Philosophers that abstract have historically bracketed their

raced identities grounded in a view from nowhere, traditional

philosophies fail to understand the different lived realities of
raced people.
Yancy 5 YANCY, GEORGE., Professor of Philosophy at Duquesne University, Whiteness and the
Return of the Black Body. The Journal of Speculative Philosophy 19.4 (2005): 215241. //VM

personal existential context. This context is a profound source of

knowledge connected to my "raced" body. Hence, I write from a place of lived
embodied experience, a site of exposure. In philosophy, the only thing that we
are taught to "expose" is a weak argument, a fallacy, or someone's "inferior"
reasoning power. The embodied self is bracketed and deemed irrelevant to
theory, superfluous and cumbersome in one's search for truth. It is best, or so we are told, to
reason from nowhere. Hence, the white philosopher/author presumes to speak
for all of "us" without the slightest mention of his or her "raced" identity. SelfI write out of a

consciously writing as a white male philosopher, Crispin Sartwell observes: Left to my own devices, I disappear as

That is the "whiteness" of my authorship. This whiteness of authorship

is, for us, a form of authority; to speak (apparently) from nowhere, for
everyone, is empowering, though one wields power here only by becoming lost to
oneself. But such an authorship and authority is also pleasurable: it yields the
pleasure of self-forgetting orpparent transcendence of the mundane and the
particular, and the pleasure of power expressed in the "comprehension" of a range
of materials. (1998, 6) To theorize the Black body one must "turn to the [Black] body as the radix for
interpreting racial experience" (Johnson [1993, 600]).1 It is important to note that this particular
strategy also functions as a lens through which to theorize and critique
whiteness; for the Black body's "racial" experience is fundamentally linked
to the oppressive modalities of the "raced" white body . However, there is no
denying that my own "racial" experiences or the social performances of
whiteness can become objects of critical reflection. In this paper, my objective
is to describe and theorize situations where the Black body's subjectivity, its lived
reality, is reduced to instantiations of the white imaginary, resulting in what I
refer to as "the phenomenological return of the Black body." 2 These instantiations
are embedded within and evolve out of the complex social and historical
interstices of whites' efforts at self-construction through complex acts of
erasure vis-a-vis Black people. These acts of self-construction, however, are
myths/ideological constructions predicated upon maintaining white power. As
an author.

James Snead has noted, "Mythification is the replacement of history with a surrogate ideology of [white] election or
[Black] demotion along a scale of human value" (Snead 1994, 4).

This abstraction allows us to assume racist entities will

somehow act justly rather than looking to how they have
historically acted.
Curry 13, Dr. Tommy J. Curry, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy,
Texas A&M, "In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of AntiBlack Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical", 2013 //VM

Traditionally we have taken ethics to be, as Henry Sidgwicks claims, "any rational
procedure by which we determine what individual human beings ' ought'or what
is right for themor to seek to realize by voluntary action. This rational procedure is
however at odds with the empirical reality the ethical deliberation must
concern itself with. To argue, as is often done, that the government, its citizens,
or white people should act justly, assumes that the possibility of how they
could act defines their moral disposition. If a white person could possibly not be racist, it
does not mean that the possibility of not being racist, can be taken to mean that they are not racist. In ethical
deliberations dealing with the problem of racism, it is common practice to
attribute to historically racist institutions, and individuals universal moral
qualities that have yet to be demonstrated. This abstraction from reality is
what frames our ethical norms and allows us to maintain, despite history or
evidence, that racist entities will act justly given the choice. Under such
complexities, the only ethical deliberation concerning racism must be antiethical, or a judgment refusing to write morality onto immoral entities.

Colorblindness only reifies the white power and silences racism

Lopez 03 (Gerardo [Professor of Political Science], "The (Racially Neutral) Politics
of Education: A Critical Race Theory Perspective", Educational Administration
Quarterly Vol. 39, No. 1 (February 2003) 68-94, 6/28,
eaq.sagepub.com/content/39/1/68.full.pdf) //VM
Racism, in other words, has been reduced to broad generalizations about
another group based on the color of their skin. It has become an individual
construction as opposed to a social and/or civilizational construct (Scheurich &
Young, 1997; Young & Laible, 2000). In this regard, racism is not necessarily connected to the larger distribution of
jobs, power, prestige, and wealth (Crenshaw et al., 1995, p. xiv) but is viewed as deviant behaviors and/or

The belief that colorblindness will eliminate

racism is not only shortsighted but reinforces the notion that racism is a
personalas opposed to systemicissue (Matsuda, 1996; McCarthy & Crichlow, 1993;
attitudes in an otherwise neutral world.

Scheurich & Young, 1997; Tatum, 1997; Valdes, Culp, & Harris, 2002; Williams, 1995b). By ignoring this broader
sociological web of power in which racism functions, individuals can readily equate White racism with Black
nationalism. This slippage only serves to protect the idea of a neutral social order by moving the focus away from

As a result,
the collective frustrations of people of color and/or Black nationalist
groups are simply seen as irrationaltheir struggle and plight to end racism are, in effect,
reduced to a deviant form of reverse racism (see also Solorzano & Yosso, 2001; Villalpando, in press). This
slippage only maintains racism firmly in place by ignoring or downplaying
the role of White racism in the larger social order . To be certain, racism has
never waned in society; it has merely been manifested in different forms.
the barriers and inequities that exist in society and refocusing it on the ignorant individual(s).

However, the discourse on racism has shifted through time, such that overt and/or blatant acts of hate (e.g., name
calling, Lpez / CRITICAL RACE THEORY 69 Downloaded from eaