Racism, Ideology, and Social Movements
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haslanger_res_philosophica_final.pdf
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257.37 KB
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Checksum (MD5)
08b94f8c34653fa29d7b62c72a1e76e6
Author(s)
Haslanger, Sally
Date Issued
January 2017
Journal
Res Philosophica
Publisher
Res Philosophica
Citation
Haslanger, Sally. “Racism, Ideology, and Social Movements.” Res Philosophica 94, 1 (2017): 1–22 © 2017 Sally Haslanger
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Racism, sexism, and other forms of injustice are more than just bad attitudes; after all, such injustice involves unfair distributions of goods and resources. But attitudes play a role. How central is that role? Tommie Shelby, among others, argues that racism is an ideology and takes a cognitivist approach suggesting that ideologies consist in false beliefs that arise out of and serve pernicious social conditions. In this paper I argue that racism is better understood as a set of practices, attitudes, social meanings, and material conditions, that systematically reinforce one another. Attitudes play a role, but even the cognitive/affective component of ideologies should include culturally shared habits of mind and action. These habits of mind distort, obscure, and occlude important facts about subordinated groups and result in a failure to recognize their interests. How do we disrupt such practices to achieve greater justice? I argue that this is sometimes, but not always, best achieved by argument or challenging false beliefs, so social movements legitimately seek other means.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Linguistics and Philosophy
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.11612/RESPHIL.1547
