Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set (...) of practices, attitudes, social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means. (shrink)

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S12-S17, March‐April 2022.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S50-S56, March‐April 2022.

Is the wish to be biologically related to your children legitimate? Here, I respond to an argument in support of a negative answer to this question according to which a preference towards having children one is biologically related to is analogous to a preference towards associating with members of one’s own race. I reject this analogy, mainly on the grounds that only the latter constitutes discrimination; still, I conclude that indeed a preference towards children one is biologically related to is (...) morally illegitimate because, in the context of parental love, biological considerations are normatively irrelevant. (shrink)

Racist beliefs express value judgments. According to an influential view, value judgments are subjective, and not amenable to rational adjudication. In contrast, we argue that the value judgments expressed in, for example, racist beliefs, are false and objectively so. Our account combines a naturalized, philosophical account of meaning inspired by Donald Davidson, with a prominent social-psychological theory of values pioneered by the social-psychologist Milton Rokeach. We use this interdisciplinary approach to show that, just as with beliefs expressing descriptive judgments, beliefs (...) expressing value judgments have empirical content, or can be inferentially linked to beliefs that do; the truth or falsity of that content can be objectively assigned; and that assignment is amenable to rational assessment. While versions of this objective view of value judgments have been defended by moral realists of various metaphysical stripes, our argument has the virtue of appealing, instead, to accounts that are as naturalistically informed as possible. And, unlike the influential subjective view of value judgments, and racist beliefs more particularly, our arguments are better able to account for instances where rational, persuasive strategies have been effective in reducing the ubiquity of racism in American culture. (shrink)

Observers have noted a decline (in the US) in attributions of genetically-based inferiority (e.g. in intelligence) to Blacks, and a rise in attributions of culturally-based inferiority. Is this "culturalism" merely warmed-over racism ("cultural racism") or a genuinely distinct way of thinking about racial groups? The question raises a larger one about the relative place of biology and culture in racist thought. I develop a typology of culturalisms as applied to race: (1) inherentist or essentialist culturalism (inferiorizing cultural characteristics (...) wrongly but intelligibly regarded as inhering in the nature of racial groups). This view has an historical pedigree in the work of J.G. von Herder, and the tradition of "national racism." (2) non-inherentist culturalism (groups regarded as possessing changeable, malleable inferiorizing cultural characteristics). (3) colonalist culturalism (colonial subjects regarded as uncivilized but capable of becoming civilized under European tutelage). (4) neo-racism (cultures of former colonial subjects in or potentially immigrating to European countries are regarded in an inherentist manner and incompatible with but not inferior to European cultures). Non-inherentist culturalism (#2) can be put to either a racist or an anti-racist use. (shrink)

Racism in Psychology examines the history of racism in psychological theory, practice and institutions. The book offers critical reviews by scholars and practising therapists from the US, Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe on racism on the couch and in the wider socio-historical context. The authors present a mixed experience of the success of efforts to counter racism in theory, institutions and organizations and differing views on the possibility of institutional change. Chapters discuss the experience of therapists, (...) anti-Semitism, inter-sectionality and how psychological praxis is part of a colonialist project. The book will appeal to practising psychologists and counsellors, socially minded psychotherapists, social workers, sociologists and students of psychology, social studies and race relations. (shrink)

In this paper I address the questions posed to me by Bret Davis, Zeynep Direk, and Charles Mills, by focusing on, first, the eurocentrism of academic philosophy in the West and strategies to overcome it; secondly, the interface of critical philosophy of race and global politics, especially as the latter touches on Islamophobia; and, thirdly, the role of critical philosophy of race in challenging the complacency of philosophy departments in the face of the discipline’s long-standing complicity with racism.

Hastings Center Report, Volume 52, Issue S1, Page S46-S49, March‐April 2022.

