On White Ignorance,White Shame,and Other Pitfalls in Critical Philosophy of Race

This article examines Samantha Vice's essay ‘How Do I Live in This Strange Place?’ (2010), which sparked a storm of controversy in South Africa, as a starting point for interrogating understandings of whiteness and racism that are dominant in critical philosophy of race. I argue that a significant body of philosophical scholarship on whiteness in general and by white scholars in particular obfuscates the structural dimension of racism. The moralisation of racism that often permeates philosophical scholarship reproduces colourblind logics, which provide individualistic explanations for structural problems, thereby sustaining white dominance. In the process, I show that notions of white guilt, white habits, white ignorance, white invisibility, white privilege, and white shame as they are theorised in much critical philosophy of race share a crucial limitation: they minimise white people's active interest in reproducing the racist status quo. Studies, such as Vice's, that frame racism as a moral dilemma while silencing its institutionalisation and the central cause for its existence and longevity – that is, white people's investment in maintaining economic, political, and symbolic power – further naturalise white supremacy.     

Resolving the Tensions Between White People's Active Investment in Racial Inequality and White Ignorance: A Response to Marzia Milazzo

This article responds to Marzia Milazzo's article ‘On white ignorance, white shame, and other pitfalls in critical philosophy of race’ (2017), 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 (as opposed to minimising) 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.     

Other People’s Problems: Student Distancing,Epistemic Responsibility,and Injustice

In classes that examine entrenched injustices like sexism or racism, students sometimes use “distancing strategies” to dissociate themselves from the injustice being studied. Education researchers argue that distancing is a mechanism through which students, especially students of apparent privilege, deny their complicity in systemic injustice. While I am sympathetic to this analysis, I argue that there is much at stake in student distancing that the current literature fails to recognize. On my view, distancing perpetuates socially sanctioned forms of ignorance and unknowing, through which students misrecognize not only their complicity in injustice, but also the ways that injustice shapes the world, their lives, and their knowledge. Thus, distancing is pedagogically problematic because it prevents students from understanding important social facts, and because it prevents them from engaging with perspectives, analyses, and testimonies that might beneficially challenge their settled views and epistemic habits. To substantiate this new analysis, I draw on recent work on epistemologies of ignorance, especially José Medina’s account of “active ignorance.” In order to respond to student distancing, I argue, it is not sufficient for teachers to make students aware of injustice, or of their potential complicity in it. Beyond this, teachers should cultivate epistemic virtue in the classroom and encourage students to take responsibility for better ways of knowing. The article ends by outlining several classroom practices for beginning this work.     

Risk aversion and elite-group ignorance

Critical race theorists and standpoint epistemologists argue that agents who are members of dominant social groups are often in a state of ignorance about the extent of their social dominance, where this ignorance is explained by these agents' membership in a socially dominant group (e.g., Mills 2007). To illustrate this claim bluntly, it is argued: 1) that many white men do not know the extent of their social dominance, 2) that they remain ignorant as to the extent of their dominant social position even where this information is freely attainable, and 3) that this ignorance is due in part to the fact that they are white men. We argue that on Buchak's (2010, 2013) model of risk averse instrumental rationality, ignorance of one's privileges can be rational. This argument yields a new account of elite-group ignorance, why it may occur, and how it might be alleviated.     

The gastroenterologist and his endoscope: The embodiment of technology and the necessity for a medical ethics

The purpose of this essay is to argue for the necessity of an ethics of the practice of the specialist-technologist in medicine. In the first part I sketch three stages of medical ethics, each with a particular viewpoint regarding the technology of medicine. I focus on Brody's consideration of the “physician's power” as a example of contemporary medical ethics which explicitly excludes the specialist-technologist as a locus of development of medical ethics. Next, the philosophy of Heidegger is examined to suggest an approach to the problem, and, finally, some of Levinas' contributions regarding the “other” are introduced to suggest a preliminary approach to a medical ethics of the specialist-technologist.     

The concept of privilege: a critical appraisal

In this essay, I examine the use of the concept of privilege within the critical theoretical discourse on oppression and liberation (with a particular focus on white privilege and antiracism in the USA). In order to fulfill the rhetorical aims of liberation, concepts for privilege must meet what I term the ‘boundary condition’, which demarcates the boundary between a privileged elite and the rest of society, and the ‘ignorance condition’, which establishes that the elite status and the advantages it confers are not publicly recognised or affirmed. I argue that the dominant use of the concept of privilege cannot fulfill these conditions. As a result, while I do not advocate for the complete abandonment of the rhetoric of privilege, I conclude that it obscures as much as it illuminates, and that the critical theoretical discourse on liberation and oppression should be suspicious of its use.     

"Fatal practices": a feminist analysis of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia

In this essay, I examine the arguments against physician-assisted suicide (PAS) Susan Wolf offers in her essay, “Gender, Feminism, and Death: Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia.” I argue that Wolf's analysis of PAS, while timely and instructive in many ways, does not require that feminists reject policy approaches that might permit PAS. The essay concludes with reflections on the relationship between feminism and questions of agency, especially women's agency.     

