On the Perils of Race Neutrality and Anti‐Blackness: Philosophy as an Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought

Date01 May 2018
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/ajes.12244
Published date01 May 2018
AuthorTommy J. Curry,Gwenetta Curry
On the Perils of Race Neutrality and
Anti-Blackness: Philosophy as an
Irreconcilable Obstacle to (Black) Thought
Tommy J. Curry1 and GweneTTa Curry2
absTraCT. Race-neutral philosophies often depend on the illusion
of a universal humanist orientation. This philosophical position,
while common, often misses what is concretely at stake in the
diagnosis and analyses of anti-Black racism in the United States. This
article argues that racism is part of a deliberate strategy of academic
philosophy to keep the discipline white. When one considers the
demographic underrepresentation of Blacks compared to other
groups in the academy, the use of universal pretenses to negate the
experiences of racial minorities, and the sociological realities of race
and racism in America, academic philosophy emerges as one of
many ideological stratagems used to deny the realities of death and
dying in our society. The authors argue that race neutrality and
colorblindness cloak the societal consequences and disciplinary
practices that allow segregation, violence, and anti-Black death to
continue unabated.
American Jour nal of Economics and Sociology, Vol. 77, Nos. 3-4 (May-Septe mber, 2018).
DOI: 10 .1111/ajes.122 44
© 2018 American Journ al of Economics and Sociology, Inc.
1Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M Universit y. Research interests: 19th- century
ethnology, Critical Race T heory, and Black Male Studies. Editor of The Philoso phical
Treatise of William H. Ferris: Sele cted Readings from The Afr ican Abroad or, His
Evolution in Western Civiliza tion (Rowman & Littlef ield 2016), author of The Man-
Not: Race, Class, Ge nre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhoo d (Temple University
Press 2017), and Another white Man’s Burden: Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy
of Racial Empire (SUNY Pres s 2018). Editor of a book series, Black Male Studies:
A Series Ex ploring the Paradoxes of Raci ally Subjugated Males (Temple University
Press). Email: tjcurry @tamu.edu
2Assistant Professor i n Gender and Race Studies at t he University of Alabam a.
Current areas of st udy include Africana Woman ism, Black Family Stud ies, Black
Male Studies, Medical S ociology, and Food Insecurity. Previous research i nvestigated
the relationship betwee n educational attainment and body m ass index among Black
women. Email: gcurr y@ua.edu
658 The American Journal of Economics and Sociology
Introduct ion
We begin with the first author’s reflections on philosophy and its
recurring problem of denying the realities of race and racism, reflections
that have arisen as a Black (male) philosopher whose life has been
threatened for doing Black philosophy. The experience of confronting
death, being fearful of being killed doing my job as a critical race
theorist, and being threatened with violence for thinking about racism
in America has a profound effect on concretizing what is at stake in our
theories about anti-Black racism. Whereas my work on race and racism
in philosophy earlier in my career was dedicated to the problems
created by the mass ignorance of the discipline to the political debates
and ethnological history of Black philosophers in the 19th and 20th
centuries, I now find myself thinking more seriously about the way that
philosophy, really theory itself—our present categories of knowledge,
such as race, class, and gender, found through disciplines—actually
hastens the deaths of subjugated peoples in the United States. Academic
philosophy routinely abstracts away from—directs thought to not
attend to the realities of death, dying, and despair created by—anti-
Black racism. Black, Brown, and Indigenous populations are routinely
rationalized as disposable flesh. The deaths of these groups launch
philosophical discussions of social injustice and spark awareness by
whites, while the deaths of white people direct policy and demand
outrage. Because racialized bodies are confined to inhumane living
conditions that nurture violence and despair that become attributed to
the savage nature of nonwhites and evidence of their inhumanity, the
deaths of these dehumanized peoples are often measured against the
dangers they are thought to pose to others.
The interpretation of the inferior position that racialized groups
occupy in the United States is grounded in how whites often think
of themselves in relation to problem populations. This relationship is
often rationalized by avoidance and by the denials of whites about
being causally related to the harsh conditions imposed on nonwhites in
the world. Philosophy, and its glorification of the rational individual, ig-
nores the complexity of anti-Black racism by blaming the complacency,
if not outright hostility, towards Blacks on the mass ignorance of white
America. To remedy this problem, Black philosophers are asked to

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