Blackness and blood: Interpreting African American identity

Philosophy and Public Affairs

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 171-192

  McPherson, Lionel K ^a   Shelby, Tommie ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247671932     PISSN: 00483915     EISSN: 10884963     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1088-4963.2004.00010.x     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The State and the Shaping of Identity," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 23, ed. Grethe B. Peterson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2002), pp. 234-99.
2. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The State and the Shaping of Identity," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 23, 2002, Ibid., p. 272.
3. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The State and the Shaping of Identity," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 23, 2002, Ibid., p. 271.
4. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The State and the Shaping of Identity," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 23, 2002, Ibid., p. 282.
5. Kwame Anthony Appiah, "The State and the Shaping of Identity," in The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, vol. 23, 2002, Ibid., p. 282.
6. See, for example, "Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections," in K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, Color Conscious: The Political Morality of Race (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 30-105.
7. For important discussions of contemporary racial inequality in America with special emphasis on the plight of African Americans, see William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999)
8. Glenn C. Loury, The Anatomy of Racial Inequality (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002)
9. Marcellus Andrews, The Political Economy of Hope and Fear: Capitalism and the Black Condition in America (New York: NYU Press, 1999)
10. Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton, American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993)
11. Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth/White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Routledge, 1995).
12. See "The State and the Shaping of Identity," pp. 249-50.
13. See, e.g., Orlando Patterson, The Ordeal of Integration: Progress and Resentment in America's "Racial" Crisis (Washington, D.C.: Civitas, 1997), pp. 173-81.
14. The California constitutional initiative Proposition 54, called the "Racial Privacy Initiative," would prohibit state and local governments from classifying any individual by race, ethnicity, color, or national origin in the operation of public education, public contracting, public employment, or any other government activity. (Various exemptions apply.) See http://www.racialprivacy.org/; and http://www.voterguide.ss.ca.gov/propositions/ propositions.html. The "Racial Privacy Initiative" was defeated in October 2003.
15. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 267.
16. See, e.g., "Race, Culture, Identity"; "Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction," in Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 149-63
17. In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992)
18. 'But Would That Still Be Me?' Notes on Gender, 'Race', and Ethnicity, as Sources of 'Identity'," Journal of Philosophy 87 (1990): 493-99.
19. The usefulness of the method of thought experiment for uncovering our intersubjective criteria for racial identity is persuasively defended and illustrated in Charles W. Mills, Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), ch. 4.
20. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," pp. 241-44.
21. These distinctions are developed in Tommie Shelby, "Foundations of Black Solidarity: Collective Identity or Common Oppression?" Ethics 112 (2002): 231-66.
22. Also see Manning Marable, "Race, Identity, and Political Culture," in Black Popular Culture, ed. Gina Dent (New York: New Press, 1998), pp. 292-302
23. Robert Gooding-Williams, "Race, Multiculturalism and Democracy," Constellations 5 (1998): 18-41.
24. See, e.g., his "Identity, Authenticity, and Survival"; "Race, Culture, Identity"; and " 'But Would That Still Be Me?' "
25. For more on this point, see David Theo Goldberg, Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), ch. 4
26. Michael Omi and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s (New York: Routledge, 1994)
27. Lucius T. Outlaw, Jr., On Race and Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 1996)
28. Paul C. Taylor, "Appiah's Uncompleted Argument: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reality of Race," Social Theory and Practice 26 (2000): 103-28
29. Ronald Sundstrom, " 'Racial' Nominalism," Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (2002): 193-210.
30. Appiah defines racialism as the doctrine that "there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, which allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with members of any other race. These traits and tendencies characteristic of a race constitute, on the racialist view, a sort of racial essence; it is part of the content of racialism that the essential heritable characteristics of the 'Races of Man' account for more than the visible morphological characteristics-skin color, hair type, facial features-on the basis of which we make our informal classifications." In My Father's House, p. Following Appiah, we use the terms "racialism" and "racial essentialism" interchangeably.
31. There is strong empirical support for the claim that norms of solidarity are widely embraced by African Americans, even across class divisions. See Michael C. Dawson, Behind the Mule: Race and Class in African-American Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994)
32. Black Visions: The Roots of Contemporary African-American Political Ideologies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
33. For a classic discussion of this rule and its social meaning, see Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, vol. I (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1996), ch. For a recent discussion of the legal status of the rule
