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On Philips and Racism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Reed Richter
Reed Richter*
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Extract

Michael Philips’ ‘Racist Acts and Racist Humor’ attempts to analyze the ethics of racism. At the heart of his discussion is the view that

… “racist” is used in its logically primary sense when it is attributed to actions. All other uses of “racist” … must be understood directly or indirectly in relation to this one. Accordingly, racist beliefs are (roughly) beliefs about an ethnic group used to “justify” racist acts, racist feelings are feelings about an ethnic group that typically give rise to such acts, and racist epithets are the stings and arrows by means of which certain such acts are carried out. Books and films are said to be racist … if they perpetuate and stimulate racist beliefs or feelings (which are in tum understood in relation to racist acts). (77)

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 785 - 794
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1986

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Footnotes

*

My thanks to Michael Philips for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks go to Richard Sharvy and Edward Erwin for their comments and suggestions, some of which have been incorporated into the text.

References

1 Philips, Michael ‘Racist Acts and Racist Humor,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 14 (1984) 75–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 For example, in responding to an alleged counterexample, Philips writes, ‘For our inclination to regard these jokes as racist is no stronger or no weaker than our inclination to regard the telling of them as a form of mistreatment’ (94). This clearly illustrates that he intends the bi-conditional.

3 Note that one can make sense of the claim that the tyrant's act is racist with respect to Americans in general precisely because he presumably feels hostile or superior to Americans as an ethnic group.

4 I owe this example to Edward Erwin.

5 This was Philips’ personal response to an earlier draft of this paper.

6 Goodman, Nelson Fact, Fiction, and Forecast (New York: Bobbs-Merrill 1965)Google Scholar

7 A source of the disagreement between Philips and me stems from the fact that Philips believes there are many cases of truly racist acts which are not motivated by racist attitudes. My response is that some of these cases, e.g., the case of the patriotic German rounding up Jews, count as racist because they are indirectly motivated by racist attitudes. (See note 8.) Other cases, notably his case of prudently crossing to the other side of the street to avoid a Black man (because he is Black and more likely to be dangerous) at night on an empty street in a bad section of town, are doubtful cases of truly racist acts even by Philips’ own definition of ‘racist.’ In this and other such cases I have difficulty with the view that the ‘victim’ has been mistreated, i.e., injured in a morally objectionable manner. Unfortunately Philips never gives an argument to this effect; he seems to assume the reader will see these cases his way. The ‘victim“s rights certainly have not been violated; he is not owed compensation of any sort. It is up to Philips to spell out some other relevant, meaningful sense of the phrase ‘morally objectionable injury’ (77, footnote).

8 For the record, my own view of the matter is that our category ‘racist’ is a mixed-bag of closely related things. Roughly, the ‘point’ of the category ‘racist’ is (a) to pick out individuals who hold either an unjustifiable hostility or sense of superiority to a particular ethnic group; (b) to pick out acts directly or indirectly motivated by, and for the purpose of expressing, an unjustifiable hostility or sense of superiority toward a particular ethnic group; or (c) to pick out things which exhibit properties, the exhibition of which impute (seriously intended or not) either an unjustifiable hostility or sense of superiority toward a particular ethnic group (e.g., a racist joke, epithet, or piece of candy). By ‘impute’ I have in mind something like Gricean conversational implicature. For example, in a certain context and done with a certain tone of voice, calling Jews ‘aggressive’ and ‘ambitious’ imputes to the speaker the fact that he feels hostility towards Jews, regardless of whether he in fact feels such hostility. Assuming the hostility is unjustified, we would call this remark ‘racist.’ Note that my account differs from the three accounts that Philips discusses, but comes closest to the Agent-Centered account which Philips is most concerned to attack. On this view acts are not primary; if anything attitudes are. This modified Agent-Centered account avoids Philips’ criticisms of the unmodified version. For example a Nazi soldier need not personally harbor hostility towards Jews in order for his acts to be racist. They could be racist if the soldier was acting as an agent of others motivated by such hostility. My account of the term ‘racist’ is obviously crude and stands in need of clarification; but since my primary purpose is to critique Philips’ account, it would be out of palce here to fully develop my own account.