RACE
"'Cultural Racism': Biology and Culture in Racist Thought," Journal of Social Philosophy, spring 2020
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.
"'Black Lives Matter': Moral Frames for Understanding the Police Killings of Black Males," in Maksimilien del Mar and Amalia Amaya (eds.), Imagination, Virtues, and Emotion in Law and Legal Reasoning (London: Hart/Bloomsbury, 2020): 121-138
The Black Lives Matter movement calls attention to the injustice involved in police killings of blacks and implicitly proposes that a particular emotional attitude--caring about the life of a human being not known personally to oneself--should have been, but was not, present in the police officers involves in these killings. I examine five prominent such killings, but especially Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice [the article was written before the killing of George Floyd] for the character of the moral failing involved in them, focusing especially on the police failure to aid once the subjects were subdued after being shot or taken down. The failure to care about life is not fully captured by three alternative, though complementary, moral failings--stereotyping, implicit bias, and failing to recognize the rights of black people. I then rebut four objections proposed by a police commissioner to my 'black lives matter' moral framework--(1) that shifting from an aggressive mindset toward someone perceived as a potential threat to a caring one is not possible; (2) that we should be concerned about behavior, not emotions; (3) that police officers kill white people also; and (4) that black police officers are sometimes perpetrators of the killings.
"Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education and School Integration Today," Harvard Review of Philosophy, vol. XXVI, 2019: 1-18
The Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 mandated school integration. Integration was understood in several ways the decision did not clearly distinguish--dismantling the legal foundation of white supremacist educational systems in the South; bringing black and white children into the same schools; ensuring that all children in those schools were treated as equals. The decision also failed to recognize that inequalities and injustices outside the schools, of a class-based and race-based nature, that would survive the end of Segregation had a strong impact on the prospects for equality in schools. Today, the most prominent argument for integration is that disadvantaged students benefit from the financial, social, and cultural "capital" of middle class families when the children attend the same schools. This capital argument fails to recognize how disadvantaged students contribute to
"Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Racial Justice: Reflections from a Diverse, Non-Elite University," Theory and Research in Education, 14:3, November 2016: 348-362.
The “diversity” framework the Supreme Court has imposed on affirmative action weakens its justice import in theory and practice. The increasing alignment of wealth with attendance at selective institutions betokens a diminishing quality of student at those institutions. So some of the perceived advantages of affirmative action rely on an increasingly false sense of the quality differences between more and less highly-ranked institutions. Aligning those rankings with the quality of student (and quality of instruction at the different kinds of institution) would have the net effect of benefiting black and Latino students as a group. More generally, improving the quality of education and the standing of less selective higher education institutions is an urgent racial educational justice challenge of the current moment, from which affirmative action diverts attention.
"White Privilege, Injustice, and the 'Black Lives Matter' Movement," Radical Philosophy, Volume 19, number 3 (2016): 681-688
"Race and K-12 Education," Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, edited by Naomi Zack. New York: Oxford UP, 2016: 438-448
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.
"'Black Lives Matter': Moral Frames for Understanding the Police Killings of Black Males," in Maksimilien del Mar and Amalia Amaya (eds.), Imagination, Virtues, and Emotion in Law and Legal Reasoning (London: Hart/Bloomsbury, 2020): 121-138
The Black Lives Matter movement calls attention to the injustice involved in police killings of blacks and implicitly proposes that a particular emotional attitude--caring about the life of a human being not known personally to oneself--should have been, but was not, present in the police officers involves in these killings. I examine five prominent such killings, but especially Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice [the article was written before the killing of George Floyd] for the character of the moral failing involved in them, focusing especially on the police failure to aid once the subjects were subdued after being shot or taken down. The failure to care about life is not fully captured by three alternative, though complementary, moral failings--stereotyping, implicit bias, and failing to recognize the rights of black people. I then rebut four objections proposed by a police commissioner to my 'black lives matter' moral framework--(1) that shifting from an aggressive mindset toward someone perceived as a potential threat to a caring one is not possible; (2) that we should be concerned about behavior, not emotions; (3) that police officers kill white people also; and (4) that black police officers are sometimes perpetrators of the killings.
"Reflections on Brown v. Board of Education and School Integration Today," Harvard Review of Philosophy, vol. XXVI, 2019: 1-18
The Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1954 mandated school integration. Integration was understood in several ways the decision did not clearly distinguish--dismantling the legal foundation of white supremacist educational systems in the South; bringing black and white children into the same schools; ensuring that all children in those schools were treated as equals. The decision also failed to recognize that inequalities and injustices outside the schools, of a class-based and race-based nature, that would survive the end of Segregation had a strong impact on the prospects for equality in schools. Today, the most prominent argument for integration is that disadvantaged students benefit from the financial, social, and cultural "capital" of middle class families when the children attend the same schools. This capital argument fails to recognize how disadvantaged students contribute to
"Affirmative Action, Diversity, and Racial Justice: Reflections from a Diverse, Non-Elite University," Theory and Research in Education, 14:3, November 2016: 348-362.
The “diversity” framework the Supreme Court has imposed on affirmative action weakens its justice import in theory and practice. The increasing alignment of wealth with attendance at selective institutions betokens a diminishing quality of student at those institutions. So some of the perceived advantages of affirmative action rely on an increasingly false sense of the quality differences between more and less highly-ranked institutions. Aligning those rankings with the quality of student (and quality of instruction at the different kinds of institution) would have the net effect of benefiting black and Latino students as a group. More generally, improving the quality of education and the standing of less selective higher education institutions is an urgent racial educational justice challenge of the current moment, from which affirmative action diverts attention.
