The 2016 US Election and its aftermath have renewed anti-racist activism on the American left. This article takes a close look at familiar philosophical analyses of racism and argues that they have two shortcomings: (1) they do not offer proper guidance in combating racism, and (2) they do not adequately represent the historical relationship between race and racism. A different view of racism, one that adopts a genealogical, as opposed to analytical, approach is laid out. And it is argued that (...) this view is better able to account for what racism is and to guide the anti-racist response called for by current events. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Research on political ideology in law and psychology can be fruitfully applied to the question of whether business ethics is ideological, and, if so, what response is warranted. I suggest that legal and psychological research streams can be drawn upon to create a new genre of critical business ethics that differs from normative and empirical business ethics. In psychology, Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) suggests how the mainstream ideology within an academic field can be criticized as a reflection of a self-righteous, (...) us-them mind-set. In law, Critical Legal Studies (CLS) suggests how a field’s mainstream ideology can be criticized as a rationalization of the status quo. I suggest that the MFT and CLS criticisms of ideology can be joined to develop a critical approach to business ethics that seriously examines science on normatively charged topics, such as liberal-conservative differences and implicit attitudes, and that frames it in terms of alternative narratives. (shrink)

In an era when the public and shareholders increasingly demand greater accountability from institutions for racial injustice and slavery, scholarship on corporate reparations is more and more essential. This article argues that corporations have played a significant role in the cultural dehumanization of Blackness and therefore have a particular responsibility to make repair. Cultural dehumanization refers to embedding anti-Blackness into US culture in service of capitalist profit accumulation, which has resulted in status and material inequalities between Blacks and whites that (...) have persisted from slavery to the present. More specifically, the article argues corporations have a moral duty to offer reparations to Black Americans regardless of any redress offered by other perpetrators of anti-Blackness. It appeals to tort law in providing a moral justification for corporate reparations to Black Americans. (shrink)

Richard Rorty does have something ‘to say to [Black Americans]’ and to their racially conscious nonblack allies in the sense that his understanding of liberalism, his prophecies about the future and his urgent appeals to the American Left all paint a picture of a white middle class fully prepared to make life increasingly miserable for Black Americans unless it is ‘protected from catastrophe’. Rorty hopes that this group will undergo a moral transformation that enables it to see past its narrow (...) group interests, but doubts that it will. He, nevertheless, prescribes a politics of hope and appeasement as a hedge against both despair and backsliding. In so doing, he fails to appreciate the availability and the suitability of an alternative ‘racial realist’ (and tragicomic) posture vis-à-vis American liberalism inspired by thinkers like Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin and Derrick Bell. This alternative enables racially conscious Americans to respond to the intransigence of (certain) white Americans with cunning rather than by escaping into fantasies of a ‘dream country’ unmarked by the damage caused by racism and its long-lingering effects. I uncover and explore this alternative through Rorty’s warnings regarding the white middle class, a somewhat surprising consistency between Rorty’s brand of class politics and Bell’s understanding of ‘racial fortuity’, and, finally, through a development of Bell’s ‘racial realist’ posture combined with Baldwin’s ‘uses of the blues’ resulting in a ‘hard-eyed’ tragicomic sensibility sufficient to effectively pair continued struggle with creative consolation and resilience. (shrink)

Does a white philosopher have anything of value to offer to the philosophy of race and racism? If this philosophical subfield must embrace subjective experience, why should we value the perspective of white philosophers whose racial identity is often occluded by racial normativity and who lack substantive experiences of being on the receiving end of racism? Further, if we should be committed to experience, in what sense can the philosophy of race and racism be “objective”? What should that word mean?Tackling (...) this question first, “objective” should at least mean general, that the ideas of the literature can be coherently integrated. An objective take on racism brings together a plurality of perspectives. What’s wrong with just a plurality of satellite ideas? It implies a fragmented approach to ameliorating racism, where different specialists have different recommendations. How can racism, generally, be lessened? If major views of racism are unifiable, then we have a general method to ameliorate racism. This project might appear tone-deaf: a white philosopher unifying things by reducing ideas to some central notion. But this unity isn’t about reducing things but rather integrating them in a way that respects difference. Yet, there’s a reason we should be interested in the white perspective. Whites can speak about racism from a participatory perspective. If whites are knowledgeable, and believe themselves to have no implicit bias, they may suppose they’re “beyond” racism or no longer at risk for perpetuating it. I explore this idea in a psychologically realistic way via my notion of overlooking, where ameliorating racism from the white perspective is an ongoing project. I end by considering how racism is applicable to other philosophical ideas beyond its typical or circumscribed purview. Here, I re-frame responsibility, arguing that we needn’t be forced to choose between responsibility models divided into individual versus social camps. We ought to instead think of responsibility in terms of power, which provides a realistic lens by which persons and groups are held to account. In being more generally convincing, it might actually get folks to take responsibility where they might not otherwise—theory in service of praxis. (shrink)

