This article examines how the formation of markets in bottled water has relied on assembling a particular subject: the subject of hydration. The discourse of hydration is a conspicuous feature of efforts to market bottled water, allowing companies to appeal to scientifically framed principles and ideas of health in order to position the product as an essential component in self-health and healthy lifestyles. Alongside related principles, such as the ‘8 × 8 rule’, hydration has done much to establish new practices (...) of water drinking and consumption in which the consumer appears to be always at risk of dehydration and must engage in practices of ‘frequent sipping’. This article traces the emergence of the concept of hydration from its origins in exercise science and explores its circulation, contemporary uses and purchase. I argue that the appeal to biomedical languages and concepts found in the discourse of hydration connects with much broader ways of conceiving and acting upon the self that have become prevalent in contemporary society – what Rose and Novas call ‘biological citizenship’ – indicating how the ensemble of hydration participates in wider-ranging transformations in forms of rule. The story of hydration reveals how biomedical techniques of the self can be made to double up as ‘market devices’ by offering specific procedures for assessing the self and calculating the body’s needs. In order to grasp these developments, I position the health sciences, and health and fitness in particular, as a potent site of popular culture in which bodies learn to be affected by the procedures of scientific experiment. A critical grasp of this context is best enabled, I argue, by situating the producers and consumers of scientific principles and commercial products as embodied and looking at their interconnection in processes of emergence. Through these means, we can begin to develop a fully materialized account of the question: how have we become so thirsty? (shrink)

The ethical and social implications of data mining, algorithmic curation and automation in the context of social media have been of heightened concern for a range of researchers with interests in digital media in recent years, with particular concerns about privacy arising in the context of mobile and locative media. Despite their wide adoption and economic importance, mobile dating apps have received little scholarly attention from this perspective – but they are intense sites of data generation, algorithmic processing, and cross-platform (...) data-sharing; bound up with competing cultures of production, exploitation and use. In this paper, we describe the ways various forms of data are incorporated into, and emerge from, hook-up apps’ business logics, socio-technical arrangements, and cultures of use to produce multiple and intersecting data cultures. We propose a multi-layered research agenda for critical and empirical inquiry into this field, and suggest appropriate conceptual and methodological frameworks for exploring the social and political challenges of data cultures. (shrink)

Smoke and Mirrors is a passionate, richly nuanced work that shows television as a circus, a wishing well, and a cure for loneliness. Ranging from Ed Sullivan to cyberspace, from kid shows to cable, and from the cheap thrills of "action adventure" to the solemn boredom of PBS pledge week, Leonard argues for a whole new way of thinking about television. For Leonard, the situation comedy is a socializing agency, the talk show is a legitimating agency, the made-for-television movie is (...) the last redoubt of social conscience, and television criticism itself is the last refuge of time-serving thugs and postmodernists. Instead of scapegoating television as the cause of crime in our streets, stupidity in our schools, and spectacle rather than substance in our government, Leonard sees something else inside the box: an echo chamber and a feedback loop, a medium neither wholly innocent of nor entirely responsible for the frantic disorder it brings into our homes. (shrink)

Ideal theory in social and political philosophy generally works to hide philosophical theories’ complicity in sustaining the structural violence and maintenance of white supremacy that are foundational to settler colonial societies. While non-ideal theory can provide a corrective to some of ideal theory’s intended omissions, it can also work to conceal the same systems of violence that ideal theory does, especially when framed primarily as a response to ideal theory. This article takes a decolonial approach to exploring the limitations of (...) non-ideal theory in its ability to respond to and redress the continuing harms done to Indigenous peoples by settler colonialism, including by outlining non-ideal theory’s relationship to a colonial politics of recognition. (shrink)

