PHL 2150 Midterm Due: Wednesday, October 24th

Via email: woodsonaj@missouri.edu

Feel free to address any one of these prompts or combination of prompts. If you chose to pursue Option D, do not address it in combination with another prompt.

A. Race is often taken to be self-evident. Identify at least two challenges to thinking about race in ways that vary from what are upbringing has taught us to assume. Reference lecture or readings.

B. What is the relationship between race and racism? Reference at least two readings to support your position and identify and summarize one counter argument?

C. If race is socially constructed, what difference does it make? Reference at least two readings to support your position and identify and summarize one counter argument?

D. How should we understand racial inequality? Racism is an attempt to theorize (systematize an explanation) racial inequality. Does racism best account for racial (black/white) inequality? If so, which account (three options are listed below) do you find most persuasive? If not, why not? Make your case by presenting the general accounts of racism fail to best explain racial inequality. The easiest way would be address the primary objection to this position listed in the following. Reference at least two readings to support your position and identify and summarize one counter argument?

Minimum citations from readings: 3Font: Cambria 12pt Margins: 1”Citation format: Choose your preferential standard citation formatDouble spaced

For Option D:

The Case for a Racist Society

This position affirms the idea that racial inequality is the result of unjust discriminatory practices which deny Black people an equal opportunity to reach levels of well being enjoyed by the average American and averages attained by the white U.S. populace (which is generally higher than the national average).

This view typically identifies racism with the most prominent historical practices of unjust race relations such as the transatlantic slave trade, chattel slavery, lynching, sharecropping, and segregation/Jim Crow laws.

PHL 2150 Midterm Due: Wednesday, October 24th

Via email: woodsonaj@missouri.edu

Often the aforementioned social practices are relegated to pervious historical periods. In the absence of these historical practices, contemporarily how should we understand continued (or in some instances growing) racial inequality?

If your answer is ethnocentrism, then you must determine whether it is active/manifest or past/latent ethnocentrism.

Option 1: Racism as Accrued Ignorance: If we consider the slave trade, chattel slavery, lynching, sharecropping and Jim Crow to be the ‘causes’ of racial inequality then should we understand the time since the Modern Civil Rights Movement (1965-Present) as absent further active causes of racial inequality. If so, the current struggle for equality of opportunity is to deal with the effects of past racism. For example, reducing the cycle of poverty or helping to address ill-gotten advantages or disadvantages.

Option 2: Racism as Ill Will, Malice and/or Greed: If we consider the slave trade, chattel slavery, lynching, sharecropping and Jim Crow to be ‘forms’ of racial inequality then should we understand the time since the Modern Civil Rights Movement (1965-Present) as still potentially comprised of active causes of racial inequality. If so, the current struggle for equality of opportunity is to identify the current form of racial inequality/racism and the prospects for ending the current form. Ill will, malice and/or greed are more or less permanent features of intergroup relationship.

A third option attributes racism to social institutions which create the context wherein it is beneficial to assign people to groups with differential access to social resources (i.e. civil rights, income/wealth, liberty)

Option 3: Racism as the product of a social order: This view also considers the slave trade, chattel slavery, lynching, sharecropping and Jim Crow to be ‘forms’ of racial inequality which are still potentially active causes of racial inequality today. The current struggle for equality of opportunity is to identify the current form of racial inequality through analysis of which social arrangements are responsible for racism.

Recall: There are two critical aspects to race. There is status conferred by virtue of one’s racial assignment. Let’s call this the racial lens element of race. Then there is the some aspect of your person that triggers the racial lens. The trigger in the case of people racialized as Black is visible African origin. The racial lens element assigns each race to a place within a hierarchal structure. Unlike, race, African origin or place of origin or ethnic group is not necessarily reflective of a social hierarchy.

PHL 2150 Midterm Due: Wednesday, October 24th

Via email: woodsonaj@missouri.edu

This twoness of race leads some to muddle the desire to overcome racial hierarchy with how one feels in relationship to their community, ethnicity, and/or place of origin. (Think of Du Bois and Haslanger’s accounts)

The Case for Racial Inequality as Natural Inequality

If we are careful not to equate overt discrimination, unjust discrimination, and discrimination as such then it is possible for there to be a sharp decline in overt discrimination while other forms of unjust discrimination might not follow suit.