"White Privilege, Injustice, and the 'Black Lives Matter' Movement," Radical Philosophy, Volume 19, number 3 (2016): 681-688
"Race and K-12 Education," Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race, edited by Naomi Zack. New York: Oxford UP, 2016: 438-448
“The Too Minimal Moral and Civic Dimension of Stereotype Threat Research,” in Michael Brownstein and Jennifer Saul, eds., Implicit Bias and Philosophy Volume II: Moral Responsibility, Structural Injustice, and Ethics. New York: Oxford UP, 2016
Claude Steele’s stereotype threat idea has the potentiality for advancing racial equality in education. But it also has some drawbacks. It fails to distinguish clearly between sound generalizations and stereotypes as evidence-resistant overgeneralizations. Thus it fails to encourage students to develop the intellectual tools to diagnose and reject stereotyping and to understand its harms. In addition it could discourage the forming of accurate generalizations that are essential in diagnosing disparities between groups (e.g., in educational performance), and thus of structural and systemic injustice. In doing so it would mask the asymmetries in vulnerability to stereotyping connected with the role of stereotypes in supporting structural injustices. The masking of these asymmetries is connected with Steele’s poorly-defended view that vulnerable groups, such as black students, have not internalized stereotypes of their group. Finally, the lack of political and civic perspective in the analysis of stereotype threat is connected with depoliticized suggestions for reducing it.
“Races, Racialized Groups, and Racial Identity: Perspectives from South Africa and the US,” in Xolela Mangcu (ed.), The Colour of our Future. Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press, 2015
Racialized groups are groups treated and regarded as if they possessed the characteristics attributed to them in classic racist ideology (inherent psychological characteristics, superiority and inferiority to other races). Blacks in both the US and South Africa are racialized groups in that sense but differently according to the somewhat different racist ideologies in the two countries. Racialized identity can be positive. This tends to be denied by the South African doctrine of “non-racialism,” though it was affirmed by the Black Consciousness movement. Non-racialism is nevertheless a largely racially progressive ideology in contrast to “color blindness” in the US, which comes to little more than race denial.
“Race and Class Categories and Subcategories in Educational Thought and Research,” Theory and Research in Education, March 2015: 1-18
Educational thought and research often operates with whole-race (“black,” “white,” “Asian”) and whole-class (“low-income”) categories, masking explanatorily and normatively important subdivisions. Regarding affirmative action, on average African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and to some extent their offspring, have educational and motivational advantages over, and a distinct normative standing from, African Americans. With regard to the performance of “high commitment” charter schools, such as KIPP, that make substantial demands on parents of admitted students compared to traditional public schools serving the same population, it is essential to internally differentiate the relevant race and class categories with respect to degree of poverty, English language learner status, and parental capital. Doing so poses normative problems for such charter schools.
“False Symmetries in 'Far From Heaven' and Elsewhere,” in Susan Wolf and Christopher Grau (eds.), Understanding Love Through Philosophy, Film, and Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2014): 37-59
A common trope in many Hollywood films dealing with race is a symmetry between white and black with respect to some aspect of racism—both blacks and whites are shown to be prejudiced, or discriminatory, or using stereotypes of the other. Generally, this symmetry is false or misleading. In Far From Heaven, a critically-acclaimed 2002 film set in the 1950’s, dealing with race, gender, and sexual orientation, an upper middle class white housewife begins a romantically-charged friendship with her black gardener. Her social set disapproves of this relationship, and the film nicely portrays the racism of these well-bred and privileged Northerners; but it also depicts the black community similarly disapproving of the relationship, and ultimately running the gardener and his 11-year-old daughter out of town by throwing stones through his window. I show how the portrayed symmetry—both blacks and whites are bigoted and both viciously oppose a black-white romance—is entirely false to the period in which the film is set. I more briefly consider several other prominent Hollywood films dealing with race that involve false symmetries, and a German one, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, inspired by the same film that inspired Far From Heaven, that avoids it.
“Racial and Other Asymmetries: A Problem for the Protected Categories Framework for Antidiscrimination Thought,” in Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law, edited by Sophia Moreau and Deborah Hellman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013: 182-199
In the American judicial tradition, “protected categories” are social categories regarded as deserving of special protection against discrimination on the basis of them (e.g. race, gender, religion, disability). The protected category framework implies a default presumption of moral symmetry across a given category—for example that discriminating against blacks, or women, has the same moral valence as discriminating against whites, or men. I argue that this presumption is false and that we should generally abandon the language of “discrimination on the basis of.” Discrimination is not a unitary wrong, but involves a plurality of different wrongs in different contexts. This plurality, as well as moral asymmetries within some of the wrongs singly, account for the asymmetries among sub-groups of a given protected category.
“Moral Asymmetry: A Problem for the Protected Categories Approach,” Lewis and Clark Law Review, vol 16:2, summer 2012: 101-109
A shorter version of the article in Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law. See abstract of that article above.
“Antiracist Moral Identities, or Iris Murdoch in South Africa,” South African Journal of Philosophy 30(4), 2011: 440-451
I argue that Samantha Vice in her insightful and honest article about being white in South Africa (“How Shall I Live in This Strange Place?”) understates the moral resources available to white people to minimize their falling into distorted ways of perceiving and responding to the world, caused by bare white advantage. I delineate two similar but distinct antiracist moral identities—the “white ally” and the “person committed to racial justice”—that can guide white civic engagement, as well as providing a counterforce to the distortions of whiteness. I argue that Vice’s recommendation of withdrawal from public engagement in humble silence is not the most morally appropriate response to white privilege.
