Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and RaceThe Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race (Edited by Naomi Zack)
Abstract
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Race provides up-to-date explanation and analyses by leading scholars of contemporary issues in philosophy of race and African American philosophy. Ideas about race held by Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche are supplemented by suppressed thought from the African diaspora, early twentieth-century African American perspectives, and Native American, Asian American, and Latin American views. Philosophical analysis is brought to bear on the status of racial divisions as human categories in the biological sciences, as well as within the architectonic of contemporary criticism and conceptual analysis. The special applications of American philosophy and continental philosophy to ideas of race are presented as methodological alternatives to more analytic approaches. As a collection of analyses and assessments of “race” in the real world, there is trenchant and relevant attention paid to historical and contemporary racism and what it means to say that “race” and racial identities are socially constructed. Analyses of contemporary social issues include the importance of racial difference and identity in education, public health, medicine, IQ and other standardized tests, and sports. Societal limitations and structures provided by public policy and law are realistically considered. As a critical theory, the study of race is compared to feminism. Historical and contemporary, as well as academic and popular, racisms pertaining to male and female gender receive special consideration. Although this comprehensive collection may have the effect of a textbook, each of the original essays is a fresh and authentic development of important present thought.