Course Description: Race and the experience of race are a seemingly ineliminable part of our everyday lives, in many different ways. Race is often used as the basis for individuals’ primary locus of identity; it is used in politics, both explicitly and implicitly, for good and for ill; it operates under the radar to structure how we view and sense the world around us; and these uses have been ongoing throughout history. Considering all that we ask race to do for us in our understanding of ourselves, the world, society, and culture, it is worthwhile to pause and to ask ourselves, what are we talking about when we talk about “race” and “races”? Does race have the same meanings in all of these conversations? Is it an umbrella term that covers several different yet coherently connected meanings? Or is it an empty or incoherent concept held together by nothing more than the status quo conventions of how we talk and how history has shaped that talk?
This course provides a broad overview of several different facets of philosophical conversations about race, beginning with these sorts of questions about what we are taking as our object in the first place when we have them. Furthermore, how we answer these questions will have a major impact on how we think about who we are and how we identify and understand ourselves and each other, how we think about combating oppression and domination connected to race and racism, as well as how we define the kind of world we want to live in. As we think through these questions philosophically and consider the many aspects of “race” we will engage with issues related to the metaphysics of race, the psychological and experiential facets of race, specific ethical and political questions surrounding race, and the connections between race, ethnicity, class, and feminist thought. We will also look at the historical development of the very idea of race, including how it continues to evolve within the contemporary world, in order to articulate and analyze where we find ourselves now given the histories of race and racism that we have inherited and continue to challenge and/or reinforce every day.
Philosophy and Race (F21)