of slavery” reparations. (shrink)

Kevin M. Graham argues that political philosophy cannot fully understand race-related injustice without shifting its focus away from distributive inequities between whites and nonwhites and toward white supremacy, the unfair power relationships that allow whites to dominate and oppress nonwhites. Graham's analysis of the racial politics of police violence and public education in Omaha, Nebraska, vividly illustrates why the pursuit of racial justice in the United States must move beyond redistribution.

Our ability to dismantle white supremacy is compromised by the fact that we don’t fully appreciate what, precisely, white supremacy is. In this chapter, I suggest understanding white supremacy as an epistemological system – an epistemic frame that serves as the foundation for how we understand and interact with the world. The difficulty in dismantling an epistemological system lies in its resilience – a system’s capacity to resist change to its underlying structure while, at (...) the same time, offering the appearance of large-scale reform. Using white supremacy as a case study, here I explore what features enable this resilience. An analysis of white supremacy that presents it as more than a tool of social and political oppression, but as an epistemic system that makes this oppression possible, allows us to better understand, and eventually overthrow, such systems. (shrink)

In remembering Vuyani Vellem, this paper delves into his scholarship, a scholarship that admittedly exudes his activism in academia, church and society. Choosing intentionally the marginalised as the primary interlocutors in discourse, Vellem demonstrates that he is situated in the arena of those who are otherwise seen as the wretched of the earth, insisting that Black Theology of Liberation must engage in a praxis that centres the lived experiences of black people and creates for itself legacies that would attest to (...) Black Theology of Liberation as a formidable hermeneutic that recognises the sanctity of black life in a context of the prevalence of white supremacy. It notes however that a history of colonisation and subjugation has wrecked the humanity of black people, and as a result, a contract with black people becomes essential on this path towards the total emancipation of black people in South Africa and the world.Contribution: The scholarly contribution of this article is its focus on the systematic and practical reflection, within a paradigm in which the intersection of religious studies, social sciences and humanities generate an interdisciplinary contested discourse. (shrink)

Rita Floyd’s The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization is an important and insightful book that delineates a theory of just securitization (modified from the jus ad bellum and jus in bello criteria in just war theory) involving three sets of principles governing the just initiation of securitization, just conduct of securitization, and just desecuritization. This book is a much- needed addition to the security studies and just war literature. Here, I apply Floyd’s just securitization theory (JST) to (...) the threat posed by white supremacy to African Americans. I argue that white supremacy meets Floyd’s definition of an objective existential threat, potentially justifying the resort to securitization by African Americans. -/- In Section 1, I argue that African Americans constitute a non-state group, before demonstrating in Section 2 that white supremacy poses an objective existential threat to this group, meeting the criterion of just cause in Floyd’s JST. In Section 3, I show that, given the failure of legal challenges and democratic processes to mitigate this threat, African Americans may be justified in resorting to extraordinary measures to combat the threat of white supremacy, including “whatever most reasonable persons would agree constitutes exceptional means and actions ... non-state state groups within states. securitization can take the form of secession, civil disobedience, acts of sabotage and resistance”. Applying Floyd’s JST to the threat of white supremacy demonstrates the value of her approach for thinking about securitization outside the traditional foci of security studies but, as I discuss in my conclusion, also reveals limitations in her theory, particularly in relation to the criterion of reasonable chance of success when applied to non-state groups resisting an unjust state. (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)

Abstract:This essay argues for lyric as an anthropomorphic pattern of thought which shapes our readings of poetry and Earth. Theorizing what I call "lyric geology," the essay foregrounds two critical conjunctions: (1) the historical co-emergence of the normative lyric subject and the human species as geologic agent; and (2) the anthropomorphic genealogy of literary criticism called "lyricization" as it dovetails with Sylvia Wynter's account of the "over-representation" of colonial man as "the human itself." Reading across a seemingly eclectic archive—Charles Lyell, (...) Robert Knox, Richard Owen, and a maroon known in the Mauritian imperial archive as Simon—I show how the colonial anthropos as self-consciously theorized in and across the nineteenth century materially effectuates on a planetary scale the very racialized anthropomorphosis fallaciously naturalized as lyric. So understood, man's generic "over-representation" and lyric are co-constitutive projects. Together, they proliferate a human fantasy whose flat speciesism at once reproduces and effaces white supremacist violence and colonial dispossession. (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)

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)

The question that faces communities today has to do with who belongs and who has the right to claim certain identity markers. In contemporary United States of America, whiteness stands as an idol unto itself for it seeks to delegitimise all other identity markers except those it has given legitimacy, and which serve its own interests. One cannot deconstruct whiteness as a racial construct unless one sheds light on its origins and how it continues to validate itself in society. A (...) valid response to the idol of whiteness is to embrace a eucharistic identity; one that speaks of the human as a being radically defined by ethical solidarity with others. (shrink)

The question that faces communities today has to do with who belongs and who has the right to claim certain identity markers. In contemporary United States of America, whiteness stands as an idol unto itself for it seeks to delegitimise all other identity markers except those it has given legitimacy, and which serve its own interests. One cannot deconstruct whiteness as a racial construct unless one sheds light on its origins and how it continues to validate itself in society. A (...) valid response to the idol of whiteness is to embrace a eucharistic identity; one that speaks of the human as a being radically defined by ethical solidarity with others. (shrink)

Wittgenstein's theory of aspect perception has been taken up by scholars interested in the ways that people take in and interpret visual stimuli. Within this field of inquiry, Wittgenstein proposes the notion of “aspect blindness,” the failure of a person to see a particular aspect or expression. An important turn in the use of Wittgenstein's aspect perception has not always been in the ways that deviating perspectives fail to “see” in the same way that the normative category “sees,” but in (...) the ways that those on the constructed margins turn a critical eye on the failure of normative “seeing.” Using this framework, this article turns to critique the racism and “aspect blindness” embedded in whiteness. It examines Enlightenment scientific racism and the racialized hierarchies used as the justification for excluding some people from the category of humanity. The work finishes by linking with insights developed within the Black Lives Matter movement. (shrink)

Jean-Marc Vallée’s HBO miniseries, Sharp Objects (2018), follows Camille Preaker (Amy Adams) as she returns to her childhood home in Wind Gap, Missouri, to investigate the murders of two young girls. This article explores a specific type of object related to the systems of violence that reveal themselves over the course of the miniseries: ivory tiles. Here, the ivory tiles affixed to the floor of Camille’s mother’s, Adora Crellin’s (Patricia Clarkson), master bedroom both reveal and influence sinister behaviours of the (...) household’s women. In employing concepts inspired from Thing Theory and Object-Oriented Ontology, as well as critical theory, this article examines how the ivory tiles possess multilayered excesses that constitute an object’s thingness. The foremost excess that informs the ivory tiles’ thingness, I contend, is its relationship to white supremacy. It is not only the tiles’ material history that informs its relationship to white supremacy, but how, through outlining the forms of agency things possess under Thing Theory, the tiles are able to reveal the forms of violence that are structured within the domestic sphere of the Crellin home. A product of violence, the ivory tiles as things speak back to the design of white supremacy. (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.

Articulating heterosexualism is not to supplicate for gays 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.

