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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: tshelby@fas.harvard.edu
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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 

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