How can we register the participation of a range of elements, extending beyond the human subject, in the production of HIV events? In the context of proposals around biomedical prevention, there is a growing awareness of the need to find ways of responding to complexity, as everywhere new combinations of treatment, behavior, drugs, norms, meanings and devices are coming into encounter with one another, or are set to come into encounter with one another, with a range of unpredictable effects. In (...) this paper I consider the operation of various framing devices that attribute responsibility and causation with regard to HIV events. I propose that we need to sharpen our analytic focus on what these devices do, their performativity—that is, their full range of worldly implications and effects. My primary examples are the criminal law and the randomized control trial. I argue that these institutions operate as framing devices: They attribute responsibility for HIV events and externalize other elements and effects in the process. Drawing on recent work in science and technology studies as well as queer theory, I set out an analytic frame that marks out a new role for HIV social research. Attentiveness to the performative effects of these devices is crucial, I suggest, if we want better to address the global HIV epidemic. (shrink)

Previous studies suggested that emotions can be correctly interpreted from facial expressions in the absence of conscious awareness of the face. Our goal was to explore whether subordinate information about a face’s gender and race could also become available without awareness of the face. Participants classified the race or the gender of unfamiliar faces that were ambiguous with regard to these dimensions. The ambiguous faces were preceded by face-images that unequivocally represented gender and race, rendered consciously invisible (...) by simultaneous continuous-flash-suppression. The classification of ambiguous faces was biased away from the category of the adaptor only when it was consciously visible. The duration of subjective visibility correlated with the aftereffect strength. Moreover, face identity was consequential only if consciously perceived. These results suggest that while conscious awareness is not needed for basic level categorization, it is needed for subordinate categorization. Emotional information might be unique in this respect. (shrink)

This edited volume draws upon Lacanian psychoanalytic theory to examine the conscious and unconscious forces underlying race as a social formation, conceptualizing race, racial identity, and racism in ways that go beyond traditional modes of psychoanalytic thought Featuring contributions from Lacanian scholars from diverse geographical and disciplinary contexts, chapters span a wide breadth of topics including white nationalism and contemporary debates over confederate monuments; emergent theories of race rooted in Afropessimism and postcolonialism; Latinx and other racialized groups; (...) apartheid and American slavery; and applications of Lacan's concepts of the lamella, drive and sexuation to processes of racialization. The collection both reorients readers' understandings of race through its deployment of Lacanian theory and redefines the Lacanian subject through its theorizing of subjectivity in relation to race, racism and racial identification. Lacan and Race will be a definitive text for psychoanalytic theorists and contemporary scholars of race and appeal to readers across the fields of psychology, cultural studies, humanities, politics, and sociology. (shrink)

Farhad Dalal argues that people differentiate between races in order to make a distinction between the "haves" and "must-not-haves", and that this process is cognitive, emotional and political rather than biological. Examining the subject over the past thousand years, Race, Colour and the Process of Racialisation covers theories of racism and a general theory of difference based on the works of Fanon, Elias, Matte-Blanco and Foulkes, as well as application of this theory to race and racism. Farhad Dalal (...) concludes that the structures of society are reflected in the structures of the psyche, and both of these are colour coded. This book will be invaluable to students, academics and practitioners in the areas of psychoanalysis, group analysis, psychotherapy and counseling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.4 (2000) 691-698 [Access article in PDF] Hume, Race, and Human Nature Emmanuel C. Eze Introduction John Immerwahr recently wrote in the Journal of the History of Ideas, "While Hume is generally known as an enemy of prejudice and intolerance, he is also infamous as a proponent of philosophical racism." 1 I am intrigued by this suggestion that Hume's is a "philosophical (...) racism"; one wonders: how many brands of racisms are there? What does "philosophical" racism mean? Assuming that philosophical racism is something which we wish to take notice of, what part of Hume's philosophy sustains it? How much of Hume's philosophy may be affected by this, and how profound?On the surface it seems not to make sense to ask, for example, how profound Hume's "philosophical racism" is or how deeply racist his philosophical works may be. The question appears contrived because, currently, every reference in the literature seem to point to only a footnote: I am apt to suspect the Negroes and in general all other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent either in action or speculation. No ingenious manufacturers amongst them, no arts, no sciences. On the other hand, the most rude and barbarous of the whites, such as the ancient GERMANS, the present TARTARS, have still something eminent about them, in their valour, form of government, or some other particular. Such a uniform and constant difference could not happen, in so many countries and ages, if nature had not made an original distinction betwixt these breeds of men. Not to mention our colonies, there are NEGROE slaves dispersed all over EUROPE, of which none ever discovered [End Page 691] any symptoms of ingenuity; tho' low people, without education, will start up amongst us, and distinguish themselves in every profession. In JAMAICA, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but 'tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly. 2This was added, between 1753 and 1754, to the essay "Of National Characters." It was also revised in the final edition of the Essays: Moral, Political and Literary, which Hume had prepared shortly before he died in 1777. 3 Meanwhile, the original version of "Of National Characters" was written in 1748.An equally reasonable point of view on the matter, however, is to show that, far from being philosophically unimportant or an after-thought, the footnote, both its addition several years after the original essay was written and its maintenance in the subsequent revisions by Hume, suggests that the ideas expressed therein were important to the author and, significantly, to the arguments of "Of National Characters." It is known that by 1770 James Beattie, in An Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, in Opposition to Sophistry and Skepticism, had extensively criticized "Of National Character," specifically the note under consideration. Hume was aware of this and other criticisms and responded or commented on them in letters to friends, among other places. In a letter to his friend and publisher, William Straham, later published in London Chronicle (12-14 June 1777), Hume discussed dismissively criticisms from Thomas Reid and James Beattie, referring to the latter as "a bigoted silly fellow." 4 The fact that it survived Hume's multiple revisions and remained part of the Essays and was publicly defended from criticisms invites one not to dismiss this lengthy addition as marginal to Hume's thought but rather to determine why he might have felt it needed to be added in the first place, revised, and critically defended in what is now its definitive version. Relevant specific questions would be: why, of all other possible places (I have in mind, for example, a comparable essay "Of the populousness of ancient nations"), was the footnote added here? How does the opinion in this note relate to... (shrink)

Despite a growing awareness within American biomedicine and bioethics that the social category “race” is of limited use in describing patients, some fields of medicine continue to use it interchangeably with, or instead of, the term “ethnicity.” Doing so reflects the assumption that social categories have a basis in physiology.

_The Multicultural Imagination_ is a challenging inquiry into the complex interrelationship between our ideas about race and color and the unconscious. Michael Vannoy Adams takes a fresh look at the contributions of psychoanalysis to a question which affects every individual who tries to establish an effective personal identity in the context of their received 'racial' identity. Adams argues that 'race' is just as important as sex or any other content of the unconcscious, drawing on clinical case materal from (...) contemporary patients for whom 'race' or color is a vitally significant social and political concern that impacts on them personally. He does not assume that racism or 'colorism' will simply vanish if we psychoanalyse them, but shows how a non-defensive ego and a self-image that is receptive to other-images can move us towards a more productive discourse of cultural differences. Wide-ranging in its references and scope, this is a book that provokes the reader - analyst or not - to confront personally those unconscious attitudes which stand in the way of authentic multicultural relationships. (shrink)

The Multicultural Imagination is a challenging inquiry into the complex interrelationship between our ideas about race, color and the unconscious. Drawing on clinical case material, Michael Vannoy Adams argues that race is just as important as sex or any other content of the unconscious. He does not assume that racism will simply vanish if we psychoanalyze a patient, but shows how a non-defensive ego and a self-image that is receptive to other-images can move us towards a more productive (...) discourse of cultural differences. The Multicultural Imagination provokes the reader--analyst or not--to confront personally those unconscious attitudes which stand in the way of authentic multicultural relationships. (shrink)

Desiring Whiteness provides a compelling new interpretation of how we understand race. Race is often seen to be a social construction. Nevertheless, we continue to deploy race thinking in our everyday life as a way of telling people apart visually. How do subjects become raced? Is it common sense to read bodies as racially marked? Employing Lacan's theories of the subject and sexual difference, Seshadri-Crooks explores how the discourse of race parallels that of sexual difference in (...) making racial identity a fundamental component of our thinking. Through close readings of literary and film texts, Seshardi-Crooks also investigates whether race is a system of difference equally determined by Whiteness. She argues that it is in relation to Whiteness that systems of racial classification are organized, endowing it with a power to shape human difference. (shrink)

Reflecting on the tension of which he was aware between the imperial West and the still-mysterious East, Victorian writer Rudyard Kipling penned the above phrase to express the incommensurable situation wherein the Westerner never understands the Asian, as the latter’s culture differs too greatly from his own. However, aware that East and West nevertheless cannot remain separated forever, the author ends the poem with an eventual encounter between the two.Over 100 years have passed since this poem was written, yet the (...) ambivalent encounter between East and West that it depicts still exists and is currently playing out within the field of pharmaceuticals. On one side of the divide are the many people in the industry who want to standardize global acceptance of drugs; on the other are the local authorities who want to maintain the overruling legal need not to compromise on health care at a national level. In this sense, the divergence and unity that Kipling captures is what this paper aims to discuss as it addresses how race is debated at the International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use. (shrink)

This paper deals with the reification of the concept of race in biomedical research. It combines philosophical analysis and a quantitative approach to investigate the ways in which the reification fallacy may occur in race research, thereby providing theoretical legitimacy to the misuse of scientific research. It examines the prevalence of obesity in the US and some African countries as an empirical case to guide a conceptual analysis. The paper suggests that, to avoid the reification of race, (...) researchers need to be more aware of the fact that continental genetic clusters do not necessarily correspond to the genotypic partitions of interest in therapeutic reaction or disease etiology, and need to take seriously the phenotypic variability of breeding populations within continents. (shrink)

Yuan Dynasty was an era with austere political reality and thinking reality. As a result of despisement to ruling of different races, a large majority of scholars in Yuan Dynasty chose seclusion without other choice, but the “internal beauty” they pursued was amazingly unanimous, which was, without doubt, owing to the spirit of the mountains and forests. When they tried to find enjoyment in painting, they put their willpower in it, which was a spontaneous awareness of cultural spirit and was, (...) moreover, a peak experience of Chinese traditional culture. Achievement of Yuan Dynasty painting was impressive, and extended the aesthetic space of human beings. Thus, it enriched and development and manifestation connotation of landscape painting to a great extent, and would be engraved forever in the spiritual and cultural history of human beings. (shrink)

This article provides a preliminary exploration into the relationship between the bodily senses and race. Seeking insight into what Merleau-Ponty called a body-subject—a lived, knowing body that is aware and reflective of its perceptual experience and actively participates in the construction of reality—it explores the role of the bodily senses in constituting the ideological universe of race. Approaching the body as an anchor of sensory apparatus that is cultivated to confirm and uphold the social and ideological existence of (...) race, it explores how we cultivate, activate, and materialize the historically specific bodies that actively perceive race as difference and participate in the social reality organized by race. Examples of colorblind ideology and racialized pain are used to substantiate the claim that our sensory participation in reality is integral to maintaining what we call race. (shrink)

While Michel Foucault’s writings have been taken up extensively to explore gender and sexuality, until recently there was little work drawing on Foucault’s writings to discuss race. In part, this was because Foucault seemed to have said almost nothing about race, aside from some comments on Nazism and eugenics in the final pages of Part V of The History of Sexuality, volume 1. With the 1997 and 1999 publication of two series of lectures that Foucault delivered at the (...) Collège de France between 1974 and 1976, Abnormal and “Society Must Be Defended” (both appearing in English translation in 2003), Foucault scholars have, however, become aware that he made more extensive and provocative observations about race than had previously been believed. Both of these lecture series gives a genealogical account of the ways in which modern, biological forms of racism emerged at a certain point in history, stressing the contingency of this emergence and its enmeshment in power struggles and modern forms of power. This paper provides an account of what Foucault argues about race and racism in the Collège de France lectures, and, more briefly, presents two of the most extended treatments of race coming from Foucauldian perspectives that have appeared in the wake of these texts. (shrink)

Recent work in social psychology suggests that people harbor “implicit race biases,” biases which can be unconscious or uncontrollable. Because awareness and control have traditionally been deemed necessary for the ascription of moral responsibility, implicit biases present a unique challenge: do we pardon discrimination based on implicit biases because of its unintentional nature, or do we punish discrimination regardless of how it comes about? The present experiments investigated the impact such theories have upon moral judgments about racial discrimination. The (...) results show that different theories differ in their impact on moral judgments: when implicit biases are defined as unconscious, people hold the biased agent less morally responsible than when these biases are defined as automatic (i.e., difficult to control), or when no theory of implicit bias is provided. (shrink)

This article focuses on the ways that sexual risk behaviors are related to race, class, and gender among low-income, culturally diverse women in South Florida. Data concerning sexual risk and gender are presented in terms of race and class variations. Results indicate that, in general, these women have a high degree of knowledge about acquired immune deficiency syndrome, a quite contemporary awareness of women's gendered subordination, and a lack of trust in heterosexual relationships. Attitudes, beliefs, and knowledge, however, (...) are not translated into sexual behaviors with men partners that would reduce their vulnerability to infection with the human immunodeficiency virus. The data indicate that race is a major factor that places women into an underclass position. Consequently, without socioeconomic resources, gendered behaviors have a direct influence on sexual risk. Multivariate analyses indicate that those women who are sex workers are significantly more likely to negotiate safe sex with clients than with main partners. The research not only challenges mainstream thinking about race, class, and gender but also provides overdue information on the vulnerability of women to HIV infection. (shrink)

Purpose This study aims to explore whether face recognition technology – as it is intensely used by state and local police departments and law enforcement agencies – is racism free or, on the contrary, is affected by racial biases and/or racist prejudices, thus reinforcing overall racial discrimination. Design/methodology/approach The study investigates the causal pathways through which face recognition technology may reinforce the racial disproportion in enforcement; it also inquires whether it further discriminates black people by making them experience more racial (...) discrimination and self-identify more decisively as black – two conditions that are shown to be harmful in various respects. Findings This study shows that face recognition technology, as it is produced, implemented and used in Western societies, reinforces existing racial disparities in stop, investigation, arrest and incarceration rates because of racist prejudices and even contributes to strengthen the unhealthy effects of racism on historically disadvantaged racial groups, like black people. Practical implications The findings hope to make law enforcement agencies and software companies aware that they must take adequate action against the racially discriminative effects of the use of face recognition technology. Social implications This study highlights that no implementation of an allegedly racism-free biometric technology is safe from the risk of racially discriminating, simply because each implementation leans against our society, which is affected by racism in many persisting ways. Originality/value While the ethical survey of biometric technologies is traditionally framed in the discourse of universal rights, this study explores an issue that has not been deeply scrutinized so far, that is, how face recognition technology differently affects distinct racial groups and how it contributes to racial discrimination. (shrink)

W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the most profound and influential African-American intellectuals of the twentieth century. This volume addresses the complexities of Du Bois' legacy, showing how his work gets to the heart of today's theorizing about the color line.

