•  217
    Active Ignorance, Antiracism, and the Psychology of White Shame
    Critical Philosophy of Race 9 (2): 342-368. 2021.
    Active white ignorance is accompanied by an epistemic and affective insensitivity that allows American white people to avoid the negative affect that might typically accompany harmdoing. Resisting active ignorance about racism and white supremacy, therefore, often gives rise to shame. Yet, thinkers have debated the value of shame for white people’s antiracism. This article asserts that shame is an appropriate response for white people recognizing our culpability for and complicity in racist inju…Read more
  •  155
    Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. The analysis by Claudia Card of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card's definition of an evil, namely, the non-medically …Read more
  •  129
    Apology is arguably the central act of the reparative work required after wrongdoing. Claudia Card’s (1940-2015) analysis of complicity in collectively perpetrated evils moves one to ask whether apology ought to be requested of persons culpably complicit in institutional evils. To better appreciate the benefits of and barriers to apologies offered by culpably complicit wrongdoers, this article examines doctors’ complicity in a practice that meets Card’s definition of an evil, namely, the non-med…Read more
  •  11
    This article defends the counterintuitive conclusion that public assignments of credibility – including statements, by hearers, of ‘that’s right’, ‘she is credible’, or ‘I believe you’ – can actually constitute a pernicious form of epistemic wrong. Sometimes referred to colloquially as ‘lip service’, the wrong occurs when, owing to ethically poisonous epistemic failures, hearers outwardly validate testifiers’ credibility despite not fully or duly believing them. To explain this wrong, I introduc…Read more