Racism, that is, the idea that White people are innately superior to people of other ethnicities, especially Black people, is a lie that supported slavery and the slave trade. That lie continues to shape all our lives today including our attitude to the issue of paying reparations to the enslaved. Not only was the original idea of a hierarchy or races a lie, but other falsehoods have been used to hide the atrocities and injustices that were committed based on (...) that first lie. Further, the hold of racism on human society is maintained by a distortion of the issue that results in White people having a visceral reaction to the subject. (shrink)

An analysis of 'racism' in terms of disrespect. This article argues against the views that racism should be understood in reductive ways as, variously, an attitude of ill-will (Jorge Garcia), a cognitive object such as ideology (Tommie Shelby), a behavior (Michael Philips), or some disjunctive hybrid (Lawrence Blum). In fact, it argues that racism should be conceptually released from having any one location. The disrespect analysis favored here can accommodate a variety of important desiderata for a theory (...) of racism. (shrink)

I begin and conclude the article by arguing that culturalisation has contributed significantly to the decline of the Left and its universal ideals. In the current climate of public opinion, ‘race’ is no longer used, at least openly, as a scientific truth to justify racism. Instead, ‘culture’ has become the mysterious term that has made the perpetuation of racist discourse possible. ‘Culture’, in this newracist worldview, is the unquestioned set of traits continually attributed to the non-White Other, essentially to (...) de-world her Being and de-individualise her personhood. In other words, ‘culture’, as it is used in the old anthropological sense, is the magic incantation with which the Other is demonised, mystified, and/or ridiculously oversimplified. I focus on the phenomenon of ‘culturalisation’ as a common new-racist method of de-politicising the Other’s affairs and surrounding socio-political phenomena. The article is an attempt to discredit the paradigm of ‘culture’ as a pseudo-concept used commonly in cultural racism. This cultural racism routinely assumes ‘culture’ to be a natural given almost exactly as the pseudo-scientific paradigm ‘race’ was (and is still) used in some discourses of biological racism. If mentality X attributes categorical differences to different groups of people based on A and A is assumed to be natural, ahistorical, and/or metaphysical, then X is a racist mentality. Obviously, A does not have to be skin-color or ‘blood’ in order for X to be racist. (shrink)

I motivate and articulate a dispositional account of aversive racism. By conceptualizing and measuring attitudes in terms of their full distribution, rather than in terms of their mode or mean preference, my account of dispositional attitudes gives ambivalent attitudes (qua attitude) the ability to predict aggregate behavior. This account can be distinguished from other dispositional accounts of attitude by its ability to characterize ambivalent attitudes such as aversive racism at the attitudinal rather than the sub-attitudinal level and its (...) deeper appreciation of the analogy between traits and attitudes. (shrink)

In the United States today, much interpersonal racism is driven by corrupt forms of self-preservation. Drawing from Jean- Jacques Rousseau, I refer to this as self-love racism. The byproduct of socially-induced racial anxieties and perceived threats to one’s physical or social wellbeing, self-love racism is the protective attachment to the racialized dimensions of one’s social status, wealth, privilege, and/or identity. Examples include police officer related shootings of unarmed Black Americans, anti-immigrant sentiment, and the resurgence of unabashed white (...) supremacy. This form of racism is defined less by the introduction of racism into the world and more on the perpetuation of racially unjust socioeconomic and political structures. My theory, therefore, works at the intersection of the interpersonal and structural by offering an account of moral complacency in racist social structures. My goal is to reorient the directionality of philosophical work on racism by questioning the sense of innocence at the core of white ways-of-being. (shrink)

Crises have become a new normality. This normality is turned into grounds for the politics of fear. The hegemonic principle of the politics of fear is security. This politics, which invents objects of fear, is intimately linked to the nationalist identity politics shaped by a particular nationalist essence. Racism is an elemental part of the nationalist identity politics. In the text, racism is considered in relation to, on the one hand, fear and anxiety and, on the other hand, (...) the imaginary and symbolic orders and the structure of fantasy. This analysis shows how xenophobic images, nationalist signifiers and racist fantasies create the vicious circles of fear and hate that gives justification for the nationalist identity politics that raises security as the hegemonic organizing principle. To counter the nationalist identity politics, the nationalist and racist fantasy must be traversed. Therefore, an anti-racist politics cannot be based on any pre-given identity. It takes place only as emancipatory events that confront the racists and nationalist fantasy. (shrink)

