black lives matter Flashcards
intro
real question: does race matter?
BLM = movement against racially-motivated police brutality
- drawing strenght/nrs from murder of George Floyd
- originally formed in the US but now increasingly worldwide (e.g. Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris 2020)
BLM important politically and sociologically
- racism is wrong
- police brutality is wrong
- and thus: racially-motivated police brutality is wrong
-> what more can be said about the subject, except that the problem should be fixed?
the sociological/political problem raises a philosophical one = do black lives matter FOR JUSTICE
- why and in what way?
- and compared to what?
the problem is an interesting one: liberalism answers no
- liberalism rejects that black lives matter, except insofar as all lives matter
do black lives matter? - Rawls
dismisses all concerns about race as obviously irrelevant for justice
“[In the original position] no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his
fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence, strength and the like …. The principles of justice
are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged of disadvantaged in the choice of principles
by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances”
liberal argument is simple:
- All people must be treated with equal concern and respect.
- Black lives don’t matter in particular, because all lives matter equally
Indeed, the essential principle of equal concern and respect – Kymlicka’s ‘egalitarian plateau’ – means that race can have no place in matters of justice
this is true also for multiculturalists:
- Race matters if attached to culture. But that’s because culture matters, not race.
- This is Kymlicka’s multiculturalism position; also David Miller’s liberal nationalist position
but is this satisfying? race still presents a unique and enduring problem -> how might it matter philosophically
-> black lives matter politically but not philosophically
- police brutality is simply an expression of society under non-ideal conditions
some questions we might raise:
- What if race is mischaracterized as simply an ascriptive condition? (If a society cannot be color blind, the problem cannot
be pushed away) - What if racism is better understood as an ideology, part of the language of society itself? Racism, then, is like the
patriarchy (as in Hirschman) socially constructed but ever-present
- Consequently, what if liberal neutrality legitimates domination?
race and the history of political thought
original (ancient) bifurcation: civilization and barbarism
in Plato’s republic: the question of war emerges -> Socrates argues it is better to enslave barbarians than Greeks
- Greeks were civilized, and thus subject of justice; barbarians were uncivilized, and could thus be enslaved
- subjects of justice is our “co-nationals”/those like us
Aristotle’s Politics defends slavery (esp of uncivilized peoples unfit for freedom): he discusses diff regimes and argues that Asiatic peoples are predisposed to despotic rule:
- Barbarians, being more servile in character than Hellenes, and Asiatics than Europeans, do not rebelagainst a despotic gov bc the people are by nature slaves
also modern: new bifurcation between enlightened peoples (white, European), and unenlightened ones (mostly black/brown peoples in Africa and Asia)
Rousseau Social Contract (1762): in favor of maturity of states and that some people aren’t ready for freedom
- for nations as for men, there is a time of maturity that must be awaited before subjecting them to the laws
John Stuart Mill (1859): barbarian peoples can legitimately be ruled by despotism, as only civilized peoples can rule themselves
- “Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians… Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free
and equal discussion” - naturally disposed to despotism until educated otherwise
arguments like these can be easily used to justify colonialism?
spotlight: Fanon
(Black Skin, White Masks)
Fanon (1925-1961), was a colonial subject of French Martinique, and was a practicing psychiatrist (in addition to being a philosopher).
He begins with the fact of colonial oppression and domination – RACE AS ERASURE
- Structural inequality (including and especially in language) – similar
starting point as Hirschmann. - This leads to psychosis and alienation
The problem isn’t purely biological, it is the interplay between biology and sociology:
- “The effective disalienation of the black man entails an immediate recognition of social and economic realities. If there is an inferiority complex, it is the outcome of a double process: primarily economic; subsequently, the internalization – or, better, the EPDERMALIZATION – of this inferiority … It will be seen that the black man’s alienation is not an individual question … Society, unlike biochemical processes, cannot escape human influences. Man is what brings society into being. !!The prognosis is in the hands of those who are willing to get rid of the worm-eaten roots of the structure”!! (4-5).
- it is internal to the structure, internal from the self (not too diff from Sandel case against Rawls: maybe there is no self apart from the structure of everything)
This sociological observations lead to a moral conclusion:
Forces of structural imbalance, erasure, and self-alienation destroy the black psyche and lead to psychosis - the COLONIZED PREDICAMENT:
- “Every colonized people – in other words, every people in whose soul an inferiority complex has been created by the death and burial of its local cultural originality – finds itself face to face with the language of the civilizing nation; that is, with the culture of the mother country. The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country’s cultural standards. He becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness, his jungle” (9).
- colonialism created structures wherein the only way of advancement was self-..(admiration?)
