Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-rj9fg Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-18T04:40:53.500Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

RACISM, MORALISM, AND SOCIAL CRITICISM1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 July 2014

Tommie Shelby
Tommie Shelby*
Affiliation:
Department of African and African American Studies and Department of Philosophy, Harvard University
*
Corresponding author: Professor Tommie Shelby, Department of African and African American Studies, Harvard University, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Through a critical engagement with Lawrence Blum’s theory of racism, I defend a “social criticism” model for the philosophical study of racism. This model relies on empirical analyses of social and psychological phenomena but goes beyond this to include the assessment of the warrant of widely held beliefs and the normative evaluation of attitudes, actions, institutions, and social arrangements. I argue that we should give political philosophy theoretical primacy over moral philosophy in normative analyses of racism. I also show how conceptualizing racism as an ideology gives us a unified account of racism and helps us to see what is truly troubling about racism, both in the past and today.

Keywords

RacismSocial JusticeIdeologyRacial InequalityRacial PoliticsPolitical Philosophy
Type
Race in a “Postracial” Epoch
Information
Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 57 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © Hutchins Center for African and African American Research 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, Elizabeth (1999). What Is the Point of Equality? Ethics, 109 (2): 287–337.Google Scholar
Anderson, Elizabeth (2010). The Imperative of Integration. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame A. (1990). Racisms. In Goldberg, David T. (Ed.), Anatomy of Racism, pp. 3–17. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Appiah, Kwame A. (1996). Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections. In Appiah, Kwame A. and Gutmann, Amy (Eds.), Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race, pp. 30–105. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Arthur, John (2007). Race, Equality, and the Burdens of History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blum, Lawrence (2002). “I'm Not a Racist, But...”: The Moral Quandary of Race. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. (2011). Somewhere Between Jim Crow and Post-Racialism: Reflections on the Racial Divide in America Today. Daedalus, 140 (2): 11–36.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D., Klugel, James R., and Smith, Ryan A. (1997). Laissez-Faire Racism: The Crystallization of a Kinder, Gentler, Antiblack Ideology. In Tuch, Steven A. and Martin, Jack K. (Eds.), Racial Attitudes in the 1990’s, pp. 15–41. Westport, CT: Praeger.Google Scholar
Bobo, Lawrence D. and Charles, Camille Z. (2009). Race in the American Mind: From the Moynihan Report to the Obama Candidacy. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 621: 243–259.Google Scholar
Boxill, Bernard R. (1992). Blacks and Social Justice (revised edition). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Carmichael, Stokely and Hamilton, Charles V. (1967). Black Power: The Politics of Liberation. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Charles, Camille Z. (2006). Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Race, Class, and Residence in Los Angeles. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Daniels, Norman (1996). Justice and Justification: Reflective Equilibrium in Theory and Practice. New York: Cambridge University.Google Scholar
Eastland, Terry (1996). Ending Affirmative Action: The Case for Colorblind Justice. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Ezorsky, Gertrude (1991). Racism and Justice: The Case for Affirmative Action. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fields, Barbara J. (1990). Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America. New Left Review, 181 (1): 95–118.Google Scholar
Ford, Richard Thompson (2008). The Race Card: How Bluffing about Bias Makes Race Relations Worse. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.Google Scholar
Fredrickson, George M. (2002). Racism: A Short History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Garcia, J. L. A. (1996). The Heart of Racism. Journal of Social Philosophy, 27 (1): 5–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia, J. L. A. (1997). Current Conceptions of Racism: A Critical Examination of Some Recent Social Philosophy. Journal of Social Philosophy, 28 (2): 5–42.Google Scholar
Glasgow, Joshua (2009). Racism as Disrespect. Ethics, 120 (1): 64–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gordon, Lewis R. (1995). Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanity Press.Google Scholar
Hall, Stuart (1980). Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance. In Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, pp. 305–345. Paris: UNESCO.Google Scholar
Haslanger, Sally (2004). Oppressions: Racial and Other. In Levine, Michael P. and Pataki, Tamas (Eds.), Racism in Mind, pp. 97–123. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Headley, Clevis (2000). Philosophical Approaches to Racism: A Critique of the Individualistic Perspective. Journal of Social Philosophy, 31 (2): 223–257.Google Scholar
Hieronymi, Pamela (2008). Responsibility for Believing. Synthese, 161 (3): 357–373.Google Scholar
Hodson, Gordon, Dovidio, John F., and Gaertner, Samuel L. (2004). The Aversive Form of Racism. In Chin, Jean Lau (Ed.), The Psychology of Prejudice and Discrimination, vol. 1: Racism in America, pp. 119–135. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Holt, Thomas C. (2000). The Problem of Race in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jost, John T. and Banaji, Mahzarin R. (1994). The Role of Stereotyping in System-Justification and the Production of False Consciousness. British Journal of Social Psychology, 33 (1): 1–27.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. and Sanders, Lynn M. (1996). Divided By Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. and Kam, Cindy D. (2009). Us Against Them: Ethnocentric Foundations of American Opinion. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Loury, Glenn C. (2002). The Anatomy of Racial Inequality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Massey, Douglas S. and Denton, Nancy A. (1993). American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas (2009). Race, Empire, and the Idea of Human Development. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Miles, Robert (1989). Racism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. (2003). From Class to Race: Essays in White Marxism and Black Radicalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Mills, Charles W. (2003). “Heart” Attack: A Critique of Jorge Garcia’s Volitional Conception of Racism. Journal of Ethics, 7 (1): 29–62.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1999). A Theory of Justice (revised edition). Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. (2003). Diversity of Objections to Inequality. In his The Difficulty of Tolerance, pp. 202–218. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sears, David O., Sidanius, Jim, and Bobo, Lawrence D., (Eds.) (2000). Racialized Politics: The Debate About Racism in America. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2002). Is Racism in the “Heart”? Journal of Social Philosophy, 33 (3): 411–420.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2003). Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory. Philosophical Forum, 34 (2): 153–188.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2004). Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations. Fordham Law Review, 72: 1697–1714.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2007). Justice, Deviance, and the Dark Ghetto. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 35 (2): 126–160.Google Scholar
Shelby, Tommie (2013). Racial Realities and Corrective Justice: A Reply to Charles Mills. Critical Philosophy of Race, 1 (2): 145–162.Google Scholar
Sidanius, Jim and Pratto, Felicia (1999). Social Dominance: An Intergroup Theory of Social Hierarchy and Oppression. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Angela M. (2005). Responsibility for Attitudes: Activity and Passivity in Mental Life. Ethics, 115 (2): 236–271.Google Scholar
Steele, Claude M. (1997). A Threat in the Air: How Stereotypes Shape Intellectual Identity and Performance. American Psychologist, 52 (6): 613–629.Google Scholar
Sundstrom, Ronald (2008). The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Google Scholar
Wasserstrom, Richard (1976). Racism, Sexism, and Preferential Treatment: An Approach to the Topics. UCLA Law Review, 24 (3): 581–622.Google Scholar
Wilson, William J. (1973). Power, Racism, and Privilege: Race Relations in Theoretical and Sociohistorical Perspectives. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Wilson, William J. and Taub, Richard P. (2006). There Goes the Neighborhood. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar