Philosophy of Race PDF
Preview Philosophy of Race
PALGRAVE PHILOSOPHY TODAY Philosophy of Race An Introduction Naomi Zack Palgrave Philosophy Today Series Editor Vittorio Bufacchi Department of Philosophy University College Cork Cork, Ireland The Palgrave Philosophy Today will help all philosophers, established and aspiring, to understand, appreciate and engage with the intricacies which characterize all the many faces of philosophy. They are ideal teaching tools as textbooks for more advanced students. These books may not be meant primarily for those who have yet to read their first book of philosophy, but all students with a basic knowledge of philosophy will benefit greatly from reading these exciting and original works, which will enable anyone to engage with all the defining issues in contemporary philosophy. There are three main aspects that make the Palgrave Philosophy Today series distinc- tive and attractive. First, each book is relatively concise. Second, the books are commissioned from some of the best-known, established and upcoming international scholars in each area of philosophy. Third, while the primary purpose is to offer an informed assessment of opinion on a key area of phil- osophical study, each title presents a distinct interpretation from someone who is closely involved with current work in the field. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14672 Naomi Zack Philosophy of Race An Introduction Naomi Zack Department of Philosophy University of Oregon Eugene, OR, USA Palgrave Philosophy Today ISBN 978-3-319-78728-2 ISBN 978-3-319-78729-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78729-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018937870 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: © Nayef Hajjaj/EyeEm—Getty Images Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer International Publishing AG part of Springer Nature The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Praise for Philosophy of Race “Naomi Zack’s book presents a panoramic view of race sweeping across centuries of philosophical thought, histories of immigration and assimilation, Brazilian, indig- enous, and Hindu challenges to prevailing racial categories, and concluding with clarifying reflections on hot-button issues around identity politics and intersection- ality. Epic in scope, Zack’s highly informative survey offers an indispensable map for understanding the rise of race in US politics.” —Cynthia Willett, Emory University, USA, and author of Irony in the Age of Empire: Comic Perspectives on Freedom and Democracy “Naomi Zack never disappoints. Unlike other philosophical engagements with race that prioritize the historical views of whites, Zack synthesizes sociological data and history to show how power creates the economic and political realities confronting racialized people. Zack accounts for practically every philosophical theorization of race, feminism, colonialism, and poverty present in the literature. This book needs to be in the hands of every philosopher teaching race, and on the shelf of every theorist claiming to write in the philosophy of race.” —Tommy J. Curry, Texas A&M University, USA To Alex, Bradford, Jessica, Coco, and Winnie, Love, Gram. Introduction to This Book Many academic philosophers who are generally interested in social justice issues pertaining to racial and ethnic minority groups still do not clearly distinguish between Philosophy of Race and African American philosophy. And in American public discourse, African Americans are the primary racial subject. But the existence of other nonwhite groups in the United States and throughout the world calls for a shared discourse about the plurality of racial and ethnic injustices endured and resisted. It is therefore now useful to con- sider Philosophy of Race as a distinct academic subfield. Philosophy of Race has primarily emerged from African American philosophy, which not only carries an awareness of injustices suffered by other groups but has since the 1970s raised issues that redound to traditional ethics and political and social philosophy. The main aim of this book is to introduce the reader to historical and contemporary issues in Philosophy of Race, with due regard for its debt to African American philosophy. African American philosophy has always had the burden of grappling with the legacy of US black chattel slavery, a bur- den that is exceptional because of the contrast between the ideals of a great democratic nation and its harsh realities for black Americans. Part of that contrast has been evident in a history of white dominance in higher educa- tion, perhaps especially among philosophers. The first line of defense against African American Philosophy was that it was not philosophy, because it focused too concretely on the experience of one human group. The greater generality of Philosophy of Race might thereby make it more acceptable to traditional philosophers. But might scholars of African American philoso- phy thereby suspect the progressiveness of Philosophy of Race, because it is ix x Introduction to This Book more similar to the universal nature of philosophy as a discipline that has historically excluded African Americans and other nonwhite thinkers? Such suspicion can be allayed if Philosophy of Race turns