Philosophy Of Race

While the idea that racism is accompanied by its denial is well established, this paper examines the widespread explicit advocacy of a stance of ‘not racism’. The rejection of racism by proponents of positions that hinder the cause of racial justice is the discursive next step in ‘postracial’ racism. I examine the various ways in which racism has been proposed to be an ‘unhelpful’ framework. I make the case that the dominant position within philosophy of race that racism is, first and foremost, a moral failing has unwittingly contributed to the emergence of ‘not racism’ as a dominant expression in race thinking today. Following an examination of several key moral philosophical analyses of racism, I illustrate my argument that ‘not racism’ is a form of racist violence with reference to several recent and contemporary cases against the backdrop of the rise of ‘Global Trumpism’.

The act of traveling has always had a hold on the human imagination, and consequently, travel writing has been a popular and influential literary genre through the centuries. Its intellectual influence upon science and culture is sometimes forgotten, for it was mostly to travelogues that people learned about far away cultures and began to discuss about human difference.
The following paper tries to discern the role travel literature has had in the development of ethnography since the discovery of America in 1492 and its impact in European (and Western) ideas about the Other; particularly the modern concept of race as it appeared in the 19th century.

These poems, composed in Somali and in English, provide a poetic reflection of the recently emerged debate on the theme of Caddaan Studies which means "White Studies". The criticism and counter-criticism contained in the debate dug so deep into life nerve of Somali Studies that over a thousand people participated. The poems, under the title "Inaugurating Caddaan Studies" were composed with a critical observation of the debate.

Written in 2014, my senior thesis explores permutations in visions of skin and embodiment within works by U.S.-based women of color (Theresa Cha, Toni Morrison, Beyoncé Knowles). Drawing on queer, feminist, and psychoanalytic theory as well as continental philosophy, my project examines the aesthetic and ethical ramifications of this fluctuating corporeality within discourses of U.S. racialization.

What can we do—and what should we do—to fight against bias? This final chapter introduces empirically-tested interventions for combating implicit (and explicit) bias and promoting a fairer world, from small daily-life debiasing tricks to larger structural interventions. Along the way, this chapter raises a range of moral, political, and strategic questions about these interventions. This chapter further stresses the importance of admitting that we don’t have all the answers. We should be humble about how much we still don’t know and dedicate efforts to gathering as much knowledge as possible. Even so, we know enough now to start making a difference, and this chapter ultimately aims to chip away at the gap between our abstract commitments to treat people fairly and our lived habits and experiences, which continue to be shaped by implicit and explicit prejudices and stereotypes about race, gender, and other social categories.

This Special Issue of Humanities comes at a time when the viability of the humanities are challenged on numerous fronts. On the one hand, the humanities face material threats as the politics of austerity continues throughout Europe and the United States, diminishing public support and making profit margin and “job creation” the primary measure of value or the basis of state university funding decisions. On the other, the humanities face conceptual, theoretical and ethical challenges, as the emergence of post-racial and post-humanist discourses signal what Foucault called “a change in the fundamental arrangements of knowledge.” The defining boundaries of constructs such as “race” and “human” have been radically called into question, challenging us to rethink the classificatory systems that found hierarchical relationships between, for example, the “fully human” and sub-human or non-human others. Despite dominant nations&rsqu...

Contemporary social scientists have detailed how the practice of systematically criminalizing black people has become administratively inseparable from the justification and management of the U.S. policing and penitentiary system. I argue that the ongoing practice of criminalizing intentional action of black agents raises important philosophical challenges for our understanding of how intentional action unfolds in the social sphere. Specifically, is the social uptake of black agents’ actions fundamentally and persistently vulnerable to being criminalized by others and, if so, what are the consequences for philosophical work on intentional action that is taken to be universally applicable to all agents? In this paper, I argue that we should analyze the problem of criminalization of black intentional action as a kind of "racial conflation," or an ongoing conflation of the concepts of “blackness” and “criminality" that transforms, drives, and textures the social meanings that drive intention and intentional action among agents. Unlike formulations of racial bias (such as prejudicial stereotyping and stigma), racial conflation illuminates how the criminalization of black action is not only a problem of how black subjects are treated or conceptualized, but also how criminal action itself is understood. I contend that racial conflation demands a more complex analysis of how “blackness” and “criminality” are woven into the broader social schematic of information, which presents challenges philosophical approaches to intentional action.

The neo-republican conception of freedom as non-domination has emerged as a powerful framework for conceptualizing the dynamic relationship between power, democracy, and constitutionalism in modernity. Despite this, I argue that adaptations of republican freedom to the problem of slavery displace attention to race and foreclose more productive ways of addressing how racial slavery constitutes a distinct form of oppression. To illuminate the limitations of neo-republicanism, I turn to the political thought of abolitionists David Walker and Ottobah Cugoano. Both utilize comparative histories of race and slavery to reveal the specificity of modern slavery as a form of oppression, which cannot be captured as an issue of domination in the technical sense of the term. They thus pose challenges to neo-republican theory for its failure to fully appreciate the historical differences between ancient and modern slavery. To do so would illuminate how neo-republican theory faces severe limitations in providing an adequate conceptualization of oppression in the case of racial slavery.

Is Africa a non-racial continent inhabited by racially undifferentiated peoples unschooled in, and unfamiliar with, the power and privileges of whiteness? This article surveys the quotidian, conceptual, spatial, and symbolic landscapes of racialized privilege and prestige in postcolonial Africa. I analyze this salient but discernible architecture of racial tropes, perceptions, and continuities as a counterpoint to the popular myth of contemporary Africa as a place in which race is an unintelligible and invisible factor in social relations, a place in which the colonial work of race and racism purportedly expired with political independence. Using examples from across Africa, I argue that colonial racial signs have persisted in the postcolonial public space, inflecting elite aspirational cultures and marking social distinctions disguised with the language of class and culture. In addition, African elites and common folk alike have actively expanded and added to a vast, variegated system of socio-cultural valuation and devaluation that is rarely acknowledged as racial in origin or interpellation, and whose connections to contemporary transnational structures of racial privilege remain hidden beneath non-racial signifiers. Deploying the popular Anglophone African conversational idiom of “colonial mentality,” which is often advanced to designate a range of practices, behaviors, and ways of seeing, acting, and conceptualizing the world, I contend that postcolonial Africa is saturated with numerous social idioms of race and racism. Africans, I argue, have not been passively imbricated in this universe of racial meanings; rather, they have been active participants in it.

Recent discussions of human categories have suffered from an over emphasis on intention and language, and have not paid enough attention to the role of material conditions, and, specifically, of social space in the construction of human categories. The relationship between human categories and social spaces is vital, especially with the categories of class, race, and gender. This paper argues that social space is not merely the consequent of the division of the world into social categories; it is constitutive of social categories. To put it more bluntly, if who we are is bound up with place, then not only do we inhabit a divided America; divided America inhabits us. The second, and equally dramatic, conclusion is that attempts to transform social categories must involve the transformation of social space. When we sort people by categories, we do so spatially: with race come racialized spaces. And because our place comes to inhabit us, when we divide spatially we cannot help but to inscribe and produce categories and identities associated with our spatial divisions: with racialized spaces come race. Recognition of this dialectic is a direct challenge to the one-way considerations of social identity and social space that occurs in much urban sociology and history. Moreover, it demonstrates that there is an internal contradiction in policies—often based in urban sociology and history—that assume that integration can be accomplished along with the conservation of ethnic and racial identity.

This article probes the possibility of the reasons of reason by interrogating the deconstruction of the subject – the Black man subject as policeman, and the Black man subject as miner – upon the grounds set out by the killing of miners at Marikana, called “The Marikana massacre”, by the South African press who reported that not since the Sharpeville massacre of 1960 had such force and brutality been witnessed than August 16th 2012. Killed, murdered, brutalised, massacred, for no reason other than to assert the authority of the right to kill when wearing a South African police uniform and guided by the murder tactics handed over by White policemen, the Black policemen shot Black men,  one after the other, resulting in a massacre – one, I call, a theatre of cruelty, which informs my point of departure for a philosophy born of massacres. This article addresses the salient features of what marks this relationship between the Black man who considers himself a product of postmodernity and post-apartheid, and the Black man who considers himself the miner.

Abstract: The aim of this article is to develop an argument against metaphysical debates about the existence of
human races. I argue that the ontology of race is underdetermined by both empirical and non-empirical evidence due
to a plurality of equally permissible candidate meanings of “race.” Furthermore, I argue that this underdetermination
leads to a deflationist diagnosis according to which disputes about the existence of human races are non-substantive
verbal disputes. While this diagnosis resembles general deflationist strategies in contemporary metaphysics, I show
that my argument does not presuppose controversial metametaphysical assumptions.

The Movement for Black Lives: Philosophical Perspectives brings philosophical analysis to bear on the aims, strategies, policy positions, and intellectual-historical context of M4BL. Leading scholars tackle such themes as: "Black Lives Matter" as a political speech act, M4BL's conception of the value of Black lives, the gender dynamics of the Movement, the relation of M4BL to other Black liberation movements and transitional justice movements, the Movement's new forms of leadership and organization, and the impact of racism on the normative assessment of the criminal justice system. The volume broaches a wide range of pressing issues in the philosophy of language, social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, philosophy of gender, and the philosophy of punishment. It is vital reading for students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences interested in race, inequality, and social justice movements.

The Color of Mind is the latest installment in the History and Philosophy of Education
series from the University of Chicago Press. The book’s focus is the Black–White
achievement gap in American schools. One cannot adequately understand this persistent
gap, Darby and Rury argue, until one knows and understands the history that continues
to inflict all varieties of dignitary harm on Black people. The authors deploy the phrase,
‘color of mind’, to describe the deeply embedded attitudinal and institutional norms that
diminish the intellect, character, and conduct of Black students – norms with a long history
that continue to poison the school system. There is, of course, no dearth of American
scholarship on these themes, and the reader may be forgiven for thinking she will encounter
little that isn’t already known. Fortunately, however, the tack the authors take deviates
in several important ways from most scholarship.

Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling examines Vietnamese American youth gang formation in Southern California, with an emphasis on the experiences of those heavily involved in the 1990s. Lam traces the genealogy of the Vietnamese American youth gang phenomenon as part of the conflict in Southeast Asia. He describes the consequences of war and migration for youth as well as their racialization as "Asian American" subjects. Grounded in the critical narratives of three gang members, Lam addresses themes of racism, violence, class struggle, style, and schooling in an era of anti-youth legislation in the state and nationally. In this dehumanizing context, Lam frames Vietnamese and Southeast Asian American gang members as post-colonial subjects, offering an alternative analysis toward humanization and decolonization.

Reviews:
"Youth Gangs, Racism, and Schooling is a pioneering book about the interplay of colonialism, racism, and the production of Vietnamese youth gangs in Southern California. Lam’s narrative is moving, rigorous, and deeply compelling. Weaving his own personal experiences with the poisonous dynamics of American imperialism, diaspora, displacement and the reconfiguration of place and agency, Lam provides a searing commentary on Vietnamese American youth gang subculture, the dynamics of racism, disruption, and poverty that now mark a notable chapter and offshoot of American domestic and foreign policy. The subculture of youth gangs is understood by Lam as a way not only to analyse a politics of disposability and state racism and violence, but also to connect the related matters of empire, immigration, geopolitics, and education. This is a brilliant book which should be required reading by everyone concerned about politics, power, and what it means to take seriously learning from historical memory in order to treat youth in general as part of the project and promise of a radical democracy."
- Henry A. Giroux, McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest, The Paulo Freire Distinguished Scholar in Critical Pedagogy, and Professor of English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University, Canada

"Lam is a new voice in critical education. In this rich account, Lam provides compelling analysis of Vietnamese gang formation in a framework that combines studies of political economy, racialization, and empire. Stuck between model minority and gang-banger status, Vietnamese youth seek meaning as criminalized and perpetual strangers in the US. As Lam shows, they are neither victims of their circumstances nor freely acting subjects. We peer into a world of contradictions where hope resides as a concrete possibility through Lam's retelling of their migration and social struggle."
– Zeus Leonardo, Professor and Affiliated Faculty Member of the Critical Theory Designated Emphasis, Graduate School of Education, University of California, Berkeley, USA

http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9781137475589#otherversion=9781349581382

“Alain Locke in His Own Words: Three Essays.” Edited and annotated by Christopher Buck and Betty J. Fisher. World Order 36.3 (2005): 37–48. 

Features four previously unpublished works by Alain Locke:
(1) “The Moon Maiden” (37) •
(2) “The Gospel for the Twentieth Century” (39–42) •
(3) “Peace between Black and White in the United States” (42–45) •
(4) “Five Phases of Democracy” (45–48).

Also included: Christopher Buck, “Alain Locke: Race Leader, Social Philosopher, Baha’i Pluralist.” Special Issue: Alain Locke: Dean of the Harlem Renaissance and Baha’i Race-Amity Leader. World Order 36.3 (2005): 7–36. 

*This special issue of World Order won the Religion Communicators Council’s 2006 DeRose-Hinkhouse Memorial Award of Excellence for excellence in religion communications and public relations (Class B. Periodicals—Single Issue, Magazine, National (B-1)).

Photography, famously described as the “pencil of nature” and the “writing with light,” is a particularly important visual technology and art for understanding how visuality—the complexes of information, images and ideas employed for social ordering—serves to undermine those considered “other” given their social location, be it race, sex, class gender, sexuality, ability, or nationality. Photographic technologies and images are thus inextricably tied to practices of “othering.” From its inception when photographic techniques were used for the purposes of “scientifically” indexing and classifying racial and so-called deviant “others” to contemporary understandings of photography as art, photographic practices remain tied to forms of violence against subjects deemed different.
The overall aim of this project is consequently to help teachers, students and lovers of photography, to engage with the various ways in which photography and photographic technologies are complicit with practices of “othering.” An attunement to the essential link between photography and these practices allows for a complex reading of photographic techniques, art, and criticism that not only discloses the collusion of photography with violence against those deemed different, but that also provides possibilities for “countervisuality” or practices that resist dominant, violent photographic technologies and representation.

Kwame Anthony Appiah (London, 1954) is one of the most renowned philosophers of contemporary thought. His work in the field of ethics and moral reach diverse subjects as sexual orientation, nationalism, social discrimination on ethnic or religious reasons and responsibility of governments and international organizations in development and poverty eradication.

In “Moral Perfectionism,” an essay in the recently published To Shape a New World: Essays on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Political Philosophy, Paul C. Taylor explicitly mentions and openly avoids King’s personalism while advancing a type of Kingian perfectionism motivated by a less than adequate reconstruction of King’s project. In this essay, I argue this is a mistake on two fronts. First, Taylor’s moral perfectionism gives pride of place to shame and self-loathing where the work of King makes central use of love. Second, in his avoidance of the personalist King, Taylor also misses the mark on the importance of love as foundational to King’s theory of community, the Beloved Community. In effect, Taylor engages in hermeneutic violence regarding King’s work and own self-description as a personalist. I offer an account of King’s love informed by personalist that better situates and shows why love is central to King’s philosophy.

In my paper I discuss the contribution of Enlightenment to the
construction of whiteness. I argue that this construction did not
only mobilize ideological items but calculated on the power of
material social relations as well. The theoretical expression of
this belief was a concept of culture as domination of nature.
Their artefacts were regarded as indicators for the ‘enwhitenment’
of mankind.

Wittgenstein’s “grammatical method” analyzes multiple uses of language across contexts of use, with the aim of identifying differences and dissolving conceptual confusion. This paper uses Wittgenstein’s method to undermine Jorge L. A. Garcia’s volitional account of racism. Garcia claims that his theory accommodates the ordinary use of terms like “racist belief.” However, he did not consider whether such terms might have multiple uses/meanings. My paper identifies three uses of “racist belief” that escape Garcia’s analysis. Consequently, philosophers should take Wittgenstein’s advice to heart: do not assume that target-terms have a single use, but “look and see” whether they do.

The article is available here: https://www.pdcnet.org/pdc/bvdb.nsf/purchase?openform&fp=soctheorpract&id=soctheorpract_2017_0999_2_8_3