I defend impact-based accounts of institutional racism against the criticism that they are over-inclusive. If having a negative impact on non-whites suffices to make an institution racist, too many institutions (including institutions whose affirmative action policies inadvertently harm its intended beneficiaries) would count as racist. To address this challenge, I consider a further necessary condition for these institutions to count as racist—they must stand in a particular relation to racist ideology. I argue that, on the impact-based model, institutions are racist (...) if they have a negative racial impact AND this impact is legitimized by racist ideology. Racist ideologies limit social criticism of and collective action against institutions that have a negative racial impact, and in so doing, lend stability to systems of racial domination. (shrink)

This article offers a response to Michael J. Monahan's engagement with and criticism of Grant Silva's article “Racism as Self-Love.” So as to demonstrate how Monahan's idea of “ur-contempt” fits alongside the author's project and supplements his attempt to challenge the variety of forms of moral obfuscation employed by white nationalists and other racists today, this response begins with an overview of the central critique of moral responsibility for racism that Silva's work offers. At stake is the attempt, by unabashed (...) white supremacist and others, to bank on historical acts of racial oppression and reap the benefits of elevated social status while evading responsibility for that past. The goal in this project is thus to demonstrate the entanglement of interpersonal and structural forms of racism while also describing how racism unfolds in the present in order to challenge the types of moral evasion for racism that Monahan and Silva are concerned with. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of the philosophical significance of liberation and prescribes the special place the idea of liberation ought to hold in the context of inter-American philosophical dialogue. Drawing from Latin American liberation philosophy, as well as philosophical and theoretical discourses and debates that can be considered part of a larger liberatory tradition, my goal is to explore the idea of liberation as a process, or perhaps more appropriately a praxis, harboring both critical and creative potentialities.

in "whites: made in america: Advancing American Philosophers' Discourse on Race," the Reverend Thandeka claims that the terms "racism" and "white privilege" can't explain what motivated the majority of Donald Trump's voters, since most of them wouldn't identify as racist or privileged. Thandeka rejects Hillary Clinton's description of Trump supporters as "deplorable," a description that fits into a racial narrative that considers whiteness to be an issue of hatred toward blacks. Thandeka believes this narrative fails to account for the shame, (...) insecurity, and fear experienced by whites and perpetrated by "whiteness." She asks us to analyze our racial terms to help create a "new racial discourse on whiteness in... (shrink)