•  7
    Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction is a work of political philosophy that examines the core injustices of the contemporary U.S. housing crisis and its relation to enduring racial injustices. It posits that what is required to achieve justice in social-spatial arrangements—what is otherwise called “spatial justice”—is to prioritize, in the crafting and enforcement of housing policy, individual moral equality and liberty; distributive justice; equal citizenship; an…Read more
  •  29
    Anti-Asian Racism
    American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (4): 411-424. 2023.
    Over the last twenty-five years, philosophers have offered increasingly more sophisticated accounts of the nature and wrongness of racism. But very little in this literature discusses what is distinctive to anti-Asian racism. This gap exists partly because philosophy, like much of U.S. culture, has been influenced by civic narratives that center anti-black racism in ways that leave vague anti-Asian racism. We discuss this conceptual gap and its effects on understanding anti-Asian racism. In resp…Read more
  •  14
    Introduction to the Special Issue: Racism
    American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (4): 325-327. 2023.
    Racism as an independent topic of investigation in philosophy has considerably developed since the 1990s, when it appeared as part of growing debates that, on the one hand, investigated the political meaning of race and, on the other, its ontology and whether it existed at all. Likewise, with the idea of racism, its broadly normative meaning is critiqued by some philosophers, while others ask how best to conceive of it and identify its immorality. There were a few early and significant forays in…Read more
  •  142
    Integration and Reaction
    Dialogue 62 (1): 77-83. 2023.
    D. C. Matthew argues that although integration offers blacks social and economic benefits, it also creates the conditions for phenotypic devaluation that leads to harm against black self-worth and servile behavior. Therefore, he advises against integration because the resulting self-worth harms outweigh the benefits of integration. I argue that Matthew’s cost-benefit calculation against integration lacks the requisite evidence, and amounts to a luxury belief that will result in more harm. Moreov…Read more
  •  116
    Residential Segregation and Rethinking the Imperative of Integration
    In Sharon M. Meagher, Samantha Noll & Joseph S. Biehl (eds.), THE ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY OF THE CITY, Routledge; Taylor and Francis. 2020.
    In this chapter I consider the place of the topic of racial and ethnic urban residential segregation factors into political philosophy. I begin with a short history of residential segregation and the ghetto, and their role in systems of racial domination and oppression, and remarks on the general neglect of this topic in contemporary political philosophy, including in nonideal political philosophy, which proports to take on examples of real-world injustices and inequalities. I then examine, from…Read more
  •  12
    The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass
    Critical Philosophy of Race 10 (2): 312-315. 2022.
    Frederick Douglass (1817?–1875) is a monumental American figure. As a runaway slave and leading black thinker, speaker, and writer in the abolitionist movement and during Reconstruction and its tragic collapse, his legacy in American history is singular. His ideals and scorching criticisms have marked American political thought about democracy, religion, race, racism, liberty, and equality. American political parties claim him, especially the Republican Party, with which he has an early connecti…Read more
  •  9
    Guest Editors' Introduction
    Critical Philosophy of Race 4 (1): 1-5. 2016.
  •  2
    Guest Editors' Introduction
    with Kyoo Lee
    Critical Philosophy of Race 2 (1): 1-4. 2014.
  •  18
    Sheltering Xenophobia
    Critical Philosophy of Race 1 (1): 68-85. 2013.
    What is xenophobia? Why is xenophobia immoral? How is xenophobia's conceptual and moral meaning diminished? Investigations of these questions would invigorate xenophobia as a topic in public morality and discourage the public's acquiescing to xenophobia's new prominence. This paper focuses on the third question, the diminishment of xenophobia. In the first section, I outline a general conception of xenophobia. In the second, I explain how theories of membership in liberal democratic societies re…Read more
  •  142
    Race as a human kind
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 28 (1): 91-115. 2002.
    In this article I present a positive ontology of 'race'. Toward this end, I discuss metaphysical pluralism and review the theories of Ian Hacking, John Dupre and Root. Working within Root's framework, I describe the conditions under which a constructed kind like 'race' would be real. I contend these conditions are currently satisfied in the United States. Given the social presence and impact of 'race' and the unique way 'race' operates at differing sites, I will argue that it is site-specific, i…Read more
  • In Rending The Veil: A Critical Look at the Ontology & Conservation of "Race," I explore the nature and existence of "race" and the question of whether the social use of racial classification ought to continue. The principal vehicle for my exploration is W. E. B. Du Bois's landmark 1897 essay "The Conservation Of Races." It is Du Bois' thesis in that essay, along with the criticism and the support it has met, that forms the focus of my work. This debate, relevant to our times, can be characteriz…Read more
  •  21
    Introduction: place and the philosophy of race
    Philosophy and Geography 7 (1): 3-7. 2004.
    [I]n the beginning, all the world was America… John Locke The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. Fred...
  •  120
    Being and Being Mixed Race
    Social Theory and Practice 27 (2): 285-307. 2001.
  •  68
    Introduction
    Journal of Social Philosophy 41 (3): 237-243. 2010.
  •  104
    "Racial" nominalism
    Journal of Social Philosophy 33 (2). 2002.
  •  33
    Frederick Douglass’s Longing for the End of Race
    Philosophia Africana 8 (2): 143-170. 2005.
  •  33
    The Browning of America and the Evasion of Social Justice
    State University of New York Press. 2008.
    Considers the effects of the browning of America on philosophical debates over race, racism, and social justice
  •  31
    Lessons About the Poor (review)
    Radical Philosophy Review 9 (1): 97-102. 2006.
  •  17
    Being and Being Mixed Race
    Social Theory and Practice 27 (2): 285-307. 2001.
  •  496
    Frederick Douglass's Longing for the End of Race
    African Philosophy 8 (2): 143-170. 2005.
    Frederick Douglass (1817–1895) argued that newly emancipated black Americans should assimilate into Anglo-American society and culture. Social assimilation would then lead to the entire physical amalgamation of the two groups, and the emergence of a new intermediate group that would be fully American. He, like those who were to follow, was driven by a vision of universal human fraternity in the light of which the varieties of human difference were incidental and far less important than the ethic…Read more
  •  5293
    Xenophobia and Racism
    Critical Philosophy of Race 2 (1): 20-45. 2014.
    Xenophobia is conceptually distinct from racism. Xenophobia is also distinct from nativism. Furthermore, theories of racism are largely ensconced in nationalized narratives of racism, often influenced by the black-white binary, which obscures xenophobia and shelters it from normative critiques. This paper addresses these claims, arguing for the first and last, and outlining the second. Just as philosophers have recently analyzed the concept of racism, clarifying it and pinpointing why it’s immor…Read more
  •  27
    Mixed-Race Looks
    Contemporary Aesthetics. 2009.
  •  125
    Racial politics in residential segregation studies
    Philosophy and Geography 7 (1): 61-78. 2004.
    Most research about race has been influenced by values of one sort or another. This started with the inception of race as a biological category. Cognitive values about race were concerned with the worth of distinctive taxonomic divisions, and political values about it were concerned with the moral, aesthetic, and political meanings of these human distinctions. The presence of cognitive and non‐cognitive values in contemporary social science concerning race is no less present or important. The ro…Read more
  •  46
    Introduction: place and the philosophy of race
    Philosophy and Geography 7 (1): 3-7. 2004.
    [I]n the beginning, all the world was America… John Locke The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. Fred...