Black, Indigenous and otherwise minoritized communities of color are amongst the most vulnerable to the adverse consequences of environmental crises and the solutions proposed to remedy them. The participation and subsequent erasure of non-White youth activists and organizers within environmental sustainability struggles, and their subsequent erasure in global media coverage on climate activism has complicated any neat hierarchy of single concerns facing humanity. How is it that White and Western climate activists come to be the faces of the global youth (...) climate movement? This essay examines the salience of race to the education and framing of environmental and sustainability efforts. It suggests that the separation of environmental concerns from the socio-political (and thus racial) contexts that produce them not only further marginalizes the contributions of non-White activists and the communities that they represent, but also engenders a violently White, and thus narrow, vision of a global, Green future. (shrink)

This case study chronicles the pedagogical decision making of one high school teacher, Mr. Diego de la Vega, a pseudonym, as he teaches about race and racism in his elective social studies class, Race, Gender, and Ethnicity. De la Vega draws upon his own racial biography and experiences with race/ism to engage with high school students around racialized content. A conceptual framework grounded in racial identity development theory is used. This snapshot of racial pedagogical decision making, or RPDM, features a (...) discussion of implications for social studies pedagogy to promote racial identity development in the classroom. (shrink)

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in African American philosophy and philosophy of race. These original essays encompass the major topics and approaches in this emerging philosophical subfield that supports demographic inclusion and diversity while at the same time strengthening the conceptual arsenal of social and political philosophy. Over the course of the volume's ten topic-based sections, ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are (...) supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives and Native-, Asian-, and Latin-, American views. The contributors bring philosophical analysis to bear on the status of racial divisions as categories of humanity in the biological sciences, as well as within contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. Essays present the special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of 'race' in the real world, the volume pays trenchant and relevant attention to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that 'race' and racial identities are socially constructed. The essays analyze contemporary social issues including the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Additionally, the essays consider the societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law. As a critical theory, the volume compares the study of race to feminism. Historical and contemporary, academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration throughout the volume. While this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Jonathan Glover, a prominent advocate of human genetic engineering, relies on a limited naturalistic account of normal human function in his defense of genetic engineering as a means of decreasing future instances of disability. I show that his concept of disability and the normative argument informed by it in his Choosing Children: Genes, Disability, and Design fails to incorporate the phenomenological dimension of embodiment, and that this dimension should be included in any account of (...) disability and human flourishing. Such inclusion, however, requires us to consider seriously the counterintuitive view that racial minorities are constitutionally disabled in racist societies. (shrink)

The election of Barack H. Obama as President of the United States was a significant event in the social and political history of the United States. His election as the first non-white male President has been seen as a sign of the changing racial attitudes of white Americans. Nonetheless, the specter of race and racism haunts his presidency. As the first African American president, he has to show the black community that he has their social, political, and economic interests on (...) his public policy agenda. On the other hand, he cannot appear to be to overtly pro-black without bruising white racial sensibilities. In order to walk this fine line, President Obama has taken a colorblind approach to public policies. He claims that his color-blind public policies will help to uplift all citizens regardless of race, creed, or national origin. Important for this discussion is the claim that race need not be a factor in public policies. There are some doubts about this claim given the history of anti-black racism in the United States. It is argued, herein, that color or race conscious policies are needed to address some of the social and economic problems that besiege the black community. This article utilizes a pragmatic account of race to illustrate why colorblindness in public policies takes an ahistorical and decontextualized view of race and in the long term will hurt the social and economic standing of African Americans in the move to a more perfect union. (shrink)

Often overlooked in studies of the corporation is the recognition that the modern corporate form and its power are rooted in the issue of race, and more specifically, in racial oppression. The racialized roots of the corporation become exposed when we acknowledge the significance of slavery and the Fourteenth Amendment to the evolution of the corporate form along with the discriminatory role corporations have traditionally played in shaping race relations in the U.S. This article draws upon several theoretical perspectives, primarily (...) critical race theory, management theory, legal studies, diversity management, and corporate social responsibility to introduce the corporate responsibility to race concept and establish it as a new basis for understanding why corporate persons have a responsibility for improving race relations. (shrink)