Feminist philosophy has been concerned with race and racism since its inception for both historical and conceptual reasons. Historically, the struggle against sexism consistently followed in the footsteps of the struggle against slavery and racism, both in the nineteenth as well as the twentieth centuries. Women who resisted slavery and racism began to rethink common beliefs about women's role, and took inspiration from the abolitionist and civil rights struggles. Nineteenth‐century transcendentalist Margaret Fuller Ossoli made a conceptual analogy (...) between slavery as an unfair restriction on human freedom and the social and economic restrictions on white women. Simone de Beauvoir argued that slaves and white women had been infantilized in similar ways. Many early feminist accounts of sexism borrowed from analyses of slavery and racism, how these were justified through attributions of inferiority and dependence, and how these affected the subjectivity of the oppressed. (shrink)

In this discussion, I engage the politics of intention to explore how structural racism structures the production of meaning and the practice of reason. Building on María Lugones's analysis of intention formation as a form of practical reasoning, I explore the reasoning at work during the 2011 Stand Your Ground (SYG) hearing of black survivor of domestic violence, Marissa Alexander, to contend that structural racism—in this case, both intimate personal violence and intimate state violence against black women—enacts race/gender (...) domination through projecting constructed intentions onto black women as a strategy to rationalize punishing black women. I also discuss two key black feminist critiques of reason—Patricia Hill Collins’ discussion of “controlling images” (2000) and Michelle Cliff's concept of the “mythic mind” (1982)—to propose controlling intentions as a framework to theorize how structural racism produces fictive intentions used to rationalize the criminal punishment of survival and justify that outcome as common sense. (shrink)

The words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ have become so overused that they nowconstitute obstacles to understanding and interracial dialogue about racial matters. Insteadof the current practice of referring to virtually anything that goes wrong or amiss withrespect to race as ‘racism,’ we should recognize a much broader moral vocabulary forcharacterizing racial ills – racial insensitivity, racial ignorance, racial injustice, racialdiscomfort, racial exclusion. At the same time, we should fix on a definition of ‘racism’ thatis continuous with its historical (...) usage, and avoids conceptual inflation. I suggest two basic,and distinct, forms of racism that meet this condition – antipathy racism and inferiorizingracism. We should also recognize that not all racially objectionable actions are done froma racist motive, and that not all racial stereotypes are racist. (shrink)

If racism is a matter of possessing racist beliefs, then it would seem that its cure involves purging one’s mind of all racist beliefs. But the truth is more complicated, and does not permit such a straightforward strategy. Racist beliefs are resistant to subjective repudiation, and even those that are so repudiated are resistant to lasting expulsion from one’s belief system. Moreover, those that remain available for use in cognition can shape thought and behavior even in the event that (...) one has recognized their falsehood. Yet if one is intent upon combating the racism within one’s mind, one is not without effective cognitive countermeasures that can render one’s racist beliefs ineffectual. (shrink)

As a young scholar, Eric Voegelin wanted to prove whether the ‘race idea’ could function as a means of political integration. He published two books on race that, after his flight to the USA, were eventually passed off as an early critique of racism. This is a complete misinterpretation and inversion of his endeavor. In his tracts, Voegelin only criticized a certain direction of race thinking that he identified as a materialistic biological approach to the problem. At the same (...) time, he advocated another spiritual and metaphysical attempt, represented by the examples of Carl Gustav Carus, Othmar Spann, and Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß. Both versions of race thinking were abundant in different types of fascism and also in Nazi Germany. That is why Voegelin could publish his books in Germany—and one of them even at the recommendation of a Nazi philosopher, with a publisher close to völkisch and fascist ideology. The revaluation of his racist texts was only possible on the basis of their affirmative or superficial and uncritical reading against the backdrop of the development of a one-dimensional conception of racism. (shrink)