“Racialized Groups: The Socio-historical Consensus,” MONIST, issue on Race, April, 2010, vol. 93, #2: 298-320
Among race scholars, there is a general consensus that (1) groups thought to be races in the 19th/20th century do not possess the characteristics attributed to them in classic racial ideology, (2) such groups are nevertheless intergenerational collectivities with distinctive social and historical experiences, and (3) those experiences were and are deeply shaped by the false beliefs of classic racial ideology. The groups of whom this consensus is true are felicitously called “racialized groups,” terminology preferable to “social construction,” “classic racial groups,” “ethnic groups,” and “ancestral/descent groups,” though each of these has something to be said for it. The socio-historical consensus is not, however, adequately reflected in recent work on race, for example, by Appiah (who confuses race and racialization), Mallon (who does not capture the “group-ness” of racialized groups), and Glasgow (who does not capture the way the false ideology of race has shaped the experience of racialized groups).
“Latinos on Race and Ethnicity: Alcoff, Corlett, and Gracia,” Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (ed. S. Nuccetelli, O. Schutte, O. Bueno) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 269-282
This article explicates the views on both race and ethnicity of these three prominent Latino/a philosophers, compares them (somewhat), and offers some criticisms. Corlett jettisons race as a categorization of groups, but accepts a form of racialization somewhat at odds with this jettisoning. Gracia adopts as a general principle that an account of both ethnicity and race should help us see aspects of reality that would otherwise be obscured; but this is at odds with his regarding the Latin American view of race as more rational than the U.S. version with its “one-drop rule.” The latter has structured the reality of race in the U.S. for African Americans. Alcoff is much more concerned with the phenomenology of race and ethnicity than the other two, and she clearly adds “pan-ethnicity” to the mix of concepts required to understand Latino/a Americans. I argue that Alcoff fails to see the agentic and political aspect of black identity in the U.S., and in a sense shares with Gracia a misplaced sense that the mixedness of Latin American racial identity is somehow to be preferred to the more binary U.S. form.
“Prejudice” in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel (Oxford University Press, 2009): 451-468
Prejudice is an affect (generally negative, but not necessarily) toward an entity, often (and here) a group, bound up with an insufficiently warranted evaluation of the group negatively or positively. The article focuses on negative prejudice, taking up whether prejudice has a different psychic structure when directed against different groups (e.g. gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims); reactive prejudice (prejudice on the part of the victimized toward members of the victimizing group but not necessarily the actual victimizers themselves); prejudices that encompass only certain sub-groups within a larger group (young black men, or black people who express their identity in a public way, but not all black people); and social, individual, and historical causes of prejudices. Prejudice is widespread but not ineradicable, and is not a necessary product of drawing an in-group/out-group boundary. Education can mitigate prejudice under certain conditions, although it is not easy to do so. The “contact hypothesis” articulates one influential theory of the required conditions. Respectful (though not sanitized) curricular approaches to the study of groups widely targeted for prejudice can also have salutary effects. Since prejudice can be either conscious or unconscious (sometimes called “implicit”), different educational approaches are called for for each of their mitigation.
“Confusions about ‘Culture’ in Explaining the Racial Achievement Gap, in John Arthur’s Race, Equality, and the Burdens of History,” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, vol 9, #1, fall 2009: 1-5
John Arthur recognizes three possible explanations of differences in school grades and attainment between black and white students (the so-called “achievement gap”)—racial discrimination, class factors, and culture. I argue that Arthur’s case for giving disproportionate weight to culture stems from several errors: (1) a narrow understanding of class simply as current family income, that results in counting some class characteristics as cultural ones; (2) failure to recognize that ethnic clustering in particular occupations (Irish in police, Chinese in laundries, Jews in commerce) often has nothing to do with ethnic culture, and derives from exclusions from other occupations or the establishing of a “beachhead” making it easier for later waves of that ethnicity to find work; (3) an uncritical and unsupported acceptance of the idea that black students routinely scorn and socially stigmatize successful black students; (4) failure to explore “non-culturalist” reasons why black students may not fully engage with school, especially those connected with racial discrimination, either in school itself or in the job market; (5) failure to translate Arthur’s own proffered evidence into practices that teachers could engage in to enhance the schooling experience of black students.
“A High School Class on Race and Racism,” in J. Entin, R. Rosen, and L. Vogt (eds.), Controversies in the Classroom: A Radical Teacher Reader (New York: Teachers College Press, 2008): 83-96 (originally published in Radical Teacher, #70 (fall ’04): 4-10)
“Some Reservations about White Privilege Analysis,” Yearbook of Philosophy of Education Society, 2008 [published in 2009; a version has been published as “’White Privilege’: A Mild Critique,” in Theory and Research in Education: 107-116 (see abstract of next article)
“’White Privilege’: A Mild Critique,” in Theory and Research in Education, vol. 6, #3, November 2008: 309-322
White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction — its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.
“Race, National Ideals, and Civic Virtue,” in Social Theory and Practice, vol. 33, #4, October 2007: 533-556
I suggest a polity-specific meta-virtue consisting in “aligning the practices of one’s society with its ideals.” I suggest that promoting racial equality is a specific form of that aligning meta-virtue in the U.S., and suggest two domains in which it can operate—customer/service worker interactions, and housing. In both domains African Americans are stigmatized and at risk of further stigmatization. Reducing such risk or the stigma itself is action in accordance with racial equality, and thus an essential part of civic virtue.