34. F. James Davis, Who Is Black? One Nation's Definition (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991). And for a discussion of the rule in relation to the practices of racial classification of the Census Bureau, see Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000).
35. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 284.
36. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 284., Ibid.
37. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 284., Ibid.
38. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 286., Ibid.
39. The idea of "race" as a trope of difference is developed in Henry Louis Gates, Jr., "Writing 'Race' and the Difference It Makes," in "Race,"Writing and Difference, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986), pp. 1-Appiah would concede that racial language is often used metaphorically, but he insists that such discourse also typically purports to be referential. He argues that when we use racial terms, such as "African American," to refer to persons or peoples, either we fail to refer to anything in the world at all or our meaning is contradictory. In short, "race" has no referent or coherent sense.
40. Here we follow Lawrence Blum's definition of racialization: "the treating of groups as if there were inherent and immutable differences between them; as if certain somatic characteristics marked the presence of significant characteristics of mind, emotion, and character; and as if some were of greater worth than others." See his "I'm Not a Racist, But . . .": The Moral Quandary of Race (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002), p. 147; emphasis in the original.
41. The idea that "race," like "sex," is a social system of classification that "marks" the human body is defended in Colette Guillaumin, Racism, Sexism, Power, and Ideology (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 133-52
42. Linda Martín Alcoff, "Towards a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment," Radical Philosophy 95 (1999): 15-26
43. Sally Haslanger, "Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?" Noûs 34 (2000): 31-55.
44. This view of the black nationalist tradition is defended in Tommie Shelby, "Two Conceptions of Black Nationalism: Martin Delany on the Meaning of Black Political Solidarity," Political Theory 31 (2003): 664-92
45. Also see the essays in Is It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism, ed. Eddie Glaude, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
46. However, if a functional white were to discover her black African origins and to affirm publicly her black identity, some African Americans would regard her as having black racial identity (though, no doubt, with qualification). "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 287.
47. Appiah acknowledges this point but insists that as long as such nationalism exists, the incoherence in African American identity remains.
48. Whether passing will be considered disloyal depends on the social circumstances prevailing at the time. For instance, under severe racial oppression, e.g., slavery and murderous repression, the obligation to "stay black" may be relaxed to save lives. For an illuminating, and deeply intimate, set of personal and philosophical reflections on racial passing in America, see Adrian Piper, "Passing for White, Passing for Black," Transition 58 (1992): 4-32.
49. Shelby has attempted to clarify the normative basis of black American political solidarity in "Foundations of Black Solidarity." Also see Yalonda Howze and David Weberman, "On Racial Kinship," Social Theory and Practice 27 (2001): 419-McPherson has argued that social relationships, and not the fact alone of "bare" relations like common racial identity, can be a source of morally salient reasons for special concern that are expressed, for instance, as political solidarity
50. See his "The Moral Insignificance of 'Bare' Personal Reasons," Philosophical Studies 110 (2002): 29-47.
51. For a similar view, see Bernard R. Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice, rev. ed. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 1992), p. 178.
52. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 288.
53. "The State and the Shaping of Identity," p. 288.,Ibid.
54. For a similar perspective, see Frank M. Kirkland, "Modernity and Intellectual Life in Black," The Philosophical Forum 24 (1992-93): 136-65.
55. Appiah, In My Father's House, p. 42.
56. See, e.g., Lawrence Bobo, "Race and Beliefs about Affirmative Action: Assessing the Effects of Interests, Group Threat, Ideology, and Racism," in Racialized Politics: The Debate about Racism in America, ed. David Sears, Jim Sidanius, and Lawrence Bobo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 137-64.
57. For more on this point, see Shelby, "Foundations of Black Solidarity," pp. 261-63
58. "Two Conceptions of Black Nationalism," pp. 680-84.
59. See the discussion of this matter in Howard Schuman, Charlotte Steeh, Lawrence Bobo, and Maria Krysan, Racial Attitudes in America: Trends and Interpretations, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 1-8.
60. There is, of course, a norm of endogamy among blacks, which might be thought to vitiate our account. However, this norm need not be rooted in a shared desire to maintain the purity of the black racial essence. This norm can be rooted instead in such concerns as strengthening a fragile, group solidarity; maintaining the integrity of black culture, reproduced in part within the family; publicly demonstrating black pride in the face of antiblack contempt; combating racialized aesthetic norms that denigrate black (especially women's) beauty; and ensuring that there are available partners for all members of the community. We cannot fully make the case for this interpretation here. But we think it is sufficient for our argument to show that black racial endogamy is compatible with nonessentialist conceptions of race. For useful discussions of this issue
61. see Charles W. Mills, "Do Black Men Have a Moral Duty to Marry Black Women?" Journal of Social Philosophy, 25th Anniversary Special Issue (1994): 131-53
62. Anita L. Allen, Why Privacy Isn't Everything: Feminist Reflections on Personal Accountability (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 97-107.