Gender, Race and Philosophy: The Blog

Philosophy and the Carceral Society

The nation’s prison population has hit a new peak and the international business of private prisons is growing.  Moreover, there is a convergence of this disturbing trend with the detention practices the U.S. government uses as part of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as in its recent crack down against undocumented immigrants in the United States. The parallels go beyond the growth of each of these sorts of prisons.  Some activists assert that the torture that has been revealed in Iraq and Afghanistan are used against U.S. prisoners.  Likewise, just as enemy combatants disappear in our secret detention centers, so do undocumented immigrants in I.C.E. facilities.

This problem is ominous and philosophers, particularly those who work on the issues of gender and race, should be paying attention.  Clearly, some of us are.  There has been some discussion about prisons (beyond liberal theories of punishment) for some time and by significant philosophers.  The two that come immediately to mind are, of course, Angela Davis and Michel Foucault.  I recently came across an article by Eduardo Mendieta that draws on their work (see the link below for the article), and it got me to think about the relationship of philosophy to what some theorists call the “carceral society.”  Particularly striking to me is the word “abolition,” which of course refers to the prison abolition movement which refers back to the antebellum movement to abolish slavery in the United States.  Are contemporary philosophers, especially philosophers of race and gender, missing the boat on this one?  Are we failing to see and address one of the biggest political and racial issues of our era?  What is behind this lack of attention? 

While there are political philosophers and philosophers of race  working on the issue of prisons, it is not a subject at the center of the debate.  For example, in the most influential recent analytic accounts of racism, prisons are hardly mentioned.  Racial profiling and other such issues are mentioned, but prisons, surprisingly, are not!  I suspect that philosophers, myself included, have seen prisons as symptoms, as outcomes of institutional racism and distributive justice at other levels of society.  Thus, while educational and residential segregation are regularly addressed, prisons as a subject are neglected.

After reading Mendieta, I worry these standard approaches misses the full spectrum of how prisons function within nations and the political, really geopolitical significance of prisons.  Drawing on Angela Davis, Mendieta lists 10 ways that prisons are racialized and serve to racialize population, and  I think his list deserves some thought.  For example, his claims that prisons, among other things, are “political machines that disenfranchise racialized others leading to their civic death,” and are “branding devices that lead to the accumulation of negative symbolic capital” are deeply intriguing and help us think about prisons beyond the idea that the are merely static symptoms of social injustice.  According to Davis and Mendieta, prisons, in their own way, are resources in the perpetuation and production of social injustice.

Eduardo Mendieta, “The Prison Contract and Surplus Punishment: On Angela Y. Davis’s Abolitionsim,” http://www.usfca.edu/fac-staff/rrsundstrom/Mendieta_Prisons.pdf

New York Times, “Prison Nation,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10mon1.html?scp=4&sq=prison%20population&st=nyt

Institutions, Systems, Structures

Folks who work on oppression often distinguish oppression attributable to individuals from oppression attributable to institutions.  Thus, there's a lot of discussion about institutional racism or sexism, say, as well as discussion of systemic or structural racism or sexism. Here's a quick question: anyone have any thoughts on the nature of the relation between the institutional, the systemic, and the structural?  Are these terms just being used as synonyms, at least in the relevant literature?  I have a vague feeling that it is possible to have non-systemic and non-structural institutions, but (since the relevant systems and structures are all social systems and structures, I presume), I'm not sure that there are any non-institutional (social) structures or (social) systems.  Any thoughts?

(Cross-posting from Pea Soup.  Hat tip: Robert Johnson's comments there prompted some revisions here.)

Classifying recent work on race

Nathan Placencia, a grad student at UC-Riverside teaching this year at DePauw, was at the Dayton Colloquium last weekend.  I really enjoyed getting to know him and his work.  He sent me a question he'd like our blog community to consider (below).  I hope people will be inspired to help him out!  --SH.

"While working on my dissertation I've been trying to map out the domains of inquiry in which contemporary philosophers of race operate. So far I've come up with at least three very rough divisions:
    (1) theorizing about the social scientific use of race;
    (2) theorizing about the political use of race; and
    (3) theorizing about the popular, folk, or ordinary use of race.
For (1) the primary goal of one's theoretical work is to come up with a viable conception of race that can be used by social scientists to build better theories as well as to improve empirical work. Or one argues that there is no viable conception of race and, therefore, social scientists should stop using it. For (2) the primary goal is to expose conceptions of race that have been used to oppress populations and to construct new conceptions of race that either empower oppressed populations or in someway fight against their oppression. For (3) the primary goal is to capture the "folk" meaning of "race talk" and/or to describe how ordinary practices of racial categorizing operate. Usually what follows this investigation is a discussion of whether or not "race talk" and its corresponding practices ought to be eliminated, significantly revised, or conserved.

I would like to find out if practitioners in the field think that this in apt way to divide up contemporary theoretical work on race. And, if so, how would they classify their own work along these lines."