A collection of lectures which focussed on the small, constant aggressions of racism.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America by Jack TurnerShannon SullivanJack Turner Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012. xv + 199pp, incl. index.Don’t let the size of this slim volume fool you: Awakening to Race is chock-full of fresh insights and original arguments regarding individualism and race in the American democratic tradition. (...) Individualism in America often takes atomistic forms that are antithetical to a rich sense of the social constitution of the self. For that reason, individualism often is viewed as antithetical to a critical consciousness of how race and white racism operate. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner boldly takes the bull of American individualism by its horns. He argues that the rhetoric of individualism can be used against, rather than in service of an allegedly colorblind society in which independent, post-racial individuals pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. The result of Turner’s skillful intervention into American political philosophy is to take back individualism from conservative forces and refashion it into a progressive tool for racial justice movements.Turner sets the stage for his intervention in chapter one, which provides an overview of the book. Beginning with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Awakening to Race proceeds to focus on Frederick Douglass and Ralph Ellison and concludes with James Baldwin. One of the primary tasks of chapter one is to outline the book’s major Emersonian theme, which is that an individualist notion of self-reliance should lead a person to become more, rather than less aware of structural and social injustices. Properly understood, individualism should lead to an awakening to race, as Turner’s book is aptly titled, not to ignoring or failing to see it. An individual who wishes to be self-reliant should be wary and watchful of the ways in which she depends on social structures, including those of social injustice. An atomistic notion of the individual is not adequate to this task; an Emersonian democratic individual is needed instead. As Turner explains with reference to adherents of atomistic individualism, “their failure to awaken to the socially indebted nature of the self desensitizes them to structural—and thus racial—injustice” (11).Chapter two turns to Tocqueville, Emerson, and (to a lesser extent) Thoreau to flesh out this idea. In this chapter, Turner develops [End Page 170] Emerson’s notion of self-reliance as “a politically dynamic ethical ideal, one that can motivate and energize democratic political action” rather than withdrawal from society (29). To do so, Turner references Tocqueville’s analysis of race in the United States, which reveals an affinity between white individualism and white supremacy. White individuals could contrast themselves with black slaves to reassure themselves that they were free while simultaneously ignoring their dependence on social and legal structures of white supremacy to ensure their psychological and personal sense of personhood. Individual self-sufficiency can operate as a racialized marker of freedom that is in bad faith because it evades its dependence on race and racism. With Emerson, Turner argues that genuine self-sufficiency requires reckoning with all sorts of ways that one is dependent on and complicit with societal structures, including those of white supremacy. Drawing on Emerson’s anti-slavery addresses, Turner develops a theory of democratic individual responsibility that requires of genuine self-reliance that it not interfere with the self-reliance of others. This requirement obligates the individual to take political and other forms of action to ensure that his or her free, self-reliant life is not dependent on the exploitation of others (45).In addition to its nonexploitation obligation, democratic individualist responsibility includes a democratic egalitarian obligation. Turner develops the latter idea in chapter three through the work of Frederick Douglas. While Douglas’s notion of self-help often is read as atomistically individualist, Turner shows how it is instead tied to social responsibility. In the case of Douglasian self-help, “ought implies can” and so requiring of people that they help themselves means ensuring that they have the resources available to do so (62). While dominant notions of self-help have been used in the United States... (shrink)

The sounds of the college campus raise important questions of participation, identity, privilege, disability, and marginalization. During the 2019–2020 academic year, three university instructors from distinct disciplines (music, history, and political science) and a student research assistant (history) used sound as a method for inquiring into contested and erased sites on the campus of Western Carolina University, a regional comprehensive university located in the southeastern United States. The project came to be called Sonic Histories. Paid student volunteers were led on (...) a soundwalk and completed three online questionnaires that engaged questions of race and belonging on campus. This study presents findings on how students experience and interpret contested and erased sites through sounds heard and imagined. Sonic Histories explores two central questions. Historically, whose voices have been included and whose have been excluded on college campuses? How can sound promote awareness of racialized spaces and, in turn, achieve social engagement? The authors challenge the triumphant narrative of campus histories, which highlights racial reconciliation and progress while eliding the ways predominantly white campuses still exclude minorities. By re-centering minority voices in campus spaces, the authors explore the systemic exclusion of minorities that has occurred on college campuses across the country. At a time when places of higher education are refining and developing their commitment to diversity and inclusivity—while assessing their past in honest ways—the Sonic Histories project builds upon ongoing initiatives to position the college campus as a scholarly community that lives up to its democratic ideals of inclusion. (shrink)

This essay focuses on determining moral leadership, as theoretically debated from an evolutionary point of view in an attempt to reflect on how this kind of moral leadership can contribute, among others, in dealing with issues such as gender, race, poverty and sexual orientation. Although important, not one of the latter issues will be discussed. It is not the primary focus of the essay. But because we are aware of the extent of the challenges regarding these issues, they were (...) specifically identified as examples for applying the moral guidelines developed and determined in this essay. This essay mainly argues that morality and moral leadership require analytical and critical evolutionary thinking and reflection that could contribute to making the world a more just and fair place in which to live. Moral leaders are created when people are constantly striving in an ongoing process of reasoning to become more humane, thereby allowing every person to flourish and to reach their full potential through biologically determined and justice-based moral reflection and action. (shrink)

