Race, Justice and American Intellectual Traditions

Stuart Rosenbaum

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9783319761978
• eBook ISBN: 9783319761985
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Some American intellectual traditions, although pristine in appearance, are racist at their core. This book reveals the racism inherent in those Platonist and Enlightenment moral traditions that motivate much contemporary rhetoric. Part One contains five chapters of substantial critique, while Part Two contains four chapters of constructive suggestion explaining how indigenous American traditions of thought about morality avoid the racism of conventional Western moral thought that dominates political rhetoric. This book, because of its focus, thesis, and brevity, will be useful in a number of academic contexts, including political science, American studies, philosophy, sociology, and also to the larger educated public.

© The Author(s) 2018

Stuart RosenbaumRace, Justice and American Intellectual Traditions https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76198-5_1

Begin Abstract

1. Prologue

Stuart Rosenbaum¹  

(1)

Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

 

 

Stuart Rosenbaum

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Ideas have consequences, and ideas have origins. Origins are at least as important as consequences, and sometimes more important, as the origin of the automobile illustrates. Likewise, moral ideas have origins equally significant for their content, as does the idea of justice. Our traditional European ideas of justice include the foundations of slavery and genocide. Only indigenous ideas of justice avoid those foundations.

Keywords

RaceNative AmericanSlaveryHenry FordTwenty-first-century racism

End Abstract

Ideas have consequences and ideas have origins. In thinking that ideas have consequences, we acknowledge the importance of what follows from them. In acknowledging that ideas have origins, we acknowledge the importance of those origins. But why are origins of ideas important?

Origins are important because they reveal particulars and contexts and alternatives. The idea of the automobile, for example, originated in a context where people moved about in vehicles drawn by animals; those vehicles were not self-moving. In that context, “self-mobility” was not possible. Combine that pre-automobile context with some inventions, along with the creativity of Henry Ford and his precursors, and you have the origin of self-mobility—automobiles.

Seeing the origin of the automobile, and the idea of it, draws attention also to elaborations of that idea. A “flying car,” for example, represents the intersection of the ideas of an automobile and an airplane. Ideas, coupled with contexts and human creativity, have cultural consequences. The idea of the automobile originated in a specific context, and apart from that context, the idea might not have appeared. Automobiles originated in the Western , industrial world, not elsewhere. In addition, the origins we know might have produced different results and different cultural consequences.

Henry Ford , for example, was famous for saying about his cars, “People can have any color they want, so long as it’s black.” If Ford had prevailed, automobiles might not have become the colorful appliances we see about us today. One might elaborate particulars and contexts of origin for many ideas—indeed for all ideas. And one might explore as well questions naturally associated with the idea that ideas have origins.

Why, for example, did automobiles originate only in the Western , industrial world? Why did Henry Ford’s preference for black automobiles not dominate for long in the commercial production of automobiles? Why did the Chinese or the Indians not produce automobiles? All such questions must be answered in terms of the particulars and contexts that give rise to ideas and their uses in particular places and times. What about ideas of morality? Do they have origins? Do they have particular contexts wherein they arise and function?

Justice

All ideas have origins, and one may understand ideas of morality by attending carefully to the particulars and contexts in which they originate and have their home. The idea of justice is of special interest in the contemporary American world.

The American world is morally complex in specific ways we barely acknowledge and rarely mention. American history is, from contemporary perspectives, rife with immoralities. The genocide we inflicted on Native Americans for five centuries, we rarely acknowledge. The slavery we practiced for four centuries, we believe we have transcended. Was it just for our forebears to kill Native Americans and to take for themselves and us the lands those Natives had lived on and with for thousands of years before we crossed the Atlantic? Was slavery a just—or at least not an unjust—institution?

We now know the answers to these questions, and we believe we have put aside the immoralities of our American ancestors. But the trauma of those immoralities continues to shape our American world. So perhaps we have not really gotten away from those injustices? Perhaps they continue to shape our lives?

Race

The most prominent expression of the injustice that continues to shape our lives is racism . Native Americans now live on reservations far from population centers and are little in our awareness. Black Americans, however, live among white Americans, and the legacy of slavery and of the century and a half following it lives on in our American world.

Twenty-first-century racism is the long shadow of America’s 500 years of racist white supremacy. Specific parts of that long shadow are contents of the following chapters. Black “criminality ” and police shootings of black men and boys are some parts of that shadow that are important in what follows. But part of that 500-year legacy of racism and white supremacy, and part of that long shadow are the moral ideas interwoven with it.

All moral ideas in our contemporary world have origins and histories. Understanding those origins and histories enables us to see alternatives. Seeing alternatives to our moral ideas can empower us in ways we seldom imagine.

Seeing how Platonism is writ into our moral ideas enables us to think alternatives to those Platonist dimensions of our thought. Seeing how Enlightenment ideas of morality are embedded in our moral thinking enables us to think beyond those ideas. Seeing how our understanding of justice has specific historical roots enables us to think beyond those roots.

The point of this book is to reveal some historical foundations of contemporary moral thinking—and in particular of our thought about justice. Our American racism is intricately interwoven with the historical roots of our thought about justice.

Plato , the Enlightenment , our Constitution and our long, messy history of racism need to be revealed in their naked collusion. We need to see our racist history and our moral traditions as intimately woven together. Only seeing how our moral traditions enforce our racism, and also how our racism reinforces our moral thinking can enable us to see a more constructive world beyond the racism deeply embedded in our lives.

This book is a partial unmasking of the moral traditions that enable and perpetuate our racism. Part I (Our Problem, Our Justice, Our Past) is an argument that our large Western moral traditions are racist. Five primary chapters elaborate Western sources of our moral traditions and a sixth summarizes those five.

Part II (Our Problem, Our Responsibility, Our Future) finds a constructive alternative to our moral traditions rooted in an indigenous, American moral tradition that holds the promise of freedom from our racism . Four chapters bring us into a contemporary world that needs our indigenous moral traditions.

* * *

A note about my use of the term “indigenous.” I use the term more expansively than is customary, and I hope doing so is not objectionable to those accustomed to using it in a more restrictive way. The normal restrictive way of using the term constrains its application to Native Americans or First Peoples or to what originates solely with them. My more expansive use of the term allows it to include perspectives of non-European and still American origin. Thus W.E.B. DuBois and John Dewey , since their perspectives on matters moral, religious and social do have deep roots in the American, non-European world are legitimate representatives of indigenous thought. And I believe significant benefits follow from this more expansive use of “indigenous.”

One benefit of the more expansive use is that connections between genuinely (restricted use) “indigenous” peoples and the (expansive use) “indigenous” perspectives I see in DuBois and Dewey become stronger together, and more distinctive in contrast to the European perspectives I claim are racist. Scott Pratt has elaborated this connection nicely in his Native Pragmatism , and I would be happy to claim Pratt’s imprimatur for the claims I make here about the indigenous—and pragmatist—perspectives of DuBois and Dewey. Our European heritage is racist. Our indigenous traditions are not.

Part IOur Problem, Our Justice, Our Past

© The Author(s) 2018

Stuart RosenbaumRace, Justice and American Intellectual Traditions https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76198-5_2

Begin Abstract

2. Justice and Race

Stuart Rosenbaum¹

(1)

Baylor University, Waco, TX, USA

Stuart Rosenbaum

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This chapter begins by describing a philosophy class discussion of a recently enacted Texas Voter Identification law. The class (mostly Republicans, but for one black female who is president of the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)) is divided by disagreement rooted in cultural difference, the same differences that divide American cultural and political worlds. The same cultural difference finds a home in confrontations between police and black men and boys; these confrontations I describe in some detail. Amadou Diallo appears, as do also Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, along with other instances of police shootings/killings of black men and boys. Justice questions get precise focus in all these situations of conflict. Western traditions of thought about justice find their way into virtually all our conversations about these particular situations that evoke judgments of justice and injustice.

Keywords

JusticeRaceMichael BrownDarren WilsonAmadou DialloPrincipleKing Solomon

End Abstract

Our setting is an introductory philosophy class at Baylor University , a Baptist university in Waco, Texas . The Texas legislature has just passed a restrictive voter identification law. The class is filled with Republicans, or at least with students whose parents are Republicans. One exception is a black female who is president of the campus chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) ; she is the only black student in the class. The class has focused on issues related to classical sources in social and political philosophy.

The students are almost unanimous in support of the Texas legislature’s action that strictly requires voter ID. A vocal exception is the female president of the campus chapter of the NAACP. What strikes the professor is a specific kind of obtuseness—a sort of blindness—in all of the students in the discussion.

The white Republican supporters of the voter ID law are blind to the constraints under which many poor Americans, especially poor black Americans, live. As natural to them as being college students is the idea of having a photo ID for voter identification . If they drive a car they must have a ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Prologue
• Part I. Our Problem, Our Justice, Our Past
• Part II. Our Problem, Our Responsibility, Our Future
• Back Matter