The Proclamation of Charles H. Long in the Time of Black Lives Matter,Standing Rock,and COVID-19

Revisiting Charles H. Long's 1991 proclamation of a modern crisis of materiality, this essay examines Long's theorization of the fetish-commodity legacies, that recreated African persons into objects and commodities, as a means of understanding our present tripartite pandemic of systemic racism, environmental destruction, and COVID-19. Examining the period of, what Long elsewhere terms, the “second creation,” I interrogate what this crisis means for the study of religion and for our society today. Building on Long's conception of “soul stuff” and yet moving beyond notions of human exceptionalism, I argue that to move beyond fetish and colonial legacies and realize a “third creation” (or, in other words, a (re-)re-creation), both scholars and the public must craft a new materialism that honors the ontological reality and value of all existence.     

Bernard Williams on the Human Prejudice

In “The Human Prejudice”, Bernard Williams discusses our treating human beings differently in our moral thinking from the ways we treat other creatures. He criticises the idea that this expresses a prejudice, speciesism, analogous to racism and sexism. His essay has been misunderstood by some of its critics, including Peter Singer and Jeff McMahan. My essay sets out several questions one may have about Williams's essay, and explains how they can be answered. I make clear the connections between “The Human Prejudice” and some main elements in Williams's thinking about ethics, including his criticisms of moral theory.     

The moral limits of Feinberg's liberalism

This essay explores Joel Feinberg's conception of liberalism and the moral limits of the criminal law. Feinberg identifies liberty with the absence of law. He defends a strong liberal presumption against law, except where it is necessary to prevent wrongful harm or offense to others. Drawing on Rawlsian, Marxian, and feminist standpoints, I argue that there are injuries to individual liberty rooted not in law, but in civil society. Against Feinberg, I defend a richer account of liberalism and liberty, linking them to human dignity, and a more positive role for law. Feinberg justifies liberty as an instrumental welfare‐interest, valuable in virtue of the way it serves the individual's ulterior goals. Drawing on the example of racism and civil rights, I argue that the value of equal liberty stems from its social role in constituting persons’ sense of their own worth and dignity. Against Feinberg, I claim that liberty's value is grounded in a shared historical ideal of personhood, not in the individual's goals or desires. Feinberg also links liberalism with an extreme anti‐paternalist position, on which individuals should be at liberty to alienate their very own right of personal autonomy. Drawing on the examples of slavery and drug addiction, I argue against this liberty, and the conception of liberalism and paternalism in Feinberg which leads to it. A liberalism founded upon an ideal of human dignity allows, even requires, a use of law to prevent persons from destroying the very conditions of their own autonomy and dignity.     

Contempt and the Cultivation of Character

Macalester Bell urges the cultivation of apt contempt as the best response to what she calls “the vices of superiority” (arrogance, hypocrisy, racism, and the like). In this essay, I sketch two character profiles. The first—the ideal contemnor—paradigmatically answers the vices of superiority with contempt. The second—the ideal Christian neighbor—is marked by humility and love, and answers the vices of superiority in non‐contemptuous ways. I argue that the latter character rivals (and may even outshine) the former as a fitting moral response to the vices of superiority. Furthermore, I argue that the two character profiles are incompatible, so one cannot jointly cultivate humble love and contempt. Given contempt's nastiness, and the alternative resources available for answering the vices of superiority, I suggest one should focus one's character‐formation efforts on the cultivation of humility and love.     

Kant’s Racism

After a long period of comparative neglect, in the last few decades growing numbers of philosophers have been paying attention to the startling contrast presented between Kant’s universal moral theory, with its inspiring enlightenment ideas of human autonomy, equality and dignity and Kant’s racism. Against Charles Mills, who argues that the way to make Kant consistent is by attributing to him a threshold notion of moral personhood, according to which some races do not qualify for consideration under the categorical imperative, I argue that Kant cannot be made consistent on race, and that rather than trying to make him so, we should use the example of Kant’s racism to tell us something about the nature of racism. I argue that Kant’s own moral philosophy and moral psychology in fact give some materials for thinking about his racism, and about racism.     

Normalization of Racism and Moral Responsibility: Against the Exculpatory Stance

In this article, we take the case of racism in contemporary Italy as a starting point for a discussion about moral responsibility for racism in cases where ignorance is involved. We focus on the issue of the normalization of racism and its contribution to different forms of ignorance to assess the extent to which these might potentially mitigate judgments of responsibility for racism, thereby grounding an Exculpatory Stance. After illustrating the phenomenon of the normalization of racism and offering an outline of how the normalization of racism contributes to ignorance, we argue against the Exculpatory Stance by appealing to a socially situated variety of capacitarian approach to the epistemic condition of moral responsibility. This approach provides us with the tools to claim that the moral ignorance favored by the normalization of racism does not mitigate judgments of individual responsibility. Finally, we point out that the interdependence of individual responsibility and the social environment is such that, in addition to backward-looking individual responsibilities for racism, there are also forward-looking, both individual and shared, responsibilities to counter racism in its various manifestations and the increased risk of moral ignorance connected to its normalization.     