While the cross-race effect (standardly characterized as the finding that individuals are generally better at recognizing previously observed faces of members of their own race than faces of members of other races), is a well-replicated finding, there is little agreement about the mechanisms underlying it. After outlining existing theories of the cross-race effect, I argue that they all face a similar problem. They at most explain our difficulty in recognizing other-race faces relative to own-race faces. (...) However, a complete explanation of the cross-race effect must account for our difficulty in recognizing other-race faces along with our limited metacognitive awareness of this difficulty. I hypothesize that this limited metacognitive awareness is a product of our tacit yet mistaken assumption that we can recognize individuals of all races equally well. One prediction of this hypothesis, which is borne out, is that subjects judge themselves to be equally likely to recognize individuals regardless of their race. This prediction is not offered by a competing hypothesis which appeals to our general tendency toward overconfidence when task performance is suboptimal. (shrink)

Few issues cause academics to disagree more than gender and race, especially when topics are addressed in terms of biological differences. To conduct research in these areas or comment favorably on research can subject one to scorn. When these topics are addressed, they generally take the form of philosophical debates. Anthony Walsh focuses upon such debates and supporting research. He divides parties into biologists and social constructionists, arguing that biologists remain focused on laboratory work, while constructionists are acutely aware (...) of the impact of biologists in contested territories. "Science Wars" introduces the ideas motivating the parties and examines social constructionism and its issues with science. He explores arguments over conceptual tools scientists love and constructionists abhor, and he provides a solid discussion of the co-evolution of genes and culture. Walsh then focuses his attention on gender, how constructionists view it, and the neuroscience explanation of gender differences. Moving to race, Walsh looks at how some have tried to bury the concept of race, while others emphasize it. He considers definitions of race--essentialist, taxonomic, population, and lineage--as they have evolved from the time of the Enlightenment to the present. And finally, he attempts to bring the opposing sides together by pointing out what each can bring to a meaningful discussion. (shrink)

Introductions and Histories: How, When, and Where of Race in Philosophy Africana Philosophy has successfully argued itself to be an important area of philosophical discourse. Fundamental to this effort is Africana Philosophy's work to bring race, race thinking, and racism to the fore of philosophical examination. In the wake of Africana Philosophy's influence, discussions of race, race thinking, and racism are becoming central to regular philosophical discourse. The production of introductory works on race and (...) philosophy and works examining the place of race and race thinking in the history of European canonical philosophy points to philosophy's growing self awareness of race as foundational to what philosophy as a body of knowledge is and its self awareness of how race and race thinking informed the development of the field. These types of texts contribute to the normalization of race as a subfield of philosophy. Specifically, this essay will analyze four contemporary texts that exemplify this trend and what they contribute to mainstream philosophy's evolution as a site that understands race and race's role as a part of human experience and a necessary part of the larger philosophical project. (shrink)

This work contributes to recent transdisciplinary efforts to view the Haitian slave revolt (1791–1804) as the historical inspiration for Hegel’s master-slave dialectic. Reconstructions offered by contemporary postcolonial scholars argue that the Haitian revolt was chronicled in Minerva as Hegel raced to finish his Phenomenology. Benhabib recently recognized the Hegel-Haiti thesis as entailing the sort of inclusive dialogical learning process necessary to validate subaltern experiences. The thesis has also drawn its share of sceptical scrutiny as Badiou claims that it risks forcing (...) an unnecessary moral dissymmetry, neglects objectionable features of enslavement and imposes a mismatch between apolitical subject and revolutionary. In reply, we appeal to the pioneering work of Tavares to show that the asymmetrical construction of classification schemes for persons of mixed-racial statuses accords with decades of documented literary exchanges between Hegel and Gregoire. We then turn to the work of James on the role of mixed-race merchants in the testimonial accounts of late 18th century French historians to show that European literate publics were well aware of the extremely coercive forms of commodified labour found in Saint-Domingue. We then invoke the archival work of Du Bois on French, British and American parliamentary proceedings that show the provisional colonial identities ascribed to Caribbean subjects did not hinder their self-conscious exercise of political agency. Viewing Hegel in terms of the historiographic records of the racial ontologies of early modern transatlantic literary exchanges helps explain how he adapted these tropes concerning mixed-race subjects in a manner that better explains many of the anomalous features of the dialectic. However, conferring the Haitian revolution its proper world-historical warrant as inspiration for his infamous master-slave dialectic need not lead us to overlook Hegel’s complicity with many of the epistemic and ontological flaws of colonial tropes held in early modern transatlantic print. (shrink)

Motivated by disparities in gun violence, sharp increases in gun ownership, and a changing gun policy landscape, we conducted a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults (n=2,778) in 2021 to compare safety-related views of white, Black, and Hispanic gun owners and non-owners. Black gun owners were most aware of homicide disparities and least expecting of personal safety improvements from gun ownership or more permissive gun carrying. Non-owner views differed. Health equity and policy opportunities are discussed.

