Philosophy Of Race

Blackness and Philosophy

by Tommie Shelby

Co-authored with Lionel McPherson. A reply to critics of "Blackness and Blood"

Oppositional Culture and Educational Opportunity

by Christopher Lewis

The most common lay explanation for the racial gap in educational achievement in the U.S. is the ‘oppositional culture... more The most common lay explanation for the racial gap in educational achievement in the U.S. is the ‘oppositional culture hypothesis’, which holds that Black students tend to
undervalue education and stigmatize their high-achieving peers, accusing them of ‘acting White’. Many believe that, insofar as this hypothesis is true, Black underachievement is unproblematic from the perspective of justice, because Black
students are simply not taking the fair opportunities presented to them. This paper offers a systematic critique of the normative aspects of this view and some conceptual clarifications regarding the nature of opportunity.

Race as a Physiosocial Phenomenon

by Catherine (Katie) Kendig

Kendig, Catherine (2011). “Race as a Physiosocial Phenomenon.” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 33:2, 191-222

Review of Race and the Enlightenment

by Andrew Carpenter

Carpenter, A. N. (2000). Review of Race and the Enlightenment. Teaching Philosophy, 23(3), 299 - 301.

Kant and China: Aesthetics, Race, and Nature

by Eric S. Nelson

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Volume 38, Issue 4, December 2011, pages 509–525.

In this paper, I examine Kant’s questionable interpretation of China and its “mysticism,” his problematic... more In this paper, I examine Kant’s questionable interpretation of China and its “mysticism,” his problematic racial-aesthetics, and how Kant articulated an aesthetics and ethics of nature in the Critique of Judgment that is evocative of both early Daoist approaches to nature and Chinese aesthetics. By stressing human receptiveness to free natural beauty, Kant proves there is more than the human domination of nature as either: (1) a constituted product or (2) mere objects of use and exploitation. In the core of the third Critique, it appears as if the sublime reveals nature to be more than the human world only in the end for it to be lesser than human dignity. Kant’s sublime risks endangering the person while disclosing the possibility of reaffirming the dignity of the individual in relation to the natural world. If that dignity is not affirmed, the person is overwhelmed in the adventurous or the grotesque. In the concluding section, I discuss the differences between Kant and early Daoism by contrasting Kant's claim that the awe and terror of the sublime is the possibility of a dignity and vocation that transcends the world with Zhuangzi's attention to an immanent attunement and ethos in accord with the natural world.

HOW WAS RACE CONSTRUCTED IN THE NEW SOUTH?

by Marek Steedman

This article focuses on the construction and reconfiguration of race in the U.S. South during the late nineteenth and... more This article focuses on the construction and reconfiguration of race in the U.S. South during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much literature on race is designed to show that race is socially constructed, with the inference that race is merely a social construction. Thus, talk about race, which is not demonstrably grounded in human biology, must be akin to talk about unicorns. But so what? Does race being a social construction make any difference to the historical accounts we give of how racial practices work? This article suggests that it can if we focus on the process of construction itself, in a particular time and place, and ask how race was socially constructed. I trace how race was made, unmade, and remade in the years between 1865 and 1920. During the postemancipation era, Southern White elites constructed race as and through naturalized relations of dependence and independence. This construction was held in place and then undermined by the prevailing social order. I offer an account of the sharp increase in racist practices at the turn of the century, focused on the notion of mobility. I show how, in the decades since the war, mobility undermined race as it had been socially constructed.

Resistance Through Re-Narration: Fanon on De-constructing Racialized Subjectivities

by Cynthia Nielsen

African Identities: Journal of Economics, Culture, and Society 9:4 (Dec 2011): 363-85. DOI:10.1080/14725843.2011.614410.

Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’... more Frantz Fanon offers a lucid account of his entrance into the white world where the weightiness of the ‘white gaze’ nearly crushed him. In chapter five of Black Skins, White Masks, he develops his historico-racial and epidermal racial schemata as correctives to Merleau-Ponty’s overly inclusive corporeal schema. Experientially aware of the reality of socially constructed (racialized) subjectivities, Fanon uses his schemata to explain the creation, maintenance, and eventual rigidification of white-scripted ‘blackness’. Through a re-telling of his own experiences of racism, Fanon is able to show how a black person in a racialized context eventually internalizes the ‘white gaze’. In this essay I bring Fanon’s insights into conversation with Foucault’s discussion of panoptic surveillance. Although the internalization of the white narrative creates a situation in which external constraints are no longer needed, Fanon highlights both the historical contingency of ‘blackness’ and the ways in which the oppressed can re-narrate their subjectivities. Lastly, I discuss Fanon’s historically attuned ‘new humanism’, once again engaging Fanon and Foucault as dialogue partners.