What to do? One answer: PSYCHOLOGICAL TRANSFORMATION
- “The juxtaposition of the white and black races has created a massive psychoexistential complex. I hope by analyzing it to destroy it” (5).
- “What I want to do is help the black man to free himself of the arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment” (20).
- self-analyze it away
!don’t get rid of race (against liberalism), need to reimagine it
Another answer: VIOLENCE
- “From the moment the Negro accepts the separation imposed by the European he has no further respite, and ‘is it not understandable that thenceforth he will try to elevate himself to the white man’s level? To elevate himself in the range of colors to which he attributes a kind of hierarchy? … We shall see that another solution is possible. !!It implies a restructuring of the world!!” (Fanon 1952: 65)
(the problem is not race, it is that it is being constructed on the epidermes: as feature of skincolor etc.)
(it becomes socially embedded in this way -> structural inequality, it becomes a psychosis: the black self becomes alienated from itself)
spotlight: Baldwin
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
- Baldwin (1924-1987) was an American novelist, activist and critic.
- He had a different perspective: the problem wasn’t just the history of (colonial) violence, but of the IDEOLOGY OF WHITE INNOCENCE.
- “I know what the world has done to my brother and how narrowly he has survived it. And I know, which is much worse, and this is the crime of which I accuse my country and my countrymen, and for which neither I nor time nor history will ever forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it. One can be, indeed one must strive to become, tough and philosophical concerning destruction and death **!!… But it is not permissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime”*!! (5-6).
- whites have discriminated against blacks, but whiteness signifies nothing (pretend the problem is not yours bc whiteness was never interrogated)(you didn’t colonize)
This white innocence suggests:
- Past racism is gone (slavery is over)
- We have atoned for the sins of prior generations (said sorry, restructered the south)
- We now believe racism is wrong
- We are innocent
Conceptually: white innocence sounds a lot like liberal neutrality
Further: White innocence places the burden of acceptance on blacks.
- “There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it” (8-9).
- not blacks having to psychoanalysis undo alienation of blackness, the opposite is also true: whites need to psychologically get themselves out of the conditions.
Baldwin and Fanon ->
In short: the solution is to see race, to understand it – not to pretend it doesn’t exist.
This is the opposite of liberalism:
- We will only become free, if we become free from racism.
- We will only become free from racism, by facing it head on.
- The means both: freeing blacks from racism, and whites from the ideology of innocence
- “The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks – the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind … We, the black and the white, deeply need each other here if we are really to become a nation – if we are really, that is, to achieve our identity, our maturity, our men and women” (97).
NOTE: Baldwin’s “in the mind” is reminiscent of Hirschmann & Taylor (and Sandel)
- idea of a common good
liberalism revisited
was Rawls right?
- If so, race is just a social problem not a philosophical problem.
- But if racial hierarchy is embedded in language and culture as Fanon suggests, and shared history as Baldwin suggests, perhaps it cannot be so easily willed away.
What can we do to correct socially constructed facts? (without violence)
- Hirschmann: change language
- Fanon: change psychology
- Baldwin: open the black box of history
- # BLM: Embrace social movements
So what to do?
- One solution: change the way we teach ideas.
- In other words: decolonizing the curriculum.
- Which is part of why we need to teach Fanon & Baldwin (and so many others) in the first place
Q&A
Arendt: freedom in the will - what happens in the west in the modern era: where we locate freedom is within the self (it is a state of being)
- but only works if there’s also the idea of a force field
- force field tends to be on your own -> monk can go on mountain and be free
- but we live together, we can will ourselves, but we can’t will others without coercion -> can only be free through coercion or
- will leads to the opposite of freedom
starting gate vs end state theories
- starting gate = i give you principles of justice, you impose them on the world as it is. start with a logic of justice + all steps you care about is set up structurally -> spcfiic decsions don’t matter
= apply principles of justice and make sure that things happen in a just matter, if inequality emerges it is unrelated - starting gate is just Nozick
- end state want to say: we should angle towards an ideal, points of principles of justice is thatthey are a model to look towards, it never stops
*e.g. Rawls: gives idea of just institution, in reality it’s not like it -> how to make it better using Rawls principle
*confucing bc it looks like Dworkins is doing what Nozick is doesn’t but its diff (thought of his thought experiment is just to generate the principle of justice) - initial premise of starting in real society is what makes Nozick starting gate (it starts with the world as it is)
exam: all questions in class and esp in office hours are more sophisticated than the exam
- try to get the central insight into each of the ideas
- don’t get too messy
- stick with the central insight
- just keep it simple: what are the central insights
