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108The Philosophical Roots of Racial Essentialism and Its LegacyConfluence: Journal of World Philosophies 85-98. 2014.Racial essentialism or the idea of unchanging racial substances that support human social hierarchy, was introduced into philosophy by David Hume and expanded upon by Immanuel Kant. These strong influences continued into W. E. B. Du Bois’ moral and spiritual idea of a black race, as a destiny to be fulfilled past a world of racism and inequality. In the twenty-first century, »the race debates« between »eliminativists« and »retentionists« swirl around the lack of independent biological scientific…Read more
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2Bill E. Lawson and Donald F. Koch, eds., Pragmatism and the Problem of Race Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 25 (6): 413-416. 2005.
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44Whiteness: Feminist Philosophical ReflectionsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 1999.Written in an engaging narrative style these philosophical investigations undermine racist hierarchies along with false natualistic conceptions of the meanings of race and universalistic understandings of gender, by considering whiteness as it shapes and is infused by gender, class, sexuality, and culture. Central to this project are questions about how it is that culture and the state create such a wide range of different people who understand themselves as white. The essays collected here disc…Read more
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13Teaching Philosophy from Scratch: Designing Dynamic Pedagogy for Adult ‘Firsts’SATS 24 (1): 71-92. 2023.I describe dynamic teaching to adult, mainly immigrant students, who are new to philosophy and often are college “firsts.” Adult students have family, financial, and work obligations, whereas standard students are leisured outside of class and approach philosophy as consumers. I teach from assigned texts, dismissing as a conceit of philosophers that philosophical questions arise from real life experience. My students are intensely focused on their grades, frugal with their expenditure of academi…Read more
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25Philosophy of Race: An IntroductionSpringer Verlag. 2023.Philosophy of Race: An Introduction provides plainly written access to a new subfield that has been in the background of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. The second edition is updated to include contemporary developments such as digital racisms, metaphysical othering and metaphysical racism, and the rise of populist movements. Its focus has also been expanded to address non-white racial groups in the Americas, Europe, and beyond, such as the Roma and Uighur people. Part I provides an overvi…Read more
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Philosophy and racial paradigmsIn Tommy Lee Lott & John P. Pittman (eds.), A Companion to African-American Philosophy, Wiley-blackwell. 2003.
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25Charles Mills, Before, Now, and LaterRadical Philosophy Review 25 (2): 191-208. 2022.In memoriam and ongoing engagement, I begin with my earlier critical interpretation and a reinterpretation that shows how Mills was prescient, given the recrudescence of white supremacy now daily evident in the United States. This leads to an historical analysis of the racial contract as the racist contract and of the racist contract as the racist compact. The racist compact endures in society, outside of government, but protected by democracy. This creates backlash and obstruction to progress t…Read more
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12Book Review: A Model for Re-Thinking Right and Wrong in the Academy: Zack and The Ethics and Mores of Race (review)Journal of Thought 47 (3): 78. 2012.
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20Ethics and Race: Past and Present Intersections and ControversiesRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2022.Ethics and Race introduces historical and contemporary conceptions of race through ideas and events and provides an ethical foundation for students to critically engage these issues in the classroom and in their lives. The book features short chapters of jargon-free writing with discussion questions and a glossary.
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17George Yancy’s Across Black Spaces Before and During the Corona DisasterJournal of Applied Philosophy 38 (4): 560-568. 2021.George Yancy’s existential analyses of Black life in anti‐Black and anti‐intellectual US society have been evocative and magisterial. The different parts of his Across Black Spaces both reprise his earlier work and take it further with new notes of concern. I suggest that COVID‐19 is metaphysical, that Yancy’s work is uniquely important for studies of race in the United States and as an intervention in our collective intellectuality. However, I suggest that we might move discussions of race ahea…Read more
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32Alberto G. Urquidez, (Re-)Defining Racism: A Philosophical Analysis, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, Viii +421 Pp. the Concept of Racism and the Adjective Racist (review)Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 24 (3): 673-677. 2021.
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12The American Tragedy of COVID-19: Social and Political Crises of 2020Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2021.Zack presents social and political aspects of the COVID-19 disaster as it unfolded through federal and local government structures, society, culture, and the economy. As a record of 2020 and an argument for why we need to prepare for Climate Change and the next pandemic, this book is an essential resource for every student, scholar, and citizen.
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12Progressive Anonymity: From Identity Politics to Evidence-Based GovernmentRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2020.Continuing her visionary work in social-political philosophy, Zack critiques identity politics as perpetuating damaging essentialist perspectives and policies. The antidote to identity group egoism is anonymity based on relevant shared interests and a meritocracy led by experts chosen without preference for group affiliation or political charisma.
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20The Good Faith of the Invisible ManThe Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy 27 108-112. 1998.I use Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to consider the requirements of existentialism to be relevant to racialized experience. Black existentialism is distinguished from white existentialism by its focus on anti-black racism. However, black existentialism is similar to white existentialism in its moral requirement that agents take responsibility so as to be in good faith. Ralph Ellison's invisible man displays good faith at the end of the novel by assuming responsibility for his particular situatio…Read more
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92Philosophy of Race: An IntroductionSpringer Verlag. 2018.Philosophy of Race: An Introduction provides plainly written access to a new subfield that has been in the background of philosophy since Plato and Aristotle. Part I provides an overview of ideas of race and ethnicity in the philosophical canon, egalitarian traditions, race in biology, and race in American and Continental Philosophy. Part II addresses race as it operates in life through colonialism and development, social constructions and institutions, racism, political philosophy, and gender. …Read more
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46Intersection Theory as ProgressiveThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 26 83-102. 2019.Many are already familiar with the idea of intersectionality. Intersection Theory can be conceived as encompassing other progressive theories, such as Philosophy of Race and Feminism. In Philosophy of Race, the ultimate explanatory concept is race; in Feminism, the ultimate explanatory term is gender. This discrepancy has given rise to Black Feminism. Intersection Theory can also be contextualized and expanded to include more detailed intersections when there is inequality within intersected gro…Read more
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3Ato Sekyi-Oto, Fanon's Dialectic of Experience Reviewed by (review)Philosophy in Review 17 (4): 276-278. 1997.
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12Applicative Justice: A Pragmatic Empirical Approach to Racial InjusticeRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2016.Naomi Zack pioneers a new theory of justice starting from a correction of current injustices. While the present justice paradigm in political philosophy and related fields begins from John Rawls’s 1970 Theory of Justice, Zack insists that what people in reality care about is not justice as an ideal, but injustice as a correctable ill.
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7Reviving the Social Compact: Inclusive Citizenship in an Age of Extreme PoliticsRowman & Littlefield Publishers. 2018.Zack addresses current upheavals with a new conception of the relationship between citizens and government. Analyzing current states of race, class, gender, and other measures of social wellbeing, Zack promotes a new social compact wherein citizens as a whole make long-term resolutions outside of government institutions to ensure stability.
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13Not Like Thales: Radical Philosophy from the Continental Tradition (review)Radical Philosophy Review 18 (2): 363-366. 2015.
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48The Idea of White Privilege, Rights, and Gender: Replies to My CriticsRadical Philosophy Review 19 (3): 701-710. 2016.
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36Contemporary Claims of Political Injustice: History and the Race to the BottomRes Philosophica 219-233. 2018.Injustice theory better serves the oppressed than theories of justice or ideal theory. Humanitarian injustice, political injustice, and legal injustice are distinguished by the rules they violate. Not all who claim political injustice have valid historical grounds, which include past oppression and its legacy. Social class, including culture as well as money, helps explain competing claims of political injustice better than racial identities. Claims of political injustice by the White Mass Recen…Read more
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93Starting from InjusticeThe Harvard Review of Philosophy 24 79-95. 2017.Political philosophers have traditionally focused on justice and regarded equality as an ideal despite its lack of factual support; normative universal human equality is a new, twentieth-century regulative moral construct. The theoretical focus on justice overlooks what most people care about in reality—injustice. In modern democratic society, formal or legal equality now co-exists with real inequality. One reason is that justice is not applied to all groups in society and applicative justice––a…Read more
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18Dark Ghettos: Injustice, Dissent, and Reform (review)The Philosophers' Magazine 76 114-115. 2017.
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41Violence, Poverty, and DisasterRadical Philosophy Review 15 (1): 53-65. 2012.Disaster has a triple violence: the literal event; inequality in rescue efforts; deprivation and coercion prior to physical disaster. Globally, the poor are the most vulnerable in disaster, but there are different degrees of poverty. Although Chile suffered a far more severe earthquake than Haiti, in 2010, the developed infrastructure of Chile allowed for greater resilience. The extreme poverty of Haiti impeded the implementation of humanitarian assistance pledged in the billions. In New Orleans…Read more
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31[Book review] race and mixed race (review)In Anthony Appiah & Henry Louis Gates (eds.), Identities, University of Chicago Press. pp. 1--4. 1995.
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104Race and Mixed RaceTemple University Press. 1993.Author note: Naomi Zack is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany. She herself is of mixed race: Jewish, African American, and Native American.
Areas of Specialization
17th/18th Century Philosophy |
African/Africana Philosophy |