‘Racism’ has become the name of something we are all against. But what exactly is it, and why are we against it? This general account proposes that in many cases and contexts, the making of racial (and other) distinctions in such a way as to give some kind of preference to members of one such group among others is quite acceptable. When isn’t it, then? The answer proposed here is that it’s unacceptable when the kind of behavior done to (...) some such group is independently wrongful behavior—in particular, seriously injurious. Various examples are given. The result is to make racism a clear notion whose unjustifiability is obvious—but to imply that many things often claimed to be racist should not be so regarded. (shrink)

As it has often been emphasised, through the concept of biopower, Foucault attempts to move away from the problem of sovereign power. Yet, after exposing Foucault’s conceptualisation of biopower, in this article I argue that he cannot simply leave this problem behind. In particular, reflections on Nazism and how the Nazi state uses racism to sustain itself force him to return to the problem of sovereign power to explain how state killing continues to be possible, and actually takes on (...) new and extreme forms, in modern times. These same considerations further complicate the theoretical distinction between biopower and sovereign power put forward, albeit not without hesitations, by Foucault but contested by other authors such as Agamben, while offering an interesting standpoint from which to reconsider the question of sovereignty and its interrelationship to biopower. (shrink)

In what follows, I will argue that racist ideology should be understood in terms of racist social norms that constitute certain incentive structures. To this end, I will motivate my position by examining two existing accounts of ideology: those of Tommie Shelby and Sally Haslanger. First, I will begin by reconstructing Shelby’s account of racism as ideology. After analysing three dimensions of ideology (epistemic, genetic and functional), I will argue that his view is too cognitivist. In this regard, Shelby’s (...) view is doxastic in viewing that racist ideologies consist in misguided beliefs. Rather, what is essential in ideology is its functional dimension. Here, ideologies persist because they function to stabilize and reinforce the unjust status quo of subordination and oppression. Then, I will turn to Haslanger’s account of ideology as cultural technēs. Her view is more functional than Shelby’s since the former is based on the account of social practice and culture. While Haslanger is right about her critique of Shelby’s cognitivist view of ideology, I argue that what she calls nonideal moral epistemology weakens her overall insight. The problem is that without considering how to intervene in concrete social mechanisms, merely knowing certain moral truths may not practically motivate subjects under ideologies. Taken together, both Shelby and Haslanger narrowly understand ideology in terms of epistemic deficiency. Even though Shelby and Haslanger deal with the discursive superstructure of ideology, both underestimate the functional substructure of ideology such as social and psychological motives, desires and needs. Ultimately, I will argue that ideology is better understood in terms of a racist social norm. This account is explanatorily superior to Shelby and Haslanger’s views in its stress on the nonepistemic, nonmoral and functional aspects of ideology. (shrink)

Trata-se de uma resenha do livro História e descrição da febre amarela epidêmica que grassou no Rio de Janeiro em 1850, de José Pereira Rego, publicado pela Chão Editora (SP) em 2020. ISBN: 978-65-990122-4-2.

Background: The experience of racism in healthcare is particularly challenging to address due to misunderstandings of the definition, the complex interplay of other potential discriminations and, at some level, the denial that it occurs. Limited studies have reported racism as an aspect of workplace violence toward nurses and nursing students from both patients and staff. Research aims: To understand nursing students’ experience of unethical behaviour, including racism during clinical placement, the perpetrators, impacts, advocating and reporting. Research design: (...) An interpretive, qualitative design was used, and 15 nursing students were interviewed using semi-structured interview guides. The interview recordings were transcribed and thematically analysed. Participants and research context: Nursing students voluntarily participated and completed the interviews for this study from one undergraduate nursing student cohort in metropolitan South Australia. Ethical considerations: This study received ethical approval from the University Social and Behavioural Research Ethics Committee. Findings/results: The two major themes with subthemes of the findings include (1) The multi-faceted student nurse experience of racism: sub themes – racism from patients to nurses, from nurses to nursing students’ and racism towards patients. (2) The pervasive influence and limited reporting of racism by nursing students: sub themes-feeling disempowered, and barriers to reporting racism. Conclusions: The findings of this study highlight the registered nurse students’ experience of racism in various forms within the clinical environment and the significant negative impact it has on RNS during placements. This evidence calls for systemic changes to create a more inclusive and supportive environment for all RNS. (shrink)

This paper argues that racism should not only be conceived as a moral concept whose main aim is to condemn severe wrongs in the domain of race. The paper advances a complementary interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept--one that plays a key role in explaining race-based social problems afflicting members of subordinate racialized groups. As an explanatory concept, the term 'racism' is used to diagnose and highlight the causes of race-related social problems. The project of diagnosing (...) race-based social problems contributes to the pragmatic anti-racist end of developing better political and policy strategies for solving these social problems. The paper defends this interpretation of racism as an explanatory concept through a critical engagement with Urquidez's moral-philosophical account of racism. (shrink)

Personal racism used to be widely considered a kind of cognitive defect, with racists being people with biased, irrational racial attitudes. This kind of epistemic “racism-in-the-head” view has fallen largely out of favor in recent decades. Few philosophers have defended it, with many turning toward moral or socio-political rival accounts. This paper offers a robust defense of the epistemic view. It advances a new, broader version, claiming: Personal racism is determined solely by the number and significance of (...) one's biasing attitudes about racial groups. This bias centered view of racism avoids key problems with previous epistemic views. It also improves upon dominant moral and socio-political views in accounting for a broader range of racist attitudes. (shrink)

The Black Lives Matter movement marks a critical moment in the ebb and flow of racial progress. But as Camisha Russell points out, this moment might not last long. Prior high-water marks in...

This is a short reply to Dan Demetriou's "Ashes of Our Fathers: Racist Monuments and the Tribal Right." Both are included in Oxford University Press's Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us.

One of the unspoken issues in public discourse in most countries is the racism of patients toward nurses who originate from a different ethnic group than theirs. The aim of the present study is to examine whether patients' racism toward nurses increases as the invasiveness of treatment rises. This study was conducted in Israel, a highly conflictual society where Jews and Arabs live together and meet in the same health facilities. Despite the tension and sometimes animosity caused by (...) the political situation, members of each group regularly encounter members of the other group during the provision of health‐care, both as patients and as medical and nursing staff. A study questionnaire which presented nine nursing treatments of diverse levels of invasiveness was filled out by Arab and Jewish participants. They were asked to convey their preference for an Arab or a Jewish nurse for each treatment. Results of Logistic Regression Analyses reveal that in both sectors, racism toward nurses increases as the treatment invasiveness rises. These findings are discussed in light of the concept of social distance, and serve as an empirical basis for several proposed practical recommendations for eradicating racism against nurses. (shrink)

This article highlights the impasses of anti-racist struggles that understand racism as an opinion or a prejudice and use education as their only means for addressing it. Racism should rather be understood as a socio-historical subjective structure rooted in the process of constitution of the division of labour on a global scale through colonialism, a process that was crucial to the institution of capitalism. This is why we will put forth the importance of rejecting the narrations that camouflage (...) colonization with the idea of civilization, and the necessity to produce decolonial counter-histories. We will thus claim that such an endeavor should start from the struggles of racialized peoples against the different forms of coloniality—that is, from the refusal by racialized peoples of the representations that are imposed on them, and from their repositioning on the basis of their alterity. Only the position of a powerful alterity can in fact make possible a real equality.Cet article met en évidence les impasses des luttes antiracistes qui conçoivent le racisme comme une opinion ou un préjugé et utilisent l’éducation comme le seul moyen d’y remédier. Le racisme devrait plutôt être compris comme une structure socio-historique subjective qui s’enracine dans le procès de constitution de la division mondiale du travail par le colonialisme, un procès qui a été décisif pour l’institution du capitalisme. C’est pourquoi nous mettrons en avant le caractère problématique des récits qui recouvrent la colonisation de l’idée de civilisation et la nécessité de produire des contre-histoires décoloniales. Il s’agira alors de montrer que, pour ce faire, il faut partir des luttes des racisés contre les différentes formes de colonialité—c’est-à-dire du refus par les racisés des représentations qui leur sont adressées et de leur repositionnement à partir de leur altérité. Seule la position d’une altérité puissante peut, en effet, rendre possible une égalité réelle. (shrink)