Resistance is Not Futile: Frederick Douglass on Panoptic Plantations and the Un-Making of Docile Bodies and Enslaved Souls

by Cynthia Nielsen

“Resistance is Not Futile: Frederick Douglass on Panoptic Plantations and the Un-Making of Docile Bodies and Enslaved Souls,” Philosophy and Literature 35.2 (2011): 251–68. DOI: 10.1353/phl.2011.0018.

Frederick Douglass describes vividly how his socio-political identity was scripted by the white other and how his... more Frederick Douglass describes vividly how his socio-political identity was scripted by the white other and how his spatio-temporal existence was constrained through constant surveillance and disciplinary dispositifs. Even so, Douglass was able to assert his humanity through creative acts of resistance. In this essay, I highlight the ways in which Douglass refused to accept the other-imposed narrative, demonstrating with his life the truth of his being—a human being unwilling to be classified as thing or property. As I engage key events from Douglass’s narrative, I likewise explore the ways in which the resistance-tactics he performs complement Foucault’s elaboration of power relations and resistance possibilities, as well as Bakhtin’s notions of authoritative and internally persuasive discourse.

Black Solidarity and Class Division

by Tommie Shelby

Draft only.

Race

by Tommie Shelby

Forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, ed. David Estlund (Oxford University Press).

A broad overview of contemporary work in political philosophy on questions of race: How should we understand the idea... more A broad overview of contemporary work in political philosophy on questions of race: How should we understand the idea of "race"? What is racism and what makes it wrong? What constitutes "racial discrimination"? How should we respond to racial injustice and its legacy? What is "post-racialism" and is it an attractive ideal?

Foundations of black solidarity: collective identity or common oppression?

by Tommie Shelby

Published in Ethics (2002).

Is Racism in the "Heart"?

by Tommie Shelby

Published in Journal of Social Philosophy (2002). A critique of J.L.A. Garcia's theory of racism.

Blackness and Blood: Interpreting African American Identity

by Tommie Shelby

Co-authored with Lionel McPherson, published in Philosophy & Public Affairs (2004).

Race and social justice: Rawlsian considerations

by Tommie Shelby

Published in Fordham Law Review (2004). Special Symposium volume on Rawls and the Law.

Racism, Identity, and Latinos: A Comment on Alcoff

by Tommie Shelby

Published in Southern Journal of Philosophy (2009).

Historic Injustice, Group Membership and Harm to Individuals: Defending Claims for Historic Justice From the Non-Identity Problem

by Ori Herstein

Harvard Journal of Racial and Ethnic Justice (formerly Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal,Harvard blackLetter Law Journal)Vol. 25, p. 229, 2009.

Some claim slavery did not harm the descendants of slaves since, without slavery, its descendants would never have... more Some claim slavery did not harm the descendants of slaves since, without slavery, its descendants would never have been born and a life worth living, even one including the subsequent harms of past slavery, is preferable to never having been born at all. This creates a classic puzzle known as the non-identity argument, applied to reject the validity of claims for historic justice based on harms to descendants of victims of historic wrongs: since descendants are never harmed by historic wrongs, they have no right to rectification. This conclusion is unintuitive.

This article explains the nature of harm involved in historic injustice, overcoming the hurdle the non-identity argument poses to historic justice claims. Historic injustice and the harms it generates are best understood as group harms. Claims for historic justice can be grounded in harms currently living individuals suffer as a function of the harms their group or community currently suffers as a consequence of historic wrongs. One form of harm, constitutive harm, differs from the aggregative account of harm assumed by the non-identity argument and is immune to it. It is the type of harm people suffer as members of certain historically wronged groups and communities. Therefore, the constitutive harm people suffer in cases of historic injustice may serve as a basis for justifying claims for historic justice.

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Interactive Classification and Practice in the Social Sciences

by Matt Drabek

published in special issue of POROI on the Rhetoric of Science and Technology

This paper examines the ways in which social scientific discourse and classification interact with the objects of... more This paper examines the ways in which social scientific discourse and classification interact with the objects of social scientific investigation. I examine this interaction in the context of the traditional philosophical project of demarcating the social sciences from the natural sciences. I begin by reviewing Ian Hacking’s work on interactive classification and argue that there are additional forms of interaction that must be treated.

Mestizaje and Hispanic Identity

by Gregory Velazco y Trianosky

Savages, Wild Men, Monstrous Races: The Social Construction of Race in the Early Modern Era

by Gregory Velazco y Trianosky

Beyond Mestizo Identity: The future of race in America

by Gregory Velazco y Trianosky