Both advocates and critics of racial integration have often depicted it as fundamentally hostile to enduring forms of racial identification and racial solidarity. This article questions the presumed antithesis between racial integration and racial solidarity through a sustained engagement with Elizabeth Anderson’s The Imperative of Integration, which depicts strong forms of racial solidarity as obstacles to integration that citizens must transcend in order to achieve racial justice. Contra Anderson, I argue that, especially under present conditions of racial segregation and inequality, (...) we can and should reconceptualize integration as a process unfolding in time that can incorporate deeply felt racial solidarities without undermining itself. (shrink)

Diderot's Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville has often been read as a Rousseauian condemnation of modern civilization judged against the standard of pure Nature. A cursory reading of the Supplement does appear to present Tahiti as a natural utopia and Europe as a civilized prison. This essay rejects such a reading by demonstrating that the Supplement actually undermines any clear opposition between virtuous nature, represented by Tahiti, and corrupt civilization, represented by Europe. Although Diderot truly does offer a stinging (...) critique of modern Europe, he refuses to offer "nature" as a redemptive alternative. Instead, the Supplement offers an implicit critique of the politics of moralism. (shrink)

RésuméD. C. Matthew propose une critique originale et importante de l'intégration raciale. Son affirmation selon laquelle l'intégration aggravera la dévaluation phénotypique des traits typiquement noirs, menaçant l'estime de soi noire, est persuasive. Pourtant, son argument normatif le plus solide, selon lequel les Noirs devraient rejeter l'intégration puisque les dommages potentiels à leur estime de soi l'emportent sur ses prétendus avantages, est moins convaincant, car il s'appuie sur une analyse coût-bénéfice douteuse. En définitive, étant donné l'incertitude d'un processus aussi complexe qui (...) se déroule dans un avenir spéculatif, je soutiens que nous devrions, dans tous les cas, résister à la tentation d'offrir une analyse coût-bénéfice définitive de l'intégration raciale. (shrink)

This article addresses a recurrent tension in the literature on race and racism in Brazil. On the one hand, we find the so-called myth of racial democracy presented as the dominant racial ideology in Brazil, obscuring enduring racial inequality and thwarting the development of a mass-movement for racial justice. On the other hand, we find periodic announcements that the myth of racial democracy has definitively died. Accordingly, I theorize the myth of racial democracy as a paradoxically undead myth and ask (...) what it is about the form of this peculiar myth that allows it to survive its own repeated death. Drawing on Roland Barthes’ theory of myth, I show how the celebration of racial mixture, or mestiçagem, functions as a mythological signifier of racial democracy that operates beneath and beyond the level of conscious thought, activating powerful affects and desires even in those who ostensibly know better. (shrink)