Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory

Res Philosophica, 2017

Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set of practices, attitudes, social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means.

Journal of Social Philosophy, 2000

This essay examines the question of what serves as the most effective philosophical approach to a definition of racism. It is more specifically concerned with developing a strategic critique of the dominant individualistic or motivational model of racism. The case is made for an institutional approach to the definition of racism. W. Thomas Schmid, in his "The Definition of Racism," defends the motivational definition of racism but rejects the behavioral and the cognitive definitions. He argues that the motivational definition is philosophically superior to the other two approaches because it captures the true essence of racism. I argue two main points in this paper: (1) Contrary to Schmid's contention, both the behavioral and the cognitive definitions appear as disguised versions of the motivational approach, and (2) the motivational approach is deficient in certain instances because it takes an individualistic or, rather, an atomistic approach to racism. Furthermore, this motivational approach is unable to explain the historical persistence and institutional manifestation of racism despite the fact that most people claim allegiance to certain abstract universal principles regarding the equal moral status of all human beings. Accordingly, I contend that it is not the case that any plausible philosophical analyses of racism should follow the model of an a priori philosophical analysis of nonnatural metaphysical notions, such as the Good in ethics or Beauty in aesthetics. Schmid does not say that he intends to treat racism as similar to these notions. However, he suggests that genuine acts of racism tend to share a common essence of an intention to harm. In suggesting this, he follows the method of defining a concept by isolating its intrinsic features. I disagree with Schmid's strategy since, on my view, racism best qualifies as a sociocultural phenomenon. 1 This means that any proper philosophical analysis of racism should assimilate the model of a critical philosophical analysis of other sociocultural phenomena, such as nationalism and sexism. Hence, instead of employing an a priori philosophical method of analysis, we can adopt a naturalistic approach and utilize information from the social sciences, sociology, history, law and economics, and so forth in an effort to understand the nature of certain sociocultural phenomena. But we should acknowledge that an appeal to naturalism in the context of sociocultural phenomena does not entail a complete rejection of a priori analysis or of its validity in this or any other context. The point is simply that the validity of certain sociocultural concepts depends on whether we can define these concepts in terms of specific cultural, social, or historical practices. The main objective is to connect sociocultural concepts with

There have been a lot of nasty ass rumors embraced by philosophers and your run of the mill academicians surrounding the material substantiations of time as "histories," and the meta-physical "flow of time," as linear continuum towards progress and development. It is assumed without provocation that the variety of "histories" offered by racialized oppressed peoples enclosed within [H]istory-understood as a universal account of white civilization-emerges as continuities that further the evolution of not only our American society, but the edifice of the West. In short, we are told to believe that the multiple histories that now emerge at this moment are in fact the inevitable result of the genius of the Dialectical Hemi-(spherical engine) driving the expression of multiple subjectivities. But time need not revolve around such a mythical perspective; a perspective that demands from colonized people that they cherish their past enslavement and historical debasement by racism, and accept that their contemporary suffering, their present dehumanization, and their ongoing exploitation by the political economics of the university, blessed them with the post-colonial discourses to be shared with a now attentive white audience waiting to take stock of their critiques. The dominant schema of America's liberal democratic order suggests that history be read and time be gauged by the falling away of the organized oppressive structures of the past, where the present is known by the remnants the last fading vestiges of racism, and the future will be identified by the absence of the barriers and attitudes of the past and present filled with only enlightened white folks who are adamantly against racism. This progressive teleology-the idea solidified by integration which suggests racism and the political economics of white supremacy will simply disappear over time-is the largely accepted political dogma of not only our social life, but the unquestioned paradigm of our academic lives as well.

International Critical Childhood Policy Studies Journal, 2012

In this document I present a two-dimensional conceptual model of racism (Structural & Ideological), for use by educators, graduate students, & scholars writing on race and racism. I ask that you indicate my authorship on all unpublished documents, including study notes.

This concluding chapter has the subtitle ›introduction‹ because it takes up the results of the previous reflections, connects them with recourse to rudimental ideas of Marx’s sociology, and relates both to a blueprint of the basic structure of a historical materialist theory of racism. At first, I will argue that racism analysis did not make ample use of elementary categories of the ›Critique of Political Economy‹ up to now – including ›economic character masks‹ and ›commodity fetishism‹. Subsequently, I will widen the focus from modern race-based racism developed in the course of European colonialism and the formation of capitalism to a perspective comprising the history of class societies at large. This extension will elucidate that the invention of races was not the origin of racism but only one (relatively late) manifestation of its diverse historical stages of development. Different class societies have found expression in various types of racism. My listing of barbarization, monsterization, contamination, diabolization, savagization, and racialization is the proposal for a typology of racisms. Its complex character is emphasized by references to the intersections of its elements and by an excursus on casteism. Finally, I will present a model of the basic structure of racism as negative societalization. It connects the formation of class societies with the racist exclusion of alienated others and understands racism as a social relation. As it is right and proper for an ›introduction‹, pertinent analyses will have to follow.

American Behavioral Scientist, 1995

Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 2014

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.

Journal of Black Studies, 2017

This is a review of the theoretical development of the concept of racism. From its 1960s activist roots, the concept lost its theoretical content in its 1970s popularization. Now racism describes virtually anything having to do with racial conflict. The concept is reintroduced and used to analyze the post-1970s race relations propositions. The declining significance of race, symbolic racism, color-blind racism, and unconscious racism missed the structural regressions brought on by the "southern strategy" to mask indirect and covert ways to continue racial oppression. As a result, the new Jim Crow was missed in race relations since the 1980s. A reconsideration of the theory of racism calls for a strategic approach to race relations research. Research should focus on the etiology of racism among European Americans and the central role played by White elites and the media in maintaining historic cultural and institutional arrangements.

Feminism & Psychology, 2002