A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond...
"The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
The heirs of privilege have a hard time imagining the experience of racism from that perspective, or the alternate experience that might have been theirs if they'd had a different inheritance. Sympathy's easier than empathy. Fact is, we all inherit circumstances beyond either our credit or our control.
As I read Appiah's chapter on color, I thought about how we typically think of racism as a black/white issue, but as he points out the word was associated with anti-Semitism of the German National Socialists. When I was a young boy, I can remember religious discussions about where black people came from if everybody came from Noah. Here is a New York Times article from 2003 which describes what I heard back in the 50s. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/from-noah-s-curse-to-slavery-s-rationale.html. As Appiah points out the Japanese considered the Chinese to be an inferior race. Which son of Noah do religious people think they came from? I hope we can continue our discussions in class about what constitutes racism and what we can do to address it.
The heirs of privilege have a hard time imagining the experience of racism from that perspective, or the alternate experience that might have been theirs if they'd had a different inheritance. Sympathy's easier than empathy. Fact is, we all inherit circumstances beyond either our credit or our control.
ReplyDeleteAs I read Appiah's chapter on color, I thought about how we typically think of racism as a black/white issue, but as he points out the word was associated with anti-Semitism of the German National Socialists. When I was a young boy, I can remember religious discussions about where black people came from if everybody came from Noah. Here is a New York Times article from 2003 which describes what I heard back in the 50s. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/01/arts/from-noah-s-curse-to-slavery-s-rationale.html. As Appiah points out the Japanese considered the Chinese to be an inferior race. Which son of Noah do religious people think they came from? I hope we can continue our discussions in class about what constitutes racism and what we can do to address it.
ReplyDeleteI heard on old preacher break down the black race in perspective to just a few years ago. Funny thing was he said nothing of the orientals.
ReplyDelete