Reading Scripture in multicultural settings requires an awareness of racial/ethnic, cultural, social class, and theological assumptions. This essay identifies common pitfalls to individual and group discovery of good news in Scripture, and presents effective pedagogies and communication strategies to facilitate transformational encounters with God in diverse settings. The essay concludes with a tried and tested step-by-step dramatic reenactment of John 8:1–11.

Academics have increasingly used video and other electronic methods to collect data and capture reflections from participants. But, until recently, it’s been less common to use film as way of disseminating the results of research. That’s beginning to change. Film can be a powerful way to share research findings with a broad audience. This is particularly true when academics are combining) the traditions of ethnography, documentary filmmaking, and storytelling. -/- Film and cinema are increasingly being used in environmental humanities to (...) complement – or challenge – text-based research. The filmmakers in the arts, sciences and humanities see potential in using the moving images within political philosophy, environmental politics, postcolonial studies, human geography, urban ecology, postcolonial studies, design and literature. An example of this is the film One Table Two Elephants. It is a cinematic ethnography created by two Swedish researchers and filmmakers Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson. Based on years of research in Cape Town, it was filmed in 2015 as part of a longer-term research and film-project . The documentary deals with race, nature and knowledge politics in Cape Town as part of the ways of knowing urban ecologies research project. -/- . (shrink)

Blue is a significant color in science fiction: Star Trek, Star Wars, Avatar, Marvel, and DC all have aliens, mutants, and superheroes that come in shades from aqua to cerulean to cobalt. In Dune, however, blue is not a skin tone, it is an eye color – not for aliens, but for humans. Specifically, it is meant to visualize and symbolize the Fremen, and anyone who is either addicted to spice or has been around it long enough for their eyes (...) to change. Accordingly, the blue eyes of Zendaya and Duncan‐Brewster are not just visually striking, they are culturally striking, especially in light of contemporary philosophy of intersectionality and critical race theory. Thus, Denis Villeneuve's Dune is not just re‐colored, it is re‐contextualized to fit a twenty‐first‐century awareness regarding diversity and cultural pluralism. (shrink)

Sociological explanations of racism tend to concentrate on the structures and dynamics of modern life that facilitate discrimination and hierarchies of inequality. In doing so, they often fail to address why racial hatred arises (as opposed to how it arises) as well as to explain why it can be so visceral and explosive in character. Bringing together sociological perspectives with psychoanalytic concepts and tools, this text offers a clear, accessible and thought-provoking synthesis of varieties of theory, with the aim of (...) clarifying the complex character of racism, discrimination and social exclusion in the contemporary world. (shrink)

In the Rebels episode “Stealth Strike,” Kanan, Ezra, Rex, and Chopper rescue Commander Sato and his crew from the clutches of the Empire. Chopper occupies an uncomfortable moral position in Rebels, as do so many droids in the Star Wars canon. Many are highly intelligent, with unique personalities that aren't merely a function of their programming. The “organics” of the Star Wars universe, those sentient species made of flesh and blood seem to have relationships with droids similar to the kind (...) many of people have with their laptops and smartphones. Philosophers call beings who exhibit traits like self‐awareness, independent thought, and unique preferences persons. Mills says race is a social construct, not a biological fact. Social constructs, things that exist because societies create them, include things like money, empires, and rebellions, things so real that people are willing to die (or kill) for them. (shrink)

Naomi Zack begins this extraordinary book with the premise that if one is to understand Western conceptions of racialized and gendered identity, one needs to go back to a period when such categories were not salient and examine how notions ...

Tamar Gendler argues that, for those living in a society in which race is a salient sociological feature, it is impossible to be fully rational: members of such a society must either fail to encode relevant information containing race, or suffer epistemic costs by being implicitly racist. However, I argue that, although Gendler calls attention to a pitfall worthy of study, she fails to conclusively demonstrate that there are epistemic (or cognitive) costs of being racist. Gendler offers three (...) supporting phenomena. First, implicit racists expend cognitive energy repressing their implicit biases. I reply, citing Ellen Bialystok’s research, that constant use of executive functioning can be beneficial. Second, Gendler argues that awareness of a negative stereotype of one’s own race with regard to a given task negatively affects one’s performance of that task. This phenomenon, I argue, demonstrates that those against whom the stigma is directed suffer costs, but it fails to demonstrate that the stigmatizers suffer cognitively. Finally, Gendler argues that racists are less competent when recognizing faces of other races than when recognizing faces of their own race because, in the first instance, they encode the race of the face (taking up cognitive space that could have been used to encode fine-grained distinctions), whereas in the second instance they encode no race. I argue that in-group/out-group categorization rather than racism is the cognitive cost. I conclude that Gendler has failed to demonstrate that there are cognitive costs associated with being a racist. (shrink)

Awareness of, and respect for differences of gender, race, religion, language, and culture have liberated many oppressed groups from the hegemony of white, Western males. However, respect for previously denigrated collective identities should not be allowed to confine individuals to identities constructed around one main component used for political mobilisation, or to identities that depend on a priority of properties that are not optional, like race, gender, and language. In this article I want to sketch an approach for (...) accommodating different kinds of identity within a multicultural constitutional democracy. From a vantage point provided by a definition and explanation of personal identity, I want to show how people define, construct and change their personal identities to make themselves into unique individuals. Next I show how democratic political institutions and the personal identities of individuals reciprocally influence one another. In the final section I sketch ways in which diverse personal identities ought to be accommodated in multicultural constitutional democracies. The conclusion is that a society which gives its members the liberty, space, and opportunity to freely construct their own identities might avoid the formation of closed groups committed exclusively to their own sectional interests. (shrink)

This book explores Christology through the lens of whiteness, addressing whiteness as a site of privilege and power within the specific context of Christology.