“Three Types of Race-Related Solidarity,” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. XXXVIII, #1, Spring 2007 (Special issue on Solidarity): 53-72
Solidarity within a group facing adversity realizes certain human goods, some instrumental to the goal of mitigating the adversity, some non-instrumental, such as trust, loyalty, and mutual concern. Group identity, shared experience, and shared political commitments are three importantly distinct but often-conflated bases of racial group solidarity. Solidarity groups built around political commitments include members of more than one identity group, even when the political focus is primarily on the justice-related interests of only one identity group (such as African Americans). (A solidarity group is more than a mere political coalition or alliance.) Two other forms of political commitment solidarity groups are ones devoted to racial justice more generally, and social justice even more generally.
"Racial Virtues" in R. Walker and P.J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Working Virtue (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2007)
“What do accounts of ‘racism’ do?” in Michael Levine and Thomas Pataki (eds.), Racism in Mind (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004): 56-77
“Racism” and “racist” have come to be the primary terms of negative assessment and accusation in the racial domain, even though prior to around 1960 these terms had little currency, yet prior to that time racial phenomena (segregation, slavery, discrimination) were roundly criticized, using other terminology. It is often implied that if something that has to do with race is not racist, it is of minimal moral concern (“she’s not racist, just ignorant, no big deal.”). There seem to be three major conceptions of racism on the contemporary scene [at the time this article was written]—an ideology of biological inferiority and superiority; a “social” account in which racism is a structure of inequality between and among racially defined groups; and an individual account best represented by Jorge Garcia’s “racial ill-will” view. The first seems now outdated; too many other phenomena are now called “racist.” The social view finds it difficult to come up with a coherent view of individual wrongdoing in the area of race; individuals can contribute to unequal racial structures from very morally diverse motives. The familiar “prejudice plus power” view also runs afoul of our assessment of individual racial wrongdoing. The social and the individual levels do not always align, yet both seem fundamental to a full understanding of racism.
But I argue that Garcia’s account has several shortcomings, most of of them related to his claim to be presenting a unified account of all forms of racism as a type of vice: (1) insufficient regard does not seem the same as, nor derivable from, ill-will/antipathy; (2) racial forms of certain vices (hatred, antipathy) seem morally worse than non-racial forms, and Garcia’s virtuist foundation does not seem able to account for this; (3) ill-will and inferiorization seem two quite distinct phenomena, yet both have historical and contemporary claim to be called “racism;” (4) Garcia’s admirable attempt to encompass categorial plurality within racism (that symbols, acts, institutions, practices, motives, etc., can all be racist) fails; (5) Garcia does not adequately situate racism within a broader field of race-related ills.
I conclude that racism and the broader field of race-related ills are irreducibly plural, including individual and social elements, and that the search for a unified account of “racism” is likely to be a pipe dream.
“Racial Integration in a Multicultural Age,” in S. Macedo and Y. Tamir (eds.), Moral and Political Education: NOMOS XLIII (NYU 2002): 383-424
[large portion reprinted in Randall Curren (ed.), Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2007)]
I argue for a non-assimilationist ideal of racial (and ethnic) integration in schools, recognizing that under certain non-ideal circumstances integration will not always be the preferred policy. Certain traditional associations of the term “integration” need to be abandoned—that it requires assimilation (the abandoning of distinctive cultures and identities), and that it concerns only whites and blacks. The Brown decision of 1954 contained several distinct and not always mutually consistent arguments for school integration—e.g. that racially separate schools would always have unequal resources because of white advantage and white power; that separate schools psychologically damaged black children; that separate schools were “inherently unequal” hence wrong. Arguments in favor of integration in the recent past have focused almost exclusively on the learning opportunities and social and cultural capital benefits to disadvantaged black and Latino students of mixed schools. This is a narrow focus and is somewhat insulting to these students, their families, and their communities.
I argue that the benefits of school integration are much more extensive in character than social capital benefits to disadvantaged racial minorities, and that they also accrue to whites and other advantaged students as well. These benefits are civic (e.g. nurturing a commitment to racial justice; gaining a deeper understanding of the experiences and histories of different groups), social (having a wider circle of friends and acquaintances across racial lines), moral (e.g. reducing prejudice, treating racial others with respect), and personal (in the sense of personal growth); these overlap but are also distinct. These goods are asymmetric in importance across racial groups—e.g. whites are more likely to need the civic knowledge and commitments than other groups. And they obtain to different degrees under varying conditions, so mere co-presence of different racial groups is not generally sufficient to achieve the maximum of any of the goods involved (though it may achieve them to some extent).
“Stereotypes and Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis,” Philosophical Papers, (ed. Ward Jones), vol. 33, #3 (November 2004): 251-289
Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief.
The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of moral distortion, to which moral philosophers have paid insufficient attention. Some of these are common to all stereotypes—failing to see members of the stereotyped groups as individuals, moral distancing, failing to see subgroup diversity within the group. Other moral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some attribute a much more damaging or stigmatizing characteristic (e.g. being violent) than others (e.g. being good at basketball). But the latter must also be viewed in their wider historical and social context to appreciate their overall negative and positive dimensions. The popular film The Passion of the Christ illustrates this point in its portrayal and Jews and Romans.