Moral Responsibility and Tourette Syndrome1

Philosophers generally assume that individuals with Tourette syndrome are not responsible for their Tourettic tics, and so not blameworthy for any harm their tics might cause. Yet this assumption is based largely on ignorance of the lived experience of Tourette syndrome. Individuals with Tourette syndrome often experience their tics as freely chosen and reason‐responsive. Yet it still seems wrong to treat a Tourettic individual's tic as on a moral par with others’ actions. In this paper, I examine the options and argue that, if this is correct, then a surprising consequence follows: the standard, motivation‐based theory of desire must be false. I go on to argue that, given what is known about the neurological basis of Tourette syndrome, this is a reasonable conclusion to draw.     

The theory of justice from a hermeneutic perspective

In this article, I argue that Gadamer's hermeneutics of historical tradition does not imply a conservative stance on ethical and political issues. My essay seeks to show that Gadamer's philosophy leaves ample room for normative criticism, objectivity, and theories of justice at odds with conventional common sense. I critically examine Walzer's Spheres of Justice, reading it as an attempt to obtain a normative account of justice based on a hermeneutical framework of interpretation. I make several criticisms of Walzer's method and results, which I use to develop my own critical model for interpreting, criticizing, and revising traditional understandings, and common sense meanings. My conclusion is that we need to extend Gadamer's philosophy, in order to identify the ways that established traditions of understanding and common sense can result from, or produce, inconsistency, irrationality, hermeneutical incoherence, and meaningless deprivations or suffering. This essay thus seeks to develop an influential continental philosophy in a direction that makes fruitful contact with Anglo-American theories of justice, and normativity.     

Together in Need: Relational Selfhood,Vulnerability to Harm,and Enriching Attachments

Connections between one's own welfare and that of others abound if we pause to look for them, although philosophical theories of selfhood have only very recently begun to incorporate these connections. This essay draws on recent work on need to argue that one of the strongest expressions of these connections is to be found in the relational needs that they can generate. While paying heed to needs that arise from the relational nature of selfhood at large, this essay pays particular attention to what I call “transpersonal needs”: needs that occur when one's experience of the needs of others gives rise to certain needs of one's own. I argue that the best criterion for defining need is vulnerability to harm, but this does not mean that having a need is something that is purely harmful. Having certain needs can also enrich one's life. Further, while every need entails a corresponding vulnerability to harm, some of these potential harms are more detrimental to one's welfare than others, with some relational needs standing among those that can result in the greatest harm if unanswered.     

Methodology of the Privileged: White Anti‐racist Feminism,Systematic Ignorance,and Epistemic Uncertainty

This article addresses the impact of systematic ignorance and epistemic uncertainty upon white Western women's participation in anti‐racist and transnational feminisms. I argue that a “methodology of the privileged” is necessary for effective coalition‐building across racial and geopolitical inequities. Examining both self‐reflexivity and racial sedition as existing methods, I conclude that epistemic uncertainty should be considered an additional strategy rather than a dilemma for the privileged.     

Rac(e)ing from Death

In response to recent events that demonstrate the persistence of racial trauma, this essay revisits James Baldwin's claim that racism is a symptom of fundamental human tendencies and constraints. For Baldwin, we cannot understand the legacy of racism if we do not take seriously all too human attempts to evade, and deflect, death and its intimations. To flesh out this component of Baldwin's thought, I engage with the thought of Georges Bataille, an author who thinks generally about the fraught relationship between the preservation of life and our responsiveness to suffering. To test the insights that Baldwin provides on racial matters, this essay engages recent discussions in black studies and queer theory around futurity, racial difference, and the category of the human. I maintain that we must think “the human” and racial difference together, as a tension‐filled relationship, in order to understand the limits and possibilities regarding our efforts to change the order of things.     

Natality or Birth? Arendt and Cavarero on the Human Condition of Being Born

This essay offers a critical analysis of Hannah Arendt's notion of natality through the lens of Adriana Cavarero's feminist philosophy of birth. First, I argue that the strength of Arendtian natality is its rootedness in an ontology of uniqueness, and a commitment to human plurality and relationality. Next, I trace with Cavarero three critical concerns regarding Arendtian natality, namely that it is curiously abstract; problematically disembodied and sexually neutral; and dependent on a model of vulnerability that assumes equality rather than asymmetry. This last issue is further developed in the final section of the essay, where I examine the idea that birth, for Cavarero, becomes the very concept by which we can distinguish and normatively differentiate acts of care and love from acts of wounding and violence. Upholding the normative distinction here depends on a conceptual distinction between vulnerability and helplessness. To maintain the ethical potential of the scene of birth, I argue that we have to insist on the very characteristics Cavarero attributes to it—ones, as this essay aims to show, that are ultimately missing in the Arendtian account thereof.