This article examines Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké and his theology as a cogent response to White Supremacy as expressed in French Colonization of Africa. White Supremacy has as its primary goal, the recreation of the whole world in the image of Whiteness upon the premise that the possession of White skin makes one inherently superior. Theism counters this ontological assault with an unabashed turn to a believer's God. Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké's insistence on Islam counters (...) White Supremacy thereby providing an ideological and metaphysical space for the non-whites of Senegal to exist without succumbing to the temptation to aspire to a Euro-centric ideal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Royce, Racism, and the Colonial IdealWhite Supremacy and the Illusion of Civilization in Josiah Royce's Account of the White Man's Burden1Tommy J. CurryNo colony can be made by a theory of Imperialism, it can only be made by people who want to colonize and are capable of maintaining themselves as colonists.—Sir Sydney OlivierIntroductionAs with most historic white figures in philosophy, their repopularization and reintroduction into contemporary (...) circles commits their work, regardless of its initial silence, to speak to the problem of anti-Black racism in America. Josiah Royce is no different in this regard. In recent years, white scholars like Jacquelyn Kegley and Shannon Sullivan have introduced revisions to Royce's thought that make it appear multicultural and antiracist, despite the anachronism of such a contention. According to Kegley, "Royce believes, as others in the contemporary scene, that 'race' as a concept cannot be eliminated, [because] it plays too crucial a role, both positive and negative, in self- and social identification" (216). While Kegley is correct that contemporary scholars like Lucius Outlaw and Cornel West have adamantly defended the importance of race as a social and cultural entity, her claim is in stark contradiction to the racial eliminativism of other scholars like Anthony Appiah and Alain Locke, whom she also contends that Royce agrees with simultaneously.2 While it makes perfect sense for Kegley to try to put Royce in conversation with contemporary Black thinkers in race theory, her work is indicative of a trend aiming to gain currency for historic white thinkers in current race debates at the expense of historical accuracy. Black scholars who studied under Royce and applied his theories to the race problem from the mid-1900s onward, like William H. Ferris3 and William T. Fontaine,4 are ignored by white scholars because the first application of Roycean philosophy supported assimilationism. It is only today with the political and ideological [End Page 10] ethicizations of racial diversity and multiculturalism that Royce's work is interpreted as critically conserving race.5In contrast to contemporary works on Royce and race, this article seeks to evaluate the current claims for the relevance of Royce's views in contemporary debates on race. I maintain that only by taking Royce out of his historical context (late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century thought) do his ideas on race acquire a level of importance that cannot be supported by the actual evidence he himself advances. Conversely, by actually placing Royce in his historical context, this article will demonstrate that Royce's 1905 article entitled "Race Questions" (later published as "Race Questions and Prejudices" in 1906) is an unapologetic extension of his 1900 article entitled "Characteristic Tendencies of American Civilization," where Royce adamantly champions British colonialism and assimilation as the remedy to the burgeoning race problem both at home and abroad. I begin with a critical analysis that places Josiah Royce's attitudes firmly within the boundaries of his times. In what follows, I will attempt to contextualize Royce's seemingly progressive stance on Japan as part of a more general reaction whites had during the early 1900s to Russia's defeat by the Japanese. Instead of reading Royce's stance on Japan as a moment of exceptionalism, I contend that Royce's attitude was in fact a popular disposition that signaled the inevitable shift of race science away from biological determinism toward more environmentalist explanations. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I will show that Royce's disposition toward Blacks was firmly rooted in a colonial and assimilationist logic that ultimately sought the cultural destruction of African-descended people. A closer look at Royce's prefatory remarks on British colonialism from 1900 and his valorization of English colonial administration in Jamaica actually reveals an insidious racial dynamic in Royce's thought that is anything but antiracist. Finally, having established Royce's philosophical stake in American assimilation and Western domination, I argue that the "provincial revision" currently in vogue amongst American philosophers working with Royce is simply not enough to overturn Royce's clearly racist investments in dealing with the race question.If I Can Think It... Then I Can Do It—Reading Royce... (shrink)

With the rise of place-based models of education, credence needs to be given to epistemological traditions that curate individual understandings of and relations to the social world (i.e., places). The epistemological traditions that have been shared across generations of North American settler colonialists are at the center of this article. The dominant epistemology of settler society provides racialized, anthropocentric, and capitalistic understandings of places. Relations to place are cultivated through particular conceptions of nature, private property, and personhood, which remain at (...) the epistemic foundation of Western society. These conceptions are concomitant to modes of domination like white supremacy and settler colonialism, and ultimately constitute an ideal white male settler actor. This article suggests that place-based education carries the potential to offer epistemic resistance to domination, but first needs to engage in a more comprehensive understanding of settler traditions of place. (shrink)

Herbert Marcuse’s political-philosophical vision, cultural critique, and social activism continue to offer an intelligent strategic perspective on current concerns – especially issues of ecological destruction, neofascist white supremacy, hate speech, hate crimes, and racist police violence. These can be countered through a recognition of the intersectionality of radical needs of diverse constituencies and radical collaboration, giving rise to system negation as a new general interest, and an ecosocialist strategy of revolutionary activism within a global alliance of transformational forces.

This article offers a model of collective responsibility that arises out of group implication in the persistent injustices of racism and colonialism. It engages with a case study of Jewish refugees who arrived in the Americas in the aftermath of the 1492 Spanish Edict of Expulsion. There, it identifies a strategy of survival grounded in identification with white Christians at the top of the colonial hierarchy and disidentification with Black and Native peoples at the bottom. This identification yielded benefits (...) for colonial Jews and those (the author included) who inherit their place in the colonial racial hierarchy. These benefits were at the expense of Black and Native peoples in the Americas. The article highlights the relational harms—to others and themselves—inherent in group complicity with white supremacy. It concludes by outlining the forms of collective responsibility that could counteract these harms and create relationality beyond white supremacy. (shrink)

The starting point for eliminating the virus of white supremacy ideology from our culture must be in our educational system. This book is intended as a vaccine to help eliminate the damage and to prevent future generations from being infected.

Philosophy Compass, Volume 17, Issue 2, February 2022.

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)

Applying Heideggerian tool ontology to antiblack racism in the United States, Ontological Branding argues that race is a tool to constrain nonwhite persons, especially Black persons, to ways of being in service to the white world. U.S. law’s colorblind “equality” safeguards white supremacy, and racial justice instead requires ontological equality.

This article examines Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké and his theology as a cogent response to White Supremacy as expressed in French Colonization of Africa. White Supremacy has as its primary goal, the recreation of the whole world in the image of Whiteness upon the premise that the possession of White skin makes one inherently superior. Theism counters this ontological assault with an unabashed turn to a believer's God. Shaikh Amadu Bamba Mbacké's insistence on Islam counters (...) White Supremacy thereby providing an ideological and metaphysical space for the non-whites of Senegal to exist without succumbing to the temptation to aspire to a Euro-centric ideal. (shrink)

This article examines racial theories of development in connection with Kant; America exceptionalism, nationalism, and nativism; and the transformation of manifest destiny into a racial destiny. It then focuses on the forms of social Darwinist thinking that pervaded and dominated American intellectual life toward the end of the nineteenth century, as well as the chief ideological uses to which this new racial imaginary was put in domestic and foreign affairs. Finally, it sketches the decline of this dominant ideology and its (...) replacement with a nearly equivalent cultural theory of development and difference. (shrink)

Cet article décrit le développement de la conscience critique ainsi que les traditions intellectuelles qui tentent d’expliquer la compréhension du concept. Parmi les plus importantes sont la philosophie analytique, le pragmatisme américain, et la théorie critique de l’École de Francfort. En particulier, deux actions déterminantes sont analysées : la volonté d’examiner nos propres suppositions et celles d’autrui à l’égard de nos pensées et de nos actions et l’ouverture aux autres perspectives et points de vue. L’auteur examine le moyen dont la (...) tradition de la théorie critique souligne la déconstruction du pouvoir et du contrôle idéologique. Il s’appuie sur sa propre expérience de la dépression clinique comme illustration. Avant de comprendre sa propre dépression, il maintient qu’il fallait être prêt à poser un regard critique sur l’idéologie dominante de la patriarchie qui a bloqué une analyse critique de sa condition mentale. (shrink)