“Reply to Byrne and Silliman re ‘I’m Not a Racist, But…’,” Social Philosophy Today (yearbook of North American Society for Social Philosophy,”
“Systemic and Individual Racism, Racialization, and Antiracist Education: A Reply to Garcia, Silliman, and Levinson,” Theory and Research in Education, vol. 2, #1, 2004: 49-74
“Global Inequalities and Race,” in Philosophical Topics (Chad Flanders and Martha Nussbaum (eds.)), vol. 30, #2, fall 2002 [actually published in March 2004]: 291-324
“Racism: What it is and what it isn’t,” in Studies in Philosophy and Education, vol. 21, 2002: 203-218
"Moral Asymmetries in Racism," in S. Babbitt and S. Campbell, Racism and Philosophy, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1999)
Essay review of Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Students Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?; Louise Derman-Sparks and Carol Phillips, Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism; Benjamin DeMott, The Trouble With Friendship; Harlon Dalton, Racial Healing; Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now; Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism. Teachers College Record, vol. 10, #4, June 1999: 860-880
"Race, Racism, and Pan-African Identity: Thoughts on K. Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House," for New Political Science, double issue 38/39, winter 1997: 183-202
In IMFH, Appiah’s first important book on topics for which he has since become a major figure of our time, Appiah takes on what he sees as a panoply of myths that have hampered African (and other) thinking—tribe, pan-African cultural unity, nation—but especially race. In this book, Appiah works toward a form of pan-African identity (understood in both a strictly continental and also a diasporic sense) that can survive postmodern currents of identity interrogation and also a rationalist critical sensibility. (The related individualism that has come to characterize Appiah’s later work is incipient but muted in this book.)
My review concerns Appiah’s discussion of race, which largely follows the lines of his 1990 article “Racisms” and applies that analysis to historical figures, especially Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. DuBois.
Appiah says there are two forms of racism, “extrinsic” (preferring one group to another based on attribution of alleged race-based psychological characteristics) and “intrinsic,” (preferring members of one’s own race based solely on shared racial membership), both involving a commitment to “racialism,” the doctrine that races are real biological entities with distinctive psychological characteristics rooted in genetic differences. Appiah has, famously, criticized racialism, and sees extrinsic and intrinsic racism condemned because of their grounding in that doctrine, but also for making distinctions based on irrelevant characteristics.
I criticize several aspects of Appiah’s views on racism: (1) not all forms of racism as currently understood presuppose racialist doctrine. (2) he fails to recognize “cultural racism”. (3) making racial distinctions is not always irrational or objectionable. (4) intrinsic racism (racial solidarity) is not inherently objectionable, is not helpfully referred to as “racism,” and, when objectionable, is so for other reasons, many of Appiah does mention elsewhere in the book. (5) The discussion of Crummell is problematic because of the confusions about racism.
“Stereotyping vs. ‘Black Lives Matter’: Moral Frames for Understanding the Police Killings,”;The Critique
On-line article about the value and limitations of “stereotyping” as a framework for illuminating the moral wrong of police killings, contrasting this with “black lives matter,” focusing on indifference to the lives of the men killed revealed in behavior of the police officers after the violent encounter. In an on-line journal with collection of articles on the police killings of black people in 2013-15.
Claude Steele’s stereotype threat idea has the potentiality for advancing racial equality in education. But it also has some drawbacks. It fails to distinguish clearly between sound generalizations and stereotypes as evidence-resistant overgeneralizations. Thus it fails to encourage students to develop the intellectual tools to diagnose and reject stereotyping and to understand its harms. In addition it could discourage the forming of accurate generalizations that are essential in diagnosing disparities between groups (e.g., in educational performance), and thus of structural and systemic injustice. In doing so it would mask the asymmetries in vulnerability to stereotyping connected with the role of stereotypes in supporting structural injustices. The masking of these asymmetries is connected with Steele’s poorly-defended view that vulnerable groups, such as black students, have not internalized stereotypes of their group. Finally, the lack of political and civic perspective in the analysis of stereotype threat is connected with depoliticized suggestions for reducing it.
“Races, Racialized Groups, and Racial Identity: Perspectives from South Africa and the US,” in Xolela Mangcu (ed.), The Colour of our Future. Johannesburg, South Africa: Wits University Press, 2015
Racialized groups are groups treated and regarded as if they possessed the characteristics attributed to them in classic racist ideology (inherent psychological characteristics, superiority and inferiority to other races). Blacks in both the US and South Africa are racialized groups in that sense but differently according to the somewhat different racist ideologies in the two countries. Racialized identity can be positive. This tends to be denied by the South African doctrine of “non-racialism,” though it was affirmed by the Black Consciousness movement. Non-racialism is nevertheless a largely racially progressive ideology in contrast to “color blindness” in the US, which comes to little more than race denial.
“Race and Class Categories and Subcategories in Educational Thought and Research,” Theory and Research in Education, March 2015: 1-18
Educational thought and research often operates with whole-race (“black,” “white,” “Asian”) and whole-class (“low-income”) categories, masking explanatorily and normatively important subdivisions. Regarding affirmative action, on average African and Afro-Caribbean immigrants, and to some extent their offspring, have educational and motivational advantages over, and a distinct normative standing from, African Americans. With regard to the performance of “high commitment” charter schools, such as KIPP, that make substantial demands on parents of admitted students compared to traditional public schools serving the same population, it is essential to internally differentiate the relevant race and class categories with respect to degree of poverty, English language learner status, and parental capital. Doing so poses normative problems for such charter schools.
“False Symmetries in 'Far From Heaven' and Elsewhere,” in Susan Wolf and Christopher Grau (eds.), Understanding Love Through Philosophy, Film, and Fiction (Oxford University Press, 2014): 37-59
A common trope in many Hollywood films dealing with race is a symmetry between white and black with respect to some aspect of racism—both blacks and whites are shown to be prejudiced, or discriminatory, or using stereotypes of the other. Generally, this symmetry is false or misleading. In Far From Heaven, a critically-acclaimed 2002 film set in the 1950’s, dealing with race, gender, and sexual orientation, an upper middle class white housewife begins a romantically-charged friendship with her black gardener. Her social set disapproves of this relationship, and the film nicely portrays the racism of these well-bred and privileged Northerners; but it also depicts the black community similarly disapproving of the relationship, and ultimately running the gardener and his 11-year-old daughter out of town by throwing stones through his window. I show how the portrayed symmetry—both blacks and whites are bigoted and both viciously oppose a black-white romance—is entirely false to the period in which the film is set. I more briefly consider several other prominent Hollywood films dealing with race that involve false symmetries, and a German one, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, inspired by the same film that inspired Far From Heaven, that avoids it.