You can hold true that overt racial discrimination has declined, and that racial inequality persists or even that racial inequality has worsened without affirming the inferiority of Black people. Possible alternative accounts:

1. More subtle forms of discrimination with similar effects to overt discrimination might have become the new norm continually adding to the legacy of past unjust racial discrimination. 2. The only relevant form of unjust racial discrimination is overt racial discrimination, which has significantly declined but the effects of past unjust racial discrimination account for continued racial inequality.

Most importantly, evaluating the argument for the inferiority of people classified as Black would require looking into the facts of the case and so determine (1) overt racial discrimination actually declined; (2) looking into whether pervasive yet subtle (less obvious) forms of racial discrimination persist in the post-Civil Rights era; (3) the effects of past discrimination.

Unfortunately, we do not have time to significantly look directly into the state of affairs. Although, important yet limited information concerning the state of affairs at various moments of U.S. history can be gleamed from course readings.

Challenges to this racial inferiority position*No independent basis for racial group membershipConceptual point – the difference/distinctions we perceive and conceive reflect what we find meaningful. The world around us consists of an infinite amount of ways to delineate one thing from another. The world is not as Aristotle once maintained ‘cut at the joints,’ instead, we experience difference when we distinguish as relevant some point of difference from the other possible points of difference.

Take note that in this short exposition, I am not denying the existence of actual differences; rather that the experience of difference reflects what we find relevant.

PHL 2150 Midterm Due: Wednesday, October 24th

Via email: woodsonaj@missouri.edu

Let us understand –relevance or meaning - as determined by the relationship of a person, place or thing to a desired objective or goal. If understood to be relevant, an entity is distinguished, distinct and lines of difference are drawn. If a person, place or thing has no effect on the likelihood of achieving the goal then it is has no relevance.

For our purposes, the salient point is the identification of difference is always ‘relevant’ difference. That is to say, the experience of difference is the product of a desired objective or goal. Our goal in the class is to identify what desired objective or goal [what interests are served] that created the salience of race [racial differences] and, by extension, the racial inequality. Recall here that race thinking entails assigning a special relationship between physical characteristics to substantive aspects of personhood such as moral character, intelligence, work ethic, virtue, relationship to god, etc.

A further point can be made regarding the relationship between meaning and relevance. Relevance is established in two directions. If the entity helps to achieve the desired goal or objective then it assumes a positive meaning; if the entity impedes the realization of the desired goal then it receives a negative meaning.

Ex. 1 [Now, I am making a plausible assumption about the relationship between an interest in fashion and the appreciation of color. For purposes of illustration, assume there to be a relationship and the way I have characterized it – true.] A person interested in fashion will most likely take note of more color distinctions on the color spectrum because color differences affect the ability to achieve a desired look. This person would see the dress pictured as coral. A person not interested in fashion could see the same dress and identify it as pink or more humorously [for the fashionably inclined]- orange or red. Same dress; two varying experience of difference.

Historical point – Slavery made Race

PHL 2150 Midterm Due: Wednesday, October 24th

Via email: woodsonaj@missouri.edu

In 1640, three men (Two European, 1 African) fled indenture servitude. The African descendant, John Punch, was declared as a servant for life. By 1680, forced labor had become exclusively assigned to people brought over through the Atlantic slave trade. The reasons for the shift from English forced labor to a combination of African and English forced labor to only African forced labor are thus:

1. the economic need to encourage more European immigrants through shorter indenture periods and improved conditions of labor.

2. the realization that the supply of Africans did not depend on conditions of labor, since servitude was involuntary.

3. The need for cheap, controllable, exploitable labor as the Southern colonies turned to plantation staples during the 17th century

4. the abundance of cheap land relative to the supply of labor, which led to high and rising wages for most Europeans

5. Over time preferred use of labor supply at home rather than the colonies

African origin became stigmatized which justified the denial of due regard to people identified as Black. [e.g. not including people identified as Black within the claim of ‘All men are created equal’]. On the other hand, western Europeans became white (a category that would later extend to the rest of the continent) as a special status/asset that allows claims of dominion, privileged (often exclusive) access to occupations, education, places of residence and credit. How people, by virtue of being white, should conduct themselves has been defined in opposition to the norms associated with being black.