out to be as progressive as African American philosophy. It may seem strange for a more general form of thought to originate in a more particular one, that is, the origination of Philosophy of Race in African American Philosophy. But there is precedent for this kind of development in the history of philosophy: Bentham and Mill invented utilitarianism with a basic tenet that pleasure or happiness should be maximized, whereas con- temporary consequentialism is more abstract in not specifying what should be maximized. Consequentialism subsumes utilitarianism. In this case, as with Philosophy of Race and African American philosophy, what occurs later is philosophically more general or abstract. And what occurs later here has a longer history than its origins. Philosophy of Race can be identified in the writings of Plato and Aristotle, when there was no version of African American Philosophy. However, greater generality and abstraction need not entail erasure. It would be a mistake for Philosophy of Race to become so abstract as to reify “race,” apart from the concerns of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Middle Eastern Americans, Latin/x-Americans, and so forth. While it is important to be able to talk about shared experiences of injustice and reach for general, unifying moral and political principles, it is more important that everyone be able to claim this discourse, regardless of racial identity. Philosophers have a long history of accepting or ignoring general and abstract, “race talk” that encompasses pluralities. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, racial ethnologists sought to explain social and psychological differences between members of different racial groups on the assumption that human races had different “ranks.” The white race was upheld as the most civilized, both morally and intellectually superior, while blacks were relegated to the bottom in culture, character, and intellect. This racist perspective was not a simple division of whites from blacks, because in-between whites and blacks, indigenes or AmerIndians, and “Orientals” or Asians, were also ranked. And even within what today would be consid- ered the white race, there was hierarchy, as in Madison Grant’s valorization of Northern Europeans compared to Southern and Eastern Europeans, in his widely read 1916 The Passing of the Great Race. In its heyday, such race thinking was closely allied to a perspective of biological determinism and inevitable Darwinian conflict. This idea of the “survival of the fittest race” posited races as warring competitors for resources and honor and it meant Introduction to This Book xi that racial difference determined social and political destiny. Grant empha- sized the connection between violence and race in referring to World War I, in his book’s Introduction: The laws of nature operate with the same relentless and unchanging force in human affairs as in the phenomena of inanimate nature, and the basis of the government of man is now and always has been, and always will be, force and not sentiment, a truth demonstrated anew by the present world conflagration. (Grant 1916, p. 3) The deeply racist Nazi ideology about Jews during World War II was in keeping with Grant’s Northern European chauvinism, because Jews were considered Semites, a distinct nonwhite race, and Nazi propaganda por- trayed Jews as both degenerate and dangerous. On a broader historical scale, moral worth was an integral part of official justifications for colonialism that included the enslavement, genocide, and material exploitation of Africans, Asians, and indigenous Americans and Australians. While it is indisputable that ideas of human racial difference have histor- ically been matters of life and death and there certainly have been physical and cultural differences among races, it is crucial to stay on a “meta” level in considering such differences as causes or justification for racial hierarchies. Ideas of biological racial difference and moral hierarchy were invented and posited to justify persecution and oppression by other names, undertaken by white Europeans for their own benefits, throughout the modern period (American Anthropological Association 1998; Eze 1997). Quite apart from explicit awareness of the injustice of such persecutions and oppressions, when interests of dominant groups were not believed to require genocide, slavery, or brutality, anti-nonwhite racism was not as violent. Also, intra-Eu- ropean racial ideologies calmed down following World War II, after Western European groups became more cooperative among themselves, partly as a result of Cold War anti-Soviet alignments and partly for gain in expanding, interdependent economies. Despite ongoing discourse about justice and human equality (e.g., the 1948 UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights) and a certain amount of formal legal progress (e.g., the US Civil Rights Movement legislation of 1964–1965), the treatment of nonwhites by whites, both internationally and within rich Western nations such as the United States, has continued to be a flashpoint in society for experiences of injustice and oppression, or in a word, racism. While white-centered ethnology and racial differences as
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