Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 134-143, January 2022.

This article responds to Marzia Milazzo's article ‘On white ignorance, white shame, and other pitfalls in critical philosophy of race’, in which Milazzo argues that the concepts white shame, white guilt, white privilege, white habits, white invisibility and white ignorance are pitfalls in the process of decolonisation. Milazzo contends that the way these concepts are theorised in much critical philosophy of race minimises white people's active interest in reproducing the racial status quo. While I agree with Milazzo's critique of white (...) shame and white guilt, I argue that these affective responses are fundamentally different to the remaining concepts. Drawing on critical whiteness studies and agnotology, I argue that white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance are valuable conceptual tools for revealing white people's active investment in maintaining racial inequality. Whereas Milazzo sees a contradiction between white people's active interest in maintaining racial inequality and concepts like white invisibility and white ignorance, I argue that, correctly theorised, these concepts resolve this apparent contradiction. I contest Milazzo's call to reject white privilege, white invisibility and white ignorance, arguing that these concepts are useful tools in the project of decolonisation. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article offers a philosophical exploration of, and critical engagement with, the antiracist slogan “I understand that I will never understand. However, I stand.” Drawing on Charles Mills’s discussions of white ignorance and Édouard Glissant’s conception of the “right to opacity,” it first offers several interpretations and philosophical reconstructions of the claim that white allies “understand that they will never understand,” reading this as potentially articulating either an epistemic failure or a kind of ethical self-limitation. It then draws on (...) the work of Saidiya Hartman to offer a caution about the affirmation and naturalization of this delimited understanding as its ambiguity threatens to reinvoke and re-entrench certain racist conceptions already present within an antiblack context. (shrink)

Recent research suggests holding a structural, rather than interpersonal, understanding of racism is associated with greater impetus to address racial disparities. We believe greater acknowledgment of structural racism also functions to mitigate against empathic failures in response to structural injustices. Given South Africa’s situatedness as a country characterized by historical racialized oppression and continuing unjust legacies, it is appropriate to examine these ideas there. Across three studies, we tested the hypotheses that members of advantaged groups’ perspective taking and empathic concern (...) may be compromised in response to people challenging the unequal status quo, and that a priori perceptions about the impact of structural racism may mitigate or exacerbate such empathic failures. In Study 1, a national sample of White South Africans endorsed perceptions of interpersonal racism more readily than perceptions of structural racism, and expressed high levels of competitive victimhood for perceived anti-White structural racism. Studies 2 and 3 showed that White participants at a historically White university responded with impaired perspective taking and intergroup empathy bias in response to people challenging structural disparities. Finally, reduced recognition of continuing structural racism predicted greater intergroup empathy bias, which, in turn, was associated with reduced willingness to engage in intergroup discussions about past harm. We propose that greater acknowledgment of structural racism is necessary not only to surmount intergroup empathic failures, but also to transcend the socioeconomically unequal legacies of apartheid and beyond. (shrink)

With the calls to decolonize the philosophy curriculum, and the university more generally, which have seen a series of intellectual interventions in South Africa, this article takes its cue from Nyoka’s recommendation when he suggests moving beyond merely thinking about decolonization. In reflecting on processes of decolonizing the curriculum, this article considers the successes and failures of a course taught during a global pandemic, wherein pedagogic strategies were constrained. Reflecting on a module taught in the first semester of 2021, this (...) article thinks through the fundamental question that underpins the course, primarily: how to develop a contextually responsive philosophical approach on the southernmost tip of the African continent. Using two primary texts, Kumalo’s Decolonization as Democratization and Jansen’s Decolonization in Universities, the module analysed this question by juxtaposing, respectively, a philosophical and educational text. In this pedagogic autocritique, I reflect on ‘what obligation do intellectuals owe their students’ in a decolonizing context. (shrink)

In Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-Racism, Shannon Sullivan considers: "What can white people do to help end racial injustice?". As one response to this question, Sullivan argues that prescribing "white shame" and "white guilt" is useless, since promoting these ideas leads to self-hate and inaction on the part of white people. In this paper, I agree with Sullivan, but for different reasons. I argue that assuming that white people can feel ashamed simply about being white within (...) our current society is unfounded. I will maintain that the project of "promoting white shame" is fraught to begin with, and show the significance of this finding for conversations about white people's role in... (shrink)