Long-standing theoretical education frameworks and methodologies have failed to provide space for the role mental health can play in mediating educational consequences. To illustrate the need for such space, Ebony McGee and David Stovall highlight the voices of black undergraduates they have served in the capacities of teacher, researcher, and mentor. Building from the theoretical contributions of intellectual giants like Frantz Fanon and W. E. B. Du Bois, the authors attempt to connect oppressive social systems to the psyche of the (...) oppressed in a way that is relevant to black students. McGee and Stovall pose a challenge to the current research trend of attributing the survival of black students at traditionally white institutions primarily to grit, perseverance, and mental toughness, noting that research on the aforementioned qualities often fails to properly acknowledge multiple forms of suffering. Utilizing the lens of Critical Race Theory, the authors also challenge the construct of grit to consider the extent to which the mental health concerns of black students go undetected. Although critical race theorists have unmasked and attacked the racial trauma experienced at all levels of the educational system, the connection of CRT to mental health and wellness research is in its embryonic stages. For these reasons, McGee and Stovall argue that CRT scholars need to incorporate praxis to address mental health and wellness in order to address a fuller spectrum of black students' racialized worlds. Ultimately, they seek interdisciplinary perspectives that can help identify and foster strategies to support black students in the project and process of healing from multiple forms of racialized trauma they experience within and beyond their educational encounters. (shrink)

(2011). Critical Race Theory Matters: Education and Ideology. By M. Zamudio, C. Russell, M. A. Rios and J. L. Bridgeman. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 59, Research capacity building, pp. 348-350.

Language tests for overseas registered nurses (ORN) working outside their home country are essential for patient safety, as communication competency needs to be established in any workforce. We argue that the current employment of existing language tests is structurally and institutionally racist and disadvantages ORNs from non‐European Union (EU) and non‐White countries seeking to work in the United Kingdom. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT), we argue that existing English language tests for ORNs seeking registration in the United Kingdom (...) are discriminatory due to the UK's racist migration policies and a regulatory body for nursing and midwifery that fails to acknowledge and understand its own institutionally racist practices. (shrink)

This article is a critical race theology analysis that asserts that Catholic social teaching established in documents such as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Populorum progressio, Caritas in veritate, and the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace’s Contribution to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance justifies reparations for the state of oppression commonly called Jim Crow, or segregation society, from the US government because it denied African Americans “truly human conditions.”.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has its origins in legal analysis but increasingly has been used by educational researchers to analyse the continued salience of institutional racism in educational settings. After providing a brief overview of the history of CRT and the educational issues addressed by critical race theorists, I review two books that explicitly engage critical race theory (CRT). Delgado and Stefancic’s (2001) primer on the CRT literature provides an important backdrop for situating Guinier (...) and Torres’ (2002) ambitious argument for building grassroots social movements around the concept of political race. (shrink)

Building on research conducted in feminist organizations in Vancouver, British Columbia, on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, this paper explores the role, relationship, and responsibility of advocating for antiracism and social justice in the context of antiracism projects in feminist nonprofit organizations. In doing so this paper asks: What do antiracism projects look like in feminist organizations? And how are these projects informed or interrupted by racialized and Indigenous activists within these spaces? (...) Using critical race theory’s composite counterstory, this paper uses storytelling methodologies to understand how racialized settlers and Indigenous folks can collaborate and thrive – as they have been doing – on occupied unceded territories in Canada. Based on a series of interviews with racialized and Indigenous activists engaging in feminist nonprofit organizations, these stories shed light on contemporary realities of colonization, including collaboration within white settler systems. (shrink)

Medical academics are increasingly bringing critical race theory (CRT) or its corollaries to their discourse, to their curricula, and to their analyses of health and medical treatment disparities. The author argues that this is an error. The author considers the history of CRT, its claims, and its current presence in the medical literature. He contends that CRT is inimical to usual academic modes of inquiry and has obscured rather than aided the analysis of social and medical treatment disparities. (...) Remedies for racism suggested by CRT advocates will not work and some of them will make things worse. Academic medicine should avoid the embrace of CRT and should maintain an allegiance to rigorous empirical inquiry and to treating patients not as essentialized ethnic group members but as individual human beings in need of care. (shrink)

