•  52881
    Stereotypes And Stereotyping: A Moral Analysis
    Philosophical Papers 33 (3): 251-289. 2004.
    Stereotypes are false or misleading generalizations about groups, generally widely shared in a society, and held in a manner resistant, but not totally, to counterevidence. Stereotypes shape the stereotyper’s perception of stereotyped groups, seeing the stereotypic characteristics when they are not present, and generally homogenizing the group. The association between the group and the given characteristic involved in a stereotype often involves a cognitive investment weaker than that of belief.…Read more
  •  828
    Racism: What It Is and What It Isn't
    Studies in Philosophy and Education 21 (3): 203-218. 2002.
    The words ‘racist’ and ‘racism’ have become so overused that they nowconstitute obstacles to understanding and interracial dialogue about racial matters. Insteadof the current practice of referring to virtually anything that goes wrong or amiss withrespect to race as ‘racism,’ we should recognize a much broader moral vocabulary forcharacterizing racial ills – racial insensitivity, racial ignorance, racial injustice, racialdiscomfort, racial exclusion. At the sa…Read more
  •  652
    Three kinds of race-related solidarity
    Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (1). 2007.
    Solidarity within a group facing adversity exemplifies certain human goods, some instrumental to the goal of mitigating the adversity, some non-instrumental, such as trust, loyalty, and mutual concern. Group identity, shared experience, and shared political commitments are three distinct but often-conflated bases of racial group solidarity. Solidarity groups built around political commitments include members of more than one identity group, even when the political focus is primarily on the justi…Read more
  •  398
    Friendship, Altruism, and Morality, originally published in 1980, gives an account of "altruistic emotions" and friendship that brings out their moral value. Blum argues that moral theories centered on rationality, universal principle, obligation, and impersonality cannot capture this moral importance. This was one of the first books in contemporary moral philosophy to emphasize the moral significance of emotions, to deal with friendship as a moral phenomenon, and to challenge the rationalism of…Read more
  •  359
    Reflections on Brown vs. Board of Education and School Integration Today
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 37-57. 2019.
    The Brown vs. Board of Education decision of 1954 mandated school integration. The decision also to recognize that inequalities outside the schools, of both a class- and race-based nature, prevent equality in education. Today, the most prominent argument for integration is that disadvantaged students benefit from the financial, social, and cultural “capital” of middle class families when the children attend the same schools. This argument fails to recognize that disadvantaged students contribute…Read more
  •  344
    Latinos on race and ethnicity : Alcoff, Corlett, and Gracia
    In Susana Nuccetelli, Ofelia Schutte & Otávio Bueno (eds.), A Companion to Latin American Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. pp. 269-282. 2009.
    This article explicates the views on both race and ethnicity of these three prominent Latinx philosophers, compares them (somewhat), and offers some criticisms. Corlett jettisons race as a categorization of groups, but accepts a form of racialization somewhat at odds with this jettisoning. Gracia adopts as a general principle that an account of both ethnicity and race should help us see aspects of reality that would otherwise be obscured; but this is at odds with his regarding the Latin American…Read more
  •  207
    Moral perception and particularity
    Ethics 101 (4): 701-725. 1991.
    Most contemporary moral philosophy is concerned with issues of rationality, universality, impartiality, and principle. By contrast Laurence Blum is concerned with the psychology of moral agency. The essays in this collection examine the moral import of emotion, motivation, judgment, perception, and group identifications, and explore how all these psychic capacities contribute to a morally good life. Blum takes up the challenge of Iris Murdoch to articulate a vision of moral excellence that provi…Read more
  •  155
  •  136
    “Cultural Racism”: Biology and Culture in Racist Thought
    Journal of Social Philosophy 54 (3): 350-369. 2023.