“Racial and Other Asymmetries: A Problem for the Protected Categories Framework for Antidiscrimination Thought,” in Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law, edited by Sophia Moreau and Deborah Hellman, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013: 182-199
In the American judicial tradition, “protected categories” are social categories regarded as deserving of special protection against discrimination on the basis of them (e.g. race, gender, religion, disability). The protected category framework implies a default presumption of moral symmetry across a given category—for example that discriminating against blacks, or women, has the same moral valence as discriminating against whites, or men. I argue that this presumption is false and that we should generally abandon the language of “discrimination on the basis of.” Discrimination is not a unitary wrong, but involves a plurality of different wrongs in different contexts. This plurality, as well as moral asymmetries within some of the wrongs singly, account for the asymmetries among sub-groups of a given protected category.
“Moral Asymmetry: A Problem for the Protected Categories Approach,” Lewis and Clark Law Review, vol 16:2, summer 2012: 101-109
A shorter version of the article in Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law. See abstract of that article above.
“Antiracist Moral Identities, or Iris Murdoch in South Africa,” South African Journal of Philosophy 30(4), 2011: 440-451
I argue that Samantha Vice in her insightful and honest article about being white in South Africa (“How Shall I Live in This Strange Place?”) understates the moral resources available to white people to minimize their falling into distorted ways of perceiving and responding to the world, caused by bare white advantage. I delineate two similar but distinct antiracist moral identities—the “white ally” and the “person committed to racial justice”—that can guide white civic engagement, as well as providing a counterforce to the distortions of whiteness. I argue that Vice’s recommendation of withdrawal from public engagement in humble silence is not the most morally appropriate response to white privilege.
“Racialized Groups: The Socio-historical Consensus,” MONIST, issue on Race, April, 2010, vol. 93, #2: 298-320
Among race scholars, there is a general consensus that (1) groups thought to be races in the 19th/20th century do not possess the characteristics attributed to them in classic racial ideology, (2) such groups are nevertheless intergenerational collectivities with distinctive social and historical experiences, and (3) those experiences were and are deeply shaped by the false beliefs of classic racial ideology. The groups of whom this consensus is true are felicitously called “racialized groups,” terminology preferable to “social construction,” “classic racial groups,” “ethnic groups,” and “ancestral/descent groups,” though each of these has something to be said for it. The socio-historical consensus is not, however, adequately reflected in recent work on race, for example, by Appiah (who confuses race and racialization), Mallon (who does not capture the “group-ness” of racialized groups), and Glasgow (who does not capture the way the false ideology of race has shaped the experience of racialized groups).
“Latinos on Race and Ethnicity: Alcoff, Corlett, and Gracia,” Blackwell Companion to Latin American Philosophy (ed. S. Nuccetelli, O. Schutte, O. Bueno) (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009): 269-282
This article explicates the views on both race and ethnicity of these three prominent Latino/a philosophers, compares them (somewhat), and offers some criticisms. Corlett jettisons race as a categorization of groups, but accepts a form of racialization somewhat at odds with this jettisoning. Gracia adopts as a general principle that an account of both ethnicity and race should help us see aspects of reality that would otherwise be obscured; but this is at odds with his regarding the Latin American view of race as more rational than the U.S. version with its “one-drop rule.” The latter has structured the reality of race in the U.S. for African Americans. Alcoff is much more concerned with the phenomenology of race and ethnicity than the other two, and she clearly adds “pan-ethnicity” to the mix of concepts required to understand Latino/a Americans. I argue that Alcoff fails to see the agentic and political aspect of black identity in the U.S., and in a sense shares with Gracia a misplaced sense that the mixedness of Latin American racial identity is somehow to be preferred to the more binary U.S. form.
“Prejudice” in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Education, ed. Harvey Siegel (Oxford University Press, 2009): 451-468
Prejudice is an affect (generally negative, but not necessarily) toward an entity, often (and here) a group, bound up with an insufficiently warranted evaluation of the group negatively or positively. The article focuses on negative prejudice, taking up whether prejudice has a different psychic structure when directed against different groups (e.g. gays, blacks, Jews, Muslims); reactive prejudice (prejudice on the part of the victimized toward members of the victimizing group but not necessarily the actual victimizers themselves); prejudices that encompass only certain sub-groups within a larger group (young black men, or black people who express their identity in a public way, but not all black people); and social, individual, and historical causes of prejudices. Prejudice is widespread but not ineradicable, and is not a necessary product of drawing an in-group/out-group boundary. Education can mitigate prejudice under certain conditions, although it is not easy to do so. The “contact hypothesis” articulates one influential theory of the required conditions. Respectful (though not sanitized) curricular approaches to the study of groups widely targeted for prejudice can also have salutary effects. Since prejudice can be either conscious or unconscious (sometimes called “implicit”), different educational approaches are called for for each of their mitigation.
“Confusions about ‘Culture’ in Explaining the Racial Achievement Gap, in John Arthur’s Race, Equality, and the Burdens of History,” APA Newsletter on Philosophy and Law, vol 9, #1, fall 2009: 1-5
John Arthur recognizes three possible explanations of differences in school grades and attainment between black and white students (the so-called “achievement gap”)—racial discrimination, class factors, and culture. I argue that Arthur’s case for giving disproportionate weight to culture stems from several errors: (1) a narrow understanding of class simply as current family income, that results in counting some class characteristics as cultural ones; (2) failure to recognize that ethnic clustering in particular occupations (Irish in police, Chinese in laundries, Jews in commerce) often has nothing to do with ethnic culture, and derives from exclusions from other occupations or the establishing of a “beachhead” making it easier for later waves of that ethnicity to find work; (3) an uncritical and unsupported acceptance of the idea that black students routinely scorn and socially stigmatize successful black students; (4) failure to explore “non-culturalist” reasons why black students may not fully engage with school, especially those connected with racial discrimination, either in school itself or in the job market; (5) failure to translate Arthur’s own proffered evidence into practices that teachers could engage in to enhance the schooling experience of black students.
“A High School Class on Race and Racism,” in J. Entin, R. Rosen, and L. Vogt (eds.), Controversies in the Classroom: A Radical Teacher Reader (New York: Teachers College Press, 2008): 83-96 (originally published in Radical Teacher, #70 (fall ’04): 4-10)
“Some Reservations about White Privilege Analysis,” Yearbook of Philosophy of Education Society, 2008 [published in 2009; a version has been published as “’White Privilege’: A Mild Critique,” in Theory and Research in Education: 107-116 (see abstract of next article)
“’White Privilege’: A Mild Critique,” in Theory and Research in Education, vol. 6, #3, November 2008: 309-322
White privilege analysis has been influential in philosophy of education. I offer some mild criticisms of this largely salutary direction — its inadequate exploration of its own normative foundations, and failure to distinguish between `spared injustice', `unjust enrichment' and `non-injustice-related' privileges; its inadequate exploration of the actual structures of racial disparity in different domains (health, education, wealth); its tendency to deny or downplay differences in the historical and current experiences of the major racial groups; its failure to recognize important ethnic differences within racial groups; and its overly narrow implied political project that omits many ways that White people can contribute meaningfully to the cause of racial justice.
“Race, National Ideals, and Civic Virtue,” in Social Theory and Practice, vol. 33, #4, October 2007: 533-556
I suggest a polity-specific meta-virtue consisting in “aligning the practices of one’s society with its ideals.” I suggest that promoting racial equality is a specific form of that aligning meta-virtue in the U.S., and suggest two domains in which it can operate—customer/service worker interactions, and housing. In both domains African Americans are stigmatized and at risk of further stigmatization. Reducing such risk or the stigma itself is action in accordance with racial equality, and thus an essential part of civic virtue.
“Three Types of Race-Related Solidarity,” Journal of Social Philosophy, vol. XXXVIII, #1, Spring 2007 (Special issue on Solidarity): 53-72
Solidarity within a group facing adversity realizes certain human goods, some instrumental to the goal of mitigating the adversity, some non-instrumental, such as trust, loyalty, and mutual concern. Group identity, shared experience, and shared political commitments are three importantly distinct but often-conflated bases of racial group solidarity. Solidarity groups built around political commitments include members of more than one identity group, even when the political focus is primarily on the justice-related interests of only one identity group (such as African Americans). (A solidarity group is more than a mere political coalition or alliance.) Two other forms of political commitment solidarity groups are ones devoted to racial justice more generally, and social justice even more generally.
"Racial Virtues" in R. Walker and P.J. Ivanhoe (eds.), Working Virtue (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 2007)
“What do accounts of ‘racism’ do?” in Michael Levine and Thomas Pataki (eds.), Racism in Mind (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2004): 56-77
“Racism” and “racist” have come to be the primary terms of negative assessment and accusation in the racial domain, even though prior to around 1960 these terms had little currency, yet prior to that time racial phenomena (segregation, slavery, discrimination) were roundly criticized, using other terminology. It is often implied that if something that has to do with race is not racist, it is of minimal moral concern (“she’s not racist, just ignorant, no big deal.”). There seem to be three major conceptions of racism on the contemporary scene [at the time this article was written]—an ideology of biological inferiority and superiority; a “social” account in which racism is a structure of inequality between and among racially defined groups; and an individual account best represented by Jorge Garcia’s “racial ill-will” view. The first seems now outdated; too many other phenomena are now called “racist.” The social view finds it difficult to come up with a coherent view of individual wrongdoing in the area of race; individuals can contribute to unequal racial structures from very morally diverse motives. The familiar “prejudice plus power” view also runs afoul of our assessment of individual racial wrongdoing. The social and the individual levels do not always align, yet both seem fundamental to a full understanding of racism.
But I argue that Garcia’s account has several shortcomings, most of of them related to his claim to be presenting a unified account of all forms of racism as a type of vice: (1) insufficient regard does not seem the same as, nor derivable from, ill-will/antipathy; (2) racial forms of certain vices (hatred, antipathy) seem morally worse than non-racial forms, and Garcia’s virtuist foundation does not seem able to account for this; (3) ill-will and inferiorization seem two quite distinct phenomena, yet both have historical and contemporary claim to be called “racism;” (4) Garcia’s admirable attempt to encompass categorial plurality within racism (that symbols, acts, institutions, practices, motives, etc., can all be racist) fails; (5) Garcia does not adequately situate racism within a broader field of race-related ills.
I conclude that racism and the broader field of race-related ills are irreducibly plural, including individual and social elements, and that the search for a unified account of “racism” is likely to be a pipe dream.