In more than half of its states, the USA has recently passed or proposed legislation to limit or ban public educational curricular reference to race, gender, sexuality, or other identity topics. The stated justifications for these legislative moves are myriad, but they share a foundational claim; namely, these topics are asserted to be politically and socially divisive such that they ought not to be included within state-controlled schools. In this paper, we consider the claims of divisiveness regarding these topics (...) and explore whether, even if taken in good faith, the popular versions of these arguments and actions are epistemically defensible. We conclude that these bans are an epistemic injustice and therefore argue for their end. The article proceeds to consider the foundational claims of epistemic injustice, followed by the invocation of epistemic standards by which the arguments for these bans can be evaluated. The article then transitions to a close application of these standards, weighing the possible epistemic gains and losses. Before concluding, we consider objections and explore the social and epistemic significance of these issues. (shrink)

The emergence of Critical Race Theory marked an important point in the history of racial politics in the legal academy and the broader conversation about race and racism in the United States. More recently, CRT has proven an important analytic tool in the field of education, offering critical perspectives on race, and the causes, consequences and manifestations of race, racism, inequity, and the dynamics of power and privilege in schooling. This groundbreaking anthology is the (...) first to pull together both the foundational writings in the field and more recent scholarship on the cultural and racial politics of schooling. A comprehensive introduction provides an overview of the history and tenets of CRT in education. Each section then seeks to explicate ideological contestation of race in education and to create new, alternative accounts. In so doing, this landmark publication not only documents the progress to date of the CRT movement, it acts to further spur developments in education. (shrink)

Traditional notions of civic education often introduce privilege and reproduce Eurocentric notions of citizenship. Proponents of cultural citizenship champion Black cultural knowledge, and critical race pedagogies to help marginalized individuals, including students of color, actualize their agentic selves. This manuscript presents three vignettes to demonstrate how teachers implemented the Black Lives Matter at School’s 13 Guiding Principles to develop Black cultural citizenship with students. Three salient aspects emerged: (1) the need for students to be active contributors in the (...) current movement for Black liberation; (2) a call to support students unlearning and relearning Black history; and (3) instruction that provides opportunities for students to recognize and challenge systems of oppression. (shrink)

Critical Race Theory (C.R.T.) has developed out of a deep dissatisfaction that many black legal scholars in the U.S. felt with liberal civil rights discourse, a discourse premised upon the ideals of assimilation, ‘colour-blindness’ and integration. In addition, the emergence of the Critical Legal Studies movement provided Critical Race theorists with an innovative lexicon and practice which allowed them to develop a critique of traditional race analysis and U.S. law. Patricia Williams has played a (...) key role in the formation of the C.R.T. movement and is concerned with many of the C.R.T. themes: the understanding that traditional civil rights law has benefited whites more than blacks, the ‘call to context’, and the critique of liberalism by the assertion that racism is routine and not aberrational. Following the C.R.T. belief that form and substance are connected, Williams has also extended the boundaries of another C.R.T. theme by (largely) eschewing the conventional genre of legal writing in much of her work, including her two books, The Alchemy of Race and Rights and The Rooster's Egg. This was one of the issues Williams discussed in an interview that commenced when she visited Britain in 1997 to deliver the Reith Lectures. (shrink)

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

This essay argues that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of embodiment can be an extremely helpful ally for contemporary feminist theorists, critical race theorists, and disability studies scholars because his work suggests that the gender, race, and ability of bodies are not innate or fixed features of those bodies, much less corporeal indicators of physical, social, psychic, and even moral inferiority, but are themselves dynamic phenomena that have the potential to overturn accepted notions of normalcy, naturalness, and normativity. Taking seriously (...) Merleau-Ponty’s insistence that our bodies are the means by which we directly engage with the world, I suggest, encourages us to be attentive to how an individual’s or group’s gender, race, and bodily abilities differentially affect how their bodies are responded to by other bodies. The responses of others, in turn, directly influences the significance of an individual’s actions within that situation. This essay provides a critical examination of specific feminist philosophers, critical race scholars, and disability theorists who creatively utilize Merleau-Pontian insights to illustrate, and ultimately combat, the insidious ways in which sexism, racism, and “compulsory able-bodiedness”, impoverish the lived experience of both oppressors and the oppressed, largely by predetermining the meaning of their bodily interactions in accordance with institutionalized cultural expectations and norms. (shrink)

Liberalism is often claimed to be at odds with feminism and critical race theory (CRT). This article argues, to the contrary, that Rawlsian liberalism supports the central commitments of both. Section 1 argues that Rawlsian liberalism supports intersectional feminism. Section 2 argues that the same is true of CRT. Section 3 then uses Young’s ‘Five Faces of Oppression’—a classic work widely utilized in feminism and CRT to understand and contest many varieties of oppression—to illustrate how Rawlsian liberalism supports (...) diverse feminist and CRT projects, and why it may be critical to achieve solidarity between feminism, CRT, and Rawlsian liberalism. Finally, Section 4 responds to five objections. (shrink)

In this article, Barbara Applebaum examines “the inability to disagree claim” as it arises in objections made by those who want to ban “critical race theory” from being taught in schools and universities. Employing insights from the recent scholarship around willful hermeneutical ignorance, she discerns the important role that marginalized conceptual resources play in conditions of just and constructive dialogue. When such resources are misinterpreted and denied uptake, the resulting harm impedes the epistemic agency of marginally situated knowers. (...) Applebaum claims that many high-profile anti–“critical race theory” arguments put forth by politicians, scholars, and others are a form of willful hermeneutical ignorance, and she concludes by showing how more just communications, in which disagreement is distinguishable from dismissal, can be achieved. (shrink)

UK Higher Education is characterised by structural and institutional forms of whiteness. As scholars and activists are increasingly speaking out to testify, whiteness has wide-ranging implications that affect curricula, pedagogy, knowledge production, university policies, campus climate, and the experiences of students and faculty of colour. Unsurprisingly then, calls to decolonize the university abound. In this article, we draw upon the Critical Race Theory method of counter-storytelling. By introducing composite characters, we speak back to assumptions that universities are (...) class='Hi'>race-neutral, meritocratic institutions. We illustrate some of the key themes that shape the experiences of faculty of colour in UK Higher Education: institutional racism, racial microaggressions, racial battle fatigue, and steadfast fugitive resistance. We argue that, despite the paradox of working under (what purports to be) a ‘decolonial’ agenda, widespread calls to decolonize our universities have further embedded rather than dismantled whiteness, thus continuing to characterise the careers, wellbeing, and daily lives of faculty of colour. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore ways in which pre-college pedagogical resources – particularly Critical Race Pedagogy developed for high school students, as well as Philosophy for Children – can be helpfully employed by college level instructors who wish to dialogue with students about the nature of race and racial oppression. More specifically, we wish to explore how P4C can both learn from, and be put to the service of, CRP, and how this provides a useful framework for (...) philosophical conversations about race at the college and pre-college levels. Our arguments are interwoven with narratives of our personal experiences utilising these pre-college pedagogical resources in conversations about race, so as to illustrate and provide context for our claims. We ultimately contend that these resources can help pedagogues in both higher and lower education work toward unmuting the voices of undervalued and underserved students in the United States. (shrink)

From Character to Color was written to explore Critical Race Theory from logical, moral, and educational standpoints, as these relate to history, people and racial groups.

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

This paper examines the polemical nature of anti-racist education and discourse in America today. On one side of this issue are those who think of the efforts toward inclusion, diversity, and the pursuit of social justice in academia as serving positive ends. On the other side are those who oppose and vilify such efforts as evidence of the destructive ethos of liberal education. This has led to a situation where universities and schools across the country have seen professors and teachers, (...) including philosophers, experience backlash for speaking seriously and courageously about confronting the problem of racism in society. One recent example of this anomaly is the kind of faux outrage or moral panic that drives the hysteria against Critical Race Theory, an inquiry that examines the intersection of race and law in the United States, as well as unearthing the reality of structural racism in America, often disguised in the mainstream liberal approaches to racial justice. This faux moral panic has been used by legislatures across the country, as the raison d’être, to pass bans and enforce policies or rules that restricts how professors (including philosophers), and teachers can talk about race, systemic racism, structural oppression, or the problem of racial injustice in the classroom. In this paper, I explore how this polemical situation creates significant challenges and unique possibilities for the discourse of philosophy, especially for those who are interested in becoming antiracist philosophers, in the context of such legal rules and restrictions. This is not for the faint of heart. (shrink)

During a period in which institutions have been refashioned to meet the demands of a complex social and political economy, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has helped to alter the public educational system. As scholars and researchers examine the material effects of NCLB, efforts to improve the educational system and its effects must also explore the relationship between policy and racial ideologies including discursive fantasies. This article examines the relationship between NCLB and racial fantasies of Black youth as (...) problematic others in order to help education reform scholarship and advocacy examine the violence of NCLB. (shrink)

The preferential option for the poor is a concept and set of ideas in Catholic social teaching that is highly relevant to bioethics scholarship and practice. The option for the poor is mentioned frequently in the bioethics literature but with little specification of its history and implications for ethical and theological analysis. This article examines the origins and implications of the preferential option; compares it to critical race theory, which dominates current debates about discrimination and oppression; and proposes (...) a set of principles for further application in bioethical scholarship and discussion. (shrink)

Classrooms are unlevel knowing fields, contested terrains where knowledge and ignorance are produced and circulate with equal vigor, and where members of dominant groups are accustomed to having an epistemic home-terrain advantage. My project focuses on one form of resistance that regularly surfaces in discussions with social-justice content. Privilege-protective epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when asked to consider both the lived and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience (...) daily. I argue that this dominant form of resistance is neither an expression of skepticism nor a critical-thinking practice. I suggest that standard philosophical engagements with these expressions of resistance are incapable of tracking the harms of privilege-protecting epistemic pushback. I recommend treating this pushback as a “shadow text,” that is, as a text that runs alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I offer this as one critical philosophical practice for making students mindful of the ways they contribute to the circulation of ignorance and epistemic violence during the course of their discussions. (shrink)

Classrooms are unlevel knowing fields, contested terrains where knowledge and ignorance are produced and circulate with equal vigor, and where members of dominant groups are accustomed to having an epistemic home-terrain advantage. My project focuses on one form of resistance that regularly surfaces in discussions with social-justice content. Privilege-preserving epistemic pushback is a variety of willful ignorance that many members of dominant groups engage in when asked to consider both the lived and structural injustices that members of marginalized groups experience (...) daily. I argue that this dominant form of resistance is neither an expression of skepticism nor a critical-thinking practice. I suggest that standard philosophical engagements with these expressions of resistance are incapable of tracking the harms of privilege-preserving epistemic pushback. I recommend treating this pushback as a “shadow text,” that is, as a text that runs alongside the readings in ways that offer no epistemic friction. I offer this as one critical philosophical practice for making students mindful of the ways they contribute to the circulation of ignorance and epistemic violence during the course of their discussions. (shrink)

This article argues that Hannah Arendt’s controversial essay “Reflections on Little Rock,” when situated within her analysis of Jewish assimilation, has an astute insight: racial integration and the decrease of the racial gaps in material inequality, without taking seriously the political project of building a world in common, only intensify racism in racist polities. This occurs because attempts to extend formal equality to the racially dominated give rise to the rule of racial common sense, a result of a clash between (...) the political structures of equality and the racial inequality practiced in quotidian interracial exchanges occurring in civil society. Though Arendt’s work on racism echoes criticisms of racial integration leveled by racial realist and pessimistic accounts of the Civil Rights struggle, her work points to a more expansive practice of “the political” that calls for the institutional design of formal politics as an important strategy against racism. (shrink)

This paper raises an uncommon question: What can studying Thomas Aquinas and Critical Race Theory teach us about failures to promote mercy across the color-line? I answer this question in five stages. After locating Thomas’s teachings on mercy and its impediments within his masterwork, the Summa theologiae, I excavate Thomas’s account of mercy’s impediments. Next, I address the question “What is CRT?” Then I examine a foundational CRT text’s analysis of mercy’s impediments. Lastly, I offer a proposal for (...) further Thomas-CRT collaborations. (shrink)

Ideas of racial genetic determinism, though unsupported by scientific evidence and atavistic, are common and readily apparent in American medical education. These theories of biologic essentialism have documented negative effects in learners, including increased measures of racial prejudice.