This essay is a personal philosophical reflection on particular dilemma privilege-cognizant white feminists face in thinking through how to use privilege in liberatory ways. Privilege takes on a new dimension for whites who resist common defensive or guilt-ridden responses to privilege and struggle to understand the connections between ill-gotten advantages and the genuine injustices that deny humanity to peoples of color. The temptation to despise whiteness and its accompanying privilege is a common response to white privilege awareness and it is (...) this initial frustration with the perceived inescapability of white privilege that I explore here. -/- What I call the "dilemma of white privilege awareness," leaves privilege-cognizant whites trapped in the awkward position of knowing that privilege is at once impossible to dispose of, and impossible to use without perpetuating those systems of domination I wish to demolish. The dilemma works like this. On the one hand, if my racial appearance and mannerisms act as a magnet for special treatment, then I cannot simply arrange my life so as not to have benefits and immunities extended to me. There appears to be no way to divest myself completely of race privilege. On the other hand, if the focus on privilege divestment is misguided, then perhaps whites ought to find responsible ways of using race privilege that do not perpetuate structural inequalities (e.g. assisting persons of color in surmounting everyday obstacles). Yet, if the power accorded to privilege is made possible by structural inequalities, then the very act of using privilege will automatically reinforce those structural inequalities. If the claims made on both sides of the dilemma are true, then I am trapped: I can neither divest myself of unearned privileges nor can I use them without reinforcing the systems I wish to demolish. -/- I carefully unpack each side of the dilemma marking detours, diversions, and natural sticking points (e.g. cultural impersonation, retreats to white ethnicity, and the temptation to shift discussions away from race to other oppressions) that prevent me engaging critically in discussions of racism. I suggest two possible solutions to the dilemma: conceptual and pragmatic. -/- If there is one lesson we carry away from the dilemma, it is that privilege is impossible to shake, and that using privilege reinscribes it. Rather than frustrating us, this phenomenon should alert us to the strengths of privilege as a resource. To use privilege as a resource for anti-racist activities is to give up its abusive power. (shrink)

If you're woke, you're left. If you're left, you're woke. We blur the terms, assuming that if you're one you must be the other. That, Susan Neiman argues, is a dangerous mistake. The intellectual roots and resources of wokeism conflict with ideas that have guided the left for more than 200 years: a commitment to universalism, a firm distinction between justice and power, and a belief in the possibility of progress. Without these ideas, Neiman argues, they will continue to undermine (...) their own goals and drift, inexorably and unintentionally, towards the right. In the long run, they risk becoming what they despise. One of the world's leading philosophical voices, Neiman makes this case by tracing the malign influence of two titans of twentieth-century thought, Michel Foucault and Carl Schmitt, whose work undermined ideas of justice and progress and portrayed social life as an eternal struggle of us against them. A generation schooled with these voices in their heads, raised in a broader culture shaped by the ruthless ideas of neoliberalism and evolutionary psychology, has set about changing the world. It's time they thought again. (shrink)

While gender and race often are considered socially constructed, this book argues that they are physiologically constituted through the biopsychosocial effects of sexism and racism. This means that to be fully successful, critical philosophy of race and feminist philosophy need to examine not only the financial, legal, political and other forms of racist and sexism oppression, but also their physiological operations. Examining a complex tangle of affects, emotions, knowledge, and privilege, The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression develops (...) an understanding of the human body whose unconscious habits are biological. On this account, affect and emotion are thoroughly somatic, not something "mental" or extra-biological layered on top of the body. They also are interpersonal, social, and can be transactionally transmitted between people.Ranging from the stomach and the gut to the hips and the heart, from autoimmune diseases to epigenetic markers, Sullivan demonstrates the gastrointestinal effects of sexual abuse that disproportionately affect women, often manifesting as IBS, Crohn's disease, or similar functional disorders. She also explores the transgenerational effects of racism via epigenetic changes in African American women, who experience much higher pre-term birth rates than white women do, and she reveals the unjust benefits for heart health experienced by white people as a result of their racial privilege. Finally, developing the notion of a physiological therapy that doesn't prioritize bringing unconscious habits to conscious awareness, Sullivan closes with a double-barreled approach for both working for institutional change and transforming biologically unconscious habits. The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression skillfully combines feminist and critical philosophy of race with the biological and health sciences. The result is a critical physiology of race and gender that offers new strategies for fighting male and white privilege. (shrink)