“Racial Integration in a Multicultural Age,” in S. Macedo and Y. Tamir (eds.), Moral and Political Education: NOMOS XLIII (NYU 2002): 383-424
[large portion reprinted in Randall Curren (ed.), Philosophy of Education: An Anthology (Blackwell, 2007)]
I argue for a non-assimilationist ideal of racial (and ethnic) integration in schools, recognizing that under certain non-ideal circumstances integration will not always be the preferred policy. Certain traditional associations of the term “integration” need to be abandoned—that it requires assimilation (the abandoning of distinctive cultures and identities), and that it concerns only whites and blacks. The Brown decision of 1954 contained several distinct and not always mutually consistent arguments for school integration—e.g. that racially separate schools would always have unequal resources because of white advantage and white power; that separate schools psychologically damaged black children; that separate schools were “inherently unequal” hence wrong. Arguments in favor of integration in the recent past have focused almost exclusively on the learning opportunities and social and cultural capital benefits to disadvantaged black and Latino students of mixed schools. This is a narrow focus and is somewhat insulting to these students, their families, and their communities.
I argue that the benefits of school integration are much more extensive in character than social capital benefits to disadvantaged racial minorities, and that they also accrue to whites and other advantaged students as well. These benefits are civic (e.g. nurturing a commitment to racial justice; gaining a deeper understanding of the experiences and histories of different groups), social (having a wider circle of friends and acquaintances across racial lines), moral (e.g. reducing prejudice, treating racial others with respect), and personal (in the sense of personal growth); these overlap but are also distinct. These goods are asymmetric in importance across racial groups—e.g. whites are more likely to need the civic knowledge and commitments than other groups. And they obtain to different degrees under varying conditions, so mere co-presence of different racial groups is not generally sufficient to achieve the maximum of any of the goods involved (though it may achieve them to some extent).
“Stereotypes and Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis,” Philosophical Papers, (ed. Ward Jones), vol. 33, #3 (November 2004): 251-289
Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief.
The cognitive distortions involved in stereotyping lead to various forms of moral distortion, to which moral philosophers have paid insufficient attention. Some of these are common to all stereotypes—failing to see members of the stereotyped groups as individuals, moral distancing, failing to see subgroup diversity within the group. Other moral distortions vary with the stereotype. Some attribute a much more damaging or stigmatizing characteristic (e.g. being violent) than others (e.g. being good at basketball). But the latter must also be viewed in their wider historical and social context to appreciate their overall negative and positive dimensions. The popular film The Passion of the Christ illustrates this point in its portrayal and Jews and Romans.
“Reply to Byrne and Silliman re ‘I’m Not a Racist, But…’,” Social Philosophy Today (yearbook of North American Society for Social Philosophy,”
“Systemic and Individual Racism, Racialization, and Antiracist Education: A Reply to Garcia, Silliman, and Levinson,” Theory and Research in Education, vol. 2, #1, 2004: 49-74
“Global Inequalities and Race,” in Philosophical Topics (Chad Flanders and Martha Nussbaum (eds.)), vol. 30, #2, fall 2002 [actually published in March 2004]: 291-324
“Racism: What it is and what it isn’t,” in Studies in Philosophy and Education, vol. 21, 2002: 203-218
"Moral Asymmetries in Racism," in S. Babbitt and S. Campbell, Racism and Philosophy, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press, 1999)
Essay review of Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All the Black Students Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?; Louise Derman-Sparks and Carol Phillips, Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism; Benjamin DeMott, The Trouble With Friendship; Harlon Dalton, Racial Healing; Nathan Glazer, We Are All Multiculturalists Now; Dinesh D'Souza, The End of Racism. Teachers College Record, vol. 10, #4, June 1999: 860-880
"Race, Racism, and Pan-African Identity: Thoughts on K. Anthony Appiah's In My Father's House," for New Political Science, double issue 38/39, winter 1997: 183-202
In IMFH, Appiah’s first important book on topics for which he has since become a major figure of our time, Appiah takes on what he sees as a panoply of myths that have hampered African (and other) thinking—tribe, pan-African cultural unity, nation—but especially race. In this book, Appiah works toward a form of pan-African identity (understood in both a strictly continental and also a diasporic sense) that can survive postmodern currents of identity interrogation and also a rationalist critical sensibility. (The related individualism that has come to characterize Appiah’s later work is incipient but muted in this book.)
My review concerns Appiah’s discussion of race, which largely follows the lines of his 1990 article “Racisms” and applies that analysis to historical figures, especially Alexander Crummell and W.E.B. DuBois.
Appiah says there are two forms of racism, “extrinsic” (preferring one group to another based on attribution of alleged race-based psychological characteristics) and “intrinsic,” (preferring members of one’s own race based solely on shared racial membership), both involving a commitment to “racialism,” the doctrine that races are real biological entities with distinctive psychological characteristics rooted in genetic differences. Appiah has, famously, criticized racialism, and sees extrinsic and intrinsic racism condemned because of their grounding in that doctrine, but also for making distinctions based on irrelevant characteristics.
I criticize several aspects of Appiah’s views on racism: (1) not all forms of racism as currently understood presuppose racialist doctrine. (2) he fails to recognize “cultural racism”. (3) making racial distinctions is not always irrational or objectionable. (4) intrinsic racism (racial solidarity) is not inherently objectionable, is not helpfully referred to as “racism,” and, when objectionable, is so for other reasons, many of Appiah does mention elsewhere in the book. (5) The discussion of Crummell is problematic because of the confusions about racism.
“Stereotyping vs. ‘Black Lives Matter’: Moral Frames for Understanding the Police Killings,”;The Critique
On-line article about the value and limitations of “stereotyping” as a framework for illuminating the moral wrong of police killings, contrasting this with “black lives matter,” focusing on indifference to the lives of the men killed revealed in behavior of the police officers after the violent encounter. In an on-line journal with collection of articles on the police killings of black people in 2013-15.