Three Challenges to Race-Thinking

I want to concentrate this blog primarily on section 2.2.1 of the second chapter and put Taylor's commentary in dialogue with my own from the previous class; Taylor raised a challenge to what he identified as the PPP (indicating racism = Privilege Plus Power) theorist, to which I will respond. Through the questions I have raised in the previous classes, I was hoping to point out that during our discussions we often encounter inconsistency in how we (those in our class) are defining particular terms. For that reason, I am focusing on the first sections of the chapter and returning to a definition I offered in class.

Three challenges to Race-thinking that Taylor considers here are: 1) Isn't race-thinking racist? (ethical inquiry); 2) Isn't racial biology false? (empirical inquiry); 3) Shouldn't the concept of race give way to notions like class? (conceptual inquiry) (28). He shortly thereafter follows the outline with this definition of racism: "an unethical disregard for people who belong to a particular group" (32), from which point he differentiates between extrinsic, intrinsic, and indirect racism. Finally, he offers five primary advantages for using "disregard" to operationalize his definition of racism, given that he admits it cursorily appears to be a rather "weak" term. They are: 1) "disregard" encompasses a broad range of attitudes simultaneously; 2) it maintains focus on ethical evaluation while focusing on the consequences of acts; 3) it also constructs a relationship between institutionalized racism and individual agency; 4) using "disregard" illuminates the moral and ethical impetus in evaluating racism; and 5) it clearly settles questions regarding exactly who/what can be construed as racist (33-4).

In considering certain theoretical positions on racism, Taylor raises a challenge to the PPP argument; those defining racism as the sum of privilege and power, he claims, are actually reductive in their definition of racism by severely narrowing the scope of what may (not) be considered racism. He cites the example of a non-white person that intentionally beats up white people, simply because they are white; Taylor defines this action as racist, however, admits that such actions have relatively low-impact on the spectrum of racism (the trans-Atlantic slave trade obviously occupying a high-impact position). Last class, in an attempt to establish more clarity about the definition of racism in response to Dr. Florka's inquiry (Who in this room is a racist?), I espoused the PPP argument. And admittedly, reading Taylor's critique challenged my thinking, although I am still unsure as to whether conceptualizing racism pluralistically is the most advantageous perspective. To buttress my uncertainty, I would raise the declining percentages recorded of explicit racism (although I do not know whether such data has changed since the election of Barack Obama) as a conceptual limitation to Taylor's understanding. Grouping hate crimes committed by non-white people, which perhaps may be a response, albeit unjustified, to oppression, on white people with the trans-Atlantic slave trade seems too convenient for Taylor's task of defining "Race-thinking." By that, I mean that both occurrences may be drastically different enough, in my opinion, to the extent that they each merit their own spectrum rather than an aggregate consolidation for the sake of conceptual clarity. That being said, at the very least I remain skeptical about Taylor's definition in regards to this contemporary period.