Corbin Covington

This course provides a broad overview of philosophical discussions of race and racism in American, African, and Latin & Caribbean culture. In this overview, we will focus on issues concerning the experience of race and racism, epistemological issues concerning racial distortions and ignorance, and ethical and political issues concerning racial oppression. Some of the central questions that we will address are: How should we understand the concept of race and the processes of racialization through which people come to see themselves as having a racial identity? What are the different kinds of racial injustice that we can identify, and the different kinds of exclusion, subordination, marginalization and stigmatization that can be part of racial oppression? How should racial oppression be resisted? How should racial violence be stopped? How should we build racial solidarity and fight for racial justice? We will also explore the connections between race and other identity categories such as gender, sexuality, class, ethnicity, religion, nationality, etc. Some authors we will read are Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Alain Locke, Franz Fanon, Charles Mills, Sally Haslanger, Kirstie Dotson, and Quayshawn Spencer.