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I'm not a racist, but--: the moral quandary of race

Permanent Link(s)
https://hdl.handle.net/1813/112322
Collections
Race & Ethnicity
Author
Blum, Lawrence
Abstract

"Not all racial incidents are racist incidents," Lawrence Blum says. "We need a more varied and nuanced moral vocabulary for talking about the arena of race. We should not be faced with a choice of 'racism' or nothing." Use of the word "racism" is pervasive: An article about the NAACP's criticism of television networks for casting too few "minority" actors in lead roles asks, "Is television a racist institution?" A white girl in Virginia says it is racist for her African-American teacher to wear African attire. Blum argues that a growing tendency to castigate as "racism" everything that goes wrong in the racial domain reduces the term's power to evoke moral outrage. In "I'm Not a Racist, But ...," Blum develops a historically grounded account of "racism" as the deeply morally charged notion it has become. He addresses the question whether people of color can be racist, defines types of racism, and identifies debased and inappropriate usages of the term. Though racial insensitivity, racial anxiety, racial ignorance, and racial injustice are, in his view, not "racism," they are racial ills that should elicit moral concern. Blum argues that "race" itself is a morally destructive idea, implying moral distance and unequal worth. History and genetic science reveal both the avoidability and the falsity of the idea of race. Blum argues that we can give up the idea of race but must recognize that racial groups' historical and social experience has been shaped by having been treated as if they were races.

Description
Contents: 1."Racism" : its core meaning --2.Can Blacks be racist --3.Varieties of racial ills --4.Racial discrimination and color blindness --5."Race" : what we mean and what we think we mean --6."Race" : a brief history, with moral implications --7.Do races exist --8.Racialized groups and social constructions --9.Should we try to give up race?
Date Issued
2002
Publisher
Cornell University Press
Keywords
Racism--Moral and ethical aspects
•
Race discrimination
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Social ethics
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Race discrimination
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Racism--Moral and ethical aspects
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Social ethics
Has Other Format(s)
bibid: 4163216
ISBN
9781501701962pdf
1501701967pdf
0801438691 (hardback)
9780801438691 (hardback)
9780801488153 (paperback)
080148815X (paperback)
Type
book
Accessibility Hazard
none
Link(s) to Catalog Record
https://newcatalog.library.cornell.edu/catalog/15546427

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