If affirmative action and other ethnicity-based social programs are justified, then J. Angelo Corlett believes it is important to come to an adequate understanding of the nature of ethnicity in general and ethnic group membership in particular. In Race, Racism, and Reparations, Corlett reconceptualizes traditional ideas of race in terms of ethnicity. As he makes clear, the answers to the questions "What is a Native American?" or "What is a Latino?" have important implications for public policy, especially for those (...) programs designed to address historic injustices and economic and social imbalances among different groups in our society. Having supplanted "race" with a well-defined concept of ethnicity, the author then analyzes the nature and function of racism. Corlett argues for a notion of racism that must encompass not only racist beliefs but also racist actions, omissions, and attempted actions. His aim is to craft a definition of racism that will prove useful in legal and public policy contexts. Corlett places special emphasis on the broad questions of whether reparations for ethnic groups are desirable and what forms those reparations should take: land, money, social programs? He addresses the need for differential affirmative action programs and reparations policies—the experiences of different ethnic groups vary greatly. Arguments for reparations to Native and African Americans are considered in light of a variety of objections that are or might be raised against them. Corlett articulates and critically analyzes a number of possible proposals for reparations. (shrink)

By definitively establishing that racism has broad implications for how the entire field of philosophy is practiced -- and by whom -- this powerful and ...

A symbol might have racist connotations in the sense that a substantial portion of the relevant population associates it with racist values or institutions. A governmental symbol display might therefore carry racist connotations that the government doesn’t intend, including connotations that haven’t always been attached to the symbol. So I claimed recently in the pages of this journal (Alter 2000b). I also explained how those claims create problems for some of George Schedler’s (1998) main views about governmental displays of the (...) Confederate battle flag. In his response, Schedler rejects my claims, arguing that they lead to absurdities when applied to various examples. He adds that one of his examples brings into question my “political savvy” (Schedler 2000, p. 5). Be that as it may, his arguments against my claims are entirely without force, and serve to confirm the weakness of his initial position. So I’ll argue. I’ll also identify a problematic assumption in our dispute, which is not uncommon in discussions of symbolic meaning and racist speech. (shrink)

An increasingly common view is that ‘racism’ can be defined as prejudice plus power. However, this view is ambiguous between two interpretations. The first proposes a descriptive definition, claiming that a prejudice plus power account of ‘racism’ best accounts for our ordinary usage of the term. The second proposes a revisionary definition, claiming that we should adopt a new account of ‘racism’ because doing so will bring pragmatic benefit. In this paper, I argue that the prejudice plus (...) power view is unsatisfying on either interpretation. (shrink)

The paper contains pedagogical suggestions for addressing issues of racism and sexism in the classroom, in the context of an introductory philosophy survey. It draws on the ideas of Charles Mills, Laurence Thomas, Peggy McIntosh and others.

In this article, we argue that it can be fruitful for philosophers interested in the nature and moral significance of racism to pay more attention to psychology. We do this by showing that psychology provides new arguments against Garcia's views about the nature and moral significance of racism. We contend that some scientific studies of racial cognition undermine Garcia's moral and psychological monism about racism: Garcia disregards (1) the rich affective texture of racism and (2) the (...) diversity of what makes racial ills morally wrong. Key Words: racism • emotions • implicit bias • psychology • racial ills • pluralism. (shrink)

I argue that racism is essentially a civic character trait: to be a racist is to have a character that rationally reflects racial supremacist sociopolitical values. As with moral vice accounts of racism, character is my account’s primary evaluative focus: character is directly evaluated as racist, and all other racist things are racist insofar as, and because, they cause, are caused by, express or are otherwise suitably related to racist character. Yet as with political accounts of racism, (...) sociopolitical considerations provide my account’s primary evaluative standard: satisfying the sociopolitical standard of racial supremacy is what makes racist character racist. (shrink)

In the UK and USA ‘Hate crime’ has become a topic of public controversy and social mobilization around issues of violence and harassment. This has largely but not exclusively addressed racism, homophobia and gender based violence. This article has three objectives. First, to situate hate crime legislation within a broad theory of modernity;secondly to examine the politics of its emergence as a public issue; thirdly to use data from the authors' recent research in Greater Manchester to illuminate the complexity (...) of the concept of ‘hate crime’. The centrality of ‘hate crime’ to current debates derives from the importance of rights-based regulation of complex societies and the juridical management of emotional life. Hatred and violence have become problematic behaviour thrown into relief by a long term civilizing process. Hate crimes have thus acquired powerful rhetorical focus for mobilization of victim and identity politics. With reference to racist violence in Oldham and elsewhere in Greater Manchester, we argue that in its application and construction, however, ‘hate crime’ is a complex phenomenon that might dramatize rather than regulate the problems it seeks to address. (shrink)

Many people are talking about being in a post-racial era, which implies that we have overcome race and racism. Their argument is based on the fact that manyof the virulent manifestations of racism are not prevalent today. I argue that racism is not seen as prevalent today because the commonplace views of racism fail to capture the more subtle and insidious new forms of racism. I critically examine some of these views and indicate that (...) class='Hi'>racism, its forms and manifestations have changed over time. As such, racism may not be manifested in the standard obvious negative behaviors that people know and expect, but instead, it is manifested in even positive behaviors that the commonplace views may not identify as racism. I offer a view of racism that captures the new subtle forms of racism today, which are not as harmful and invidious as the older forms. Simply because the new forms of racism are not as obvious or harmful, this does not mean that racism no longer exists. (shrink)

This paper argues that lockdown was racist, where “lockdown” refers to a historically situated kind of regulatory response to the Covid-19 pandemic imposing significant restrictions on leaving the home and on activities outside it. We articulate a notion of negligent racism which is objective and does not require intent, and show that lockdown satisfies its definition. The effects of lockdown on Africa significantly disadvantaged its inhabitants relative to the inhabitants of at least some other regions. We show how this (...) suffices to establish the general proposition that lockdown was negligently racist (not merely “sometimes” or “someplace”), given our definitions. We defend our conclusion against two objections: that lockdown was a (moral) necessity (one version of which is the idea that it was a necessary precaution); and that race is explanatorily irrelevant, meaning that to whatever extent our argument is successful, it succeeds merely in showing that lockdown was anti-poor and not that it was racist. Nothing remains to gainsay the conclusion that lockdown was racist. (shrink)

Camisha Russell has written a beautiful essay articulating why race and racism should be centered within bioethics. I agree with her assertion that Black Lives Matter (and the subsequent backlash t...

ABSTRACT This paper considers what should be done about offers of organs for transplant that come with racist strings attached. Saving lives or improving their quality seem powerful reasons to accept the offer. Fairness, justice, and rejecting racism seem like powerful reasons against. This paper argues that conditional allocation should occur when it would provide access to organs for at least one person without costing others their access to organs. The bulk of the paper concentrates on defending this claim (...) against these objections: (i) that the good that might come about through conditional allocation does so through wrongful complicity in the racist's wrongdoing; (ii) that conditional allocation symbolizes support for racism; and (iii) that conditional allocation is unjust or unfair and is, for that reason, impermissible. The final section, on conditional allocation as a policy, considers the speculative possibility that conditional allocation would reduce access to organs for some, but it argues that, even then, conditional allocation could be justified. (shrink)

What makes #BlackLivesMatter unique is the implication that it isn’t only some black lives that matter, that is, not only the most commonly referenced male lives. Rather, the hashtag suggests that all black lives matter, including queer, trans, disabled, and female. This movement includes all those black lives who have been marginalized within the black liberation tradition, as well as in greater society. The movement highlights the ways in which black people have been traditionally deprived of dignity and human rights. (...) State racism and state violence are sustained together. The law creates a “subrace” out of those whom white society fears and holds in contempt. This leaves not only black Americans but all citizens vulnerable. A way to fight this form of racism is not only to create a solidarity among the oppressed members of the subrace but to create a solidarity with all members, in “vulnerable solidarity.”. (shrink)