Writing a college-application essay has become a rite of passage for high-school seniors in the U.S., one whose importance has expanded over time due to an increasingly competitive admissions process. Various commentators have noted the disturbing evolution of these essays over the years, with an ever-greater emphasis placed on obstacles overcome and traumas survived. How have we gotten to the point where college-application essays are all too frequently competitive-victimhood displays? Colleges have an understandable interest in the disadvantages their applicants may (...) have suffered, but this interest—and the awareness of it among both applicants and their advisors—has led to a “race to the bottom”: in order to thrive (or even survive) in a particular competitive context, participants are forced to continuously lower relevant standards in a game of one-upmanship. With college essays, the competition is among high-school seniors for admission, the one-upmanship is an ever-escalating effort to persuade admission committees of one’s greater disadvantage, and the relevant standards being lowered are honesty, privacy, and dignity—or so I shall argue. As we shall see, this particular race to the bottom imposes unequal costs on certain groups and has implications stretching well beyond collegiate admissions. (shrink)

Despite a decade of diversity policy plans, a wave of student rallies has ignited debates across western European university campuses. We observe these debates from a situated call for anti-racism in Belgian higher education institutions, and critically reflect on the gap between diversity policy discourse and calls for anti-racism. The students’ initiatives make a plea for racial literacy in the curriculum, to foster a critical awareness on how racial hierarchies have been educated through curricula and institutional processes. Students rethink (...) class='Hi'>race as a matter to be (un)learned. This pedagogical question, on racial literacy in the curriculum, is a response to diversity policies often silent about race and institutionalised racisms. Students request a fundamental appeal of knowledgeability in relation to race; diversity policy mostly envisions working on (racial) representation, as doing anti-racist work. This article argues how racial literacy might offer productive ways to bridge the disparities between students’ calls for anti-racism and the institutional (depoliticised) vocabulary of diversity. We implement Stuart Hall’s critical race theory and Jacques Rancière’s subjectification as key concepts to study and theorise these calls for anti-racism as a racial literacy project. This project can be built around engagement as educational concept. We coin possibilities to deploy education as a forum of engagement and dialogue where global asymmetries such as race, gender and citizenship can be critically addressed. (shrink)

This article explores how race, sexual attractiveness and ‘female nature’ are biologised in plastic surgery. I situate this analysis in relation to recent debates over the limits of social constructionism and calls for more engagement with biology in feminist theory and science studies. I analyse not only how the biological is represented by biomedicine, but also how it is experienced by patients and, most problematically, how it is entangled with social constructions of beauty, race and female reproduction. Drawing (...) on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Brazil, I focus on plastic surgery, but also analyse how this specialty is linked to Ob-Gyn and endocrinology. I argue that medical procedures instantiate a biologised model of beauty I call ‘bare sex’ (Edmonds, 2010) that is defined in terms of racial traits, anatomy, reproductive processes, hormones and ‘secondary sexual traits’. While this is a historically specific model, it is also one that is inscribed on patients, altering anatomy and physiological processes. It thus has the potential to create a biological self-awareness that cannot fully be accounted for by a social constructionist analysis. (shrink)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the National Book Award–winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society—and in ourselves. “The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.”—The New York Times ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—The New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, The Washington Post, Shelf Awareness, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews Antiracism is (...) a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At its core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilities—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their poisonous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves. Kendi weaves an electrifying combination of ethics, history, law, and science with his own personal story of awakening to antiracism. This is an essential work for anyone who wants to go beyond the awareness of racism to the next step: contributing to the formation of a just and equitable society. (shrink)

In the healthcare sector, race, ethnicity and religion have become an increasingly important factor in terms of patient care due to an increasingly diverse population. Health agencies at a national and local level produce a number of guides to raise awareness of cultural issues among healthcare professionals and hospitals may implement additional non-medical services, such as the provision of specific types of food and dress to patients or the hiring of chaplains, to accommodate the needs of patients with religious (...) requirements. However, in an attempt to address the spiritual, cultural and religious needs of patients healthcare providers often assume that ethnic minority groups are homogenous blocks of people with similar needs and fail to recognize that a diverse range of views and practices exist within specific groups themselves. This paper describes the example of the Sikh community and the provision of palliative care in hospitals and hospices. Although, the majority of patients classifying themselves as Sikhs have a shared language and history, they can also be divided on a number of lines such as caste affiliation, degree of assimilation in the west, educational level and whether baptized or not, all of which influence their beliefs and practices and hence impact on their needs from a health provider. Given that it is unfeasible for health providers to have knowledge of the multitude of views within specific religious and ethnic communities and accounting for the tight fiscal constraints of healthcare budgets, this paper concludes by raising the question whether healthcare providers should step away from catering for religious and cultural needs that do not directly affect treatment outcomes, and instead put the onus on individual communities to provide resources to meet spiritual, cultural and religious needs of patients. (shrink)

In this paper I explore white attempts to move toward a proactive position against racism that will amount to more than self-criticism in the following three ways: by assessing the debate within feminism over white women's relation to whiteness; by exploring "white awareness training" methods developed by Judith Katz and the "race traitor" politics developed by Ignatiev and Garvey, and; a case study of white revisionism being currently attempted at the University of Mississippi.