    Observers have noted a decline (in the US) in attributions of genetically-based inferiority (e.g. in intelligence) to Blacks, and a rise in attributions of culturally-based inferiority. Is this "culturalism" merely warmed-over racism ("cultural racism") or a genuinely distinct way of thinking about racial groups? The question raises a larger one about the relative place of biology and culture in racist thought. I develop a typology of culturalisms as applied to race: (1) inherentist or essential…Read more
  •  133
    In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt claims that liberals have a narrower moral outlook than conservatives—they are concerned with fairness and relief of suffering, which Haidt sees as individualistic values, while conservatives care about authority and loyalty too, values concerned with holding society together. I question Haidt’s methodology, which does not permit liberals to express concerns with social bonds that do not fit within an ‘authority’ or ‘loyalty’ framework and discounts people w…Read more
  •  127
    Rosemary Hennessy, Materialist Feminism and the Politics of DiscourseRichard J. Bernstein, Hannah Arendt and the Jewish QuestionDavid Ames Curtis, The Castoriadis ReaderDavid Ames Curtis, World in Fragments: Writings on Politics, Society, Psychoanalysis and the ImaginationMorris Kaplan, Sexual Justice: Democratic Citizenship and the Politics of Desire.
  •  116
    Iris Murdoch and the domain of the moral
    Philosophical Studies 50 (3). 1986.
    In The Sovereignty of Good Iris Murdoch suggests that the central task of the moral agent involves a true and loving perception of an- other individual, who is seen as a particular reality external to the agent. Writing in the 1960s she claimed that this dimension of morality had been "theorized away" in contemporary ethics. I will argue today that 20 years later, this charge still holds true of much contemporary ethical theory
  •  115
  •  114
    Moral Exemplars: Reflections on Schindler, the Trocmes, and Others
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 13 (1): 196-221. 1988.
  •  65
    Race, National Ideals, and Civic Virtue
    Social Theory and Practice 33 (4): 533-556. 2007.
  •  61
    Review of Michael Slote, The Ethics of Care and Empathy (review)
    Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2008 (3). 2008.
  •  55
    Global Inequality and Race
    Philosophical Topics 30 (2): 291-324. 2002.
  •  54
    Reflections on Charles Mills
    Radical Philosophy Review 25 (2): 209-218. 2022.
    Charles Mills adhered to the highest standards of philosophical scholarship, while seeing his work firmly as a contribution to the cause of social justice. He had a deep appreciation for historical context and a history of ideas approach to racial/philosophical questions. He was one of the foremost Rawls interpreters or our time, though only a few years before his passing was he so recognized. He channeled his analytic training in his habit of demonstrating how a view is strengthened when an aut…Read more
  •  50
    Racialized Groups: The Sociohistorical Consensus
    The Monist 93 (2): 298-320. 2010.
    Among race scholars, there is a general consensus that (1) groups thought to be races in the 19th/20th century do not possess the characteristics attributed to them in classic racial ideology, (2) such groups are nevertheless intergenerational collectivities with distinctive social and historical experiences, and (3) those experiences were and are deeply shaped by the false beliefs of classic racial ideology. The groups of whom this consensus is true are felicitously called “racialized groups,” …Read more
  •  49
    Race and Class Together
    American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (4): 381-395. 2023.
    The dispute about the role of class in understanding the life situations of people of color has tended to be overpolarized, between a class reductionism and an “it's only race” position. Class processes shape racial groups’ life situations. Race and class are also distinct axes of injustice; but class injustice informs racial injustice. Some aspects of racial injustice can be expressed only in concepts associated with class (e.g., material deprivation, inferior education). But other aspects of r…Read more
  •  49
    Neoliberalism and education
    In Randall R. Curren (ed.), Handbook of philosophy of education, Routledge. pp. 257-269. 2022.
    Neoliberalism is an approach to social policy, now globally influential, that applies market approaches to all aspects of social life, including education. Charter schools, privately operated but publicly funded, are its most prominent manifestation in the U.S. The neoliberal principles of competition, consumerism, and choice cannot serve as foundations of a sound and equitable public education system. Neoliberalism embraces socio-economic inequality overall and in doing so constricts any justic…Read more
  •  39
  •  38
    Opportunity and Equality of Opportunity
    Public Affairs Quarterly 2 (4): 1-18. 1988.