New Work on Implicit Bias

Erica Roedder and Dan Kelly have just posted a very interesting and valuable paper on implicit bias called, "Racial Cognition and the Ethics of Implicit Bias."  It discusses recent work in psychology on implicit racial bias and considers whether it is morally problematic, in an of itself, to have implicit biases.  The paper considers work by Garcia, Blum and Corlett to determine whether and how their accounts of racism take a stand on implicit bias and find that there are important unaswered questions.

If you haven't taken the Implicit Association Test (IAP), you should take it before you read this paper.  Don't try to learn about how the test works first, just take it and see what happens.  I myself have qualms about whether the test is effective for those who know they have implicit biases and try to guard against their impact, but we can talk about that in a later series of posts.

Radical Hope

There has been a lot of chatter these days about hope, especially with Obama using it as a campaign slogan.  It is exciting to see so many people excited and mobilized by the idea of hope during this election campaign.  Yet it is easy and perhaps instinctive for philosophers to dismiss hope as naive emotion.  I was reminded of this when I recently came across, in a colleague’s paper, Kafka’s quip, “Oh [there is], plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us.”  Kafka’s sentiment is dark, but it isn’t too dark.  While you and I are doomed, the people that follow may have some of that hope, which is part of an infinite supply somewhere out there beyond our sight and grasp.

How to access that hope in dark times is the subject of Jonathan Lear’s new book Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Destruction (Harvard 2007).  The book is a fascinating analysis of the life of the Sioux leader, Plenty Coups and his attempt to steer his people to a new way of existing after the collapse of the Sioux’s traditional way of life.  Radical Hope draws on a variety of philosophical methods and literature to discuss the destruction of the Sioux world, including the collapse of its central concepts (mainly courage), and the possibility of hope.

I was very impressed with Lear’s sustained analysis of Plenty Coup’s life, dream life, and politics.  Often major works in philosophy turn away from America—and frequently toward the Ancient World—for narratives to illustrate their analyses.  Lear didn’t.  Instead he delivered an insightful work about radical hope that was richly detailed with an American narrative.  For this reason, Lear’s book is a work of American philosophy about American identity.  I look forward to reading more books like Lear’s.

I wondered, however, as I read the book, how will the few philosophers out there who’ve been working in Native American philosophy react to this book?  Lear doesn’t engage that literature.  Indeed, a reader who is unfamiliar with the extent of work done on Native American philosophy may get the false impression that this work is unique in its taking up of Native American issues in U.S. philosophy.

In addition that question, I have a lingering worry about the book: Lear’s argument that Plenty Coups’ decision to ally with the U.S. government and to fight with U.S. troops against the Sioux, who were the traditional enemies of the  Crow, was courageous and an example of “radical hope” was too quick—and too convenient from the perspectives of critics of U.S. policies toward Native Americans tribes.  Much of Lear’s argument pivots on his claim that Plenty Coup was “facing up to reality” and “exercising good judgment” about the military force of the U.S. government.  With all due respect to Plenty Coups, maybe he got lucky—there was no reality to apprehend in dealings with the U.S. government.  The U.S. government’s dealings with the Native American tribes was capricious, exploitative, and brutal.  “Reality” shifted with American demands.  Sitting Bull was, in such a situation, just as rational to continue attacks against the U.S. government.

By the way, my colleague who authored the paper on Kafka wasn’t such a fan of Lear’s conclusions, and maybe for reasons similar to my worries above.  Within oppressive governments “reality” is hard to pin down and is manipulated by the powerful.  The movements of raw, capricious force is not something that serves as a reliable foundation for any sort of hope, radical or not.

-RS

Confucianism and Sexism

Manyul Im has a blog on Chinese Philosophy that has a recent thread on Confucianism and Sexism, with interesting comments.  Check it out here!  Thanks Manyul! 
--SH

Mallon essay on social construction

I just came across an article by Ron Mallon "A Field Guide to Social Construction," by Ron Mallon (in Blackwell's Philosophy Compass).  I believe there is direct and free access here:
http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1747-9991.2006.00051.x

Toward the end of the paper, Ron makes the following point:
"But while nativist accounts of folk theories of race may compete with constructionist explanations, they might also be combined into accounts emphasizing a variety of factors -- both social and psychological -- leading to folk racial theorizing.  And in any case, there is no reason that human kind constructionism about race cannot be paired with alternate accounts -- including nativist accounts -- of racial theories.  Such accounts might hold that psychological predispositions contribute to the formation of racial social roles that have played an important role in racial oppression." (103)

I agree with Ron that in principle nativist accounts of race might be combined with constructionist accounts, but I am very dubious of empirical work (I'm most familiar with Hirshfeld's (1996), which I think is appallingly bad) suggesting "innate psychological propensities to categorize people" along lines that map the contours of social race.  Of course children recognize the difference between brown skin and pale skin as soon as they get color concepts, just as they recognize the difference between a red apple and a green apple.  But children have to be taught that sometimes green apples turn red, and they must be taught that brown skinned babies won't turn pale as they grow up, and that a pregnant pale mommy with a pale daddy will probably not produce a brown baby. (I know this from personal experience with my own family.) There are many complex issues here, but I don't think there is any reason, in fact, to think that a combined nativist + constructivist account of race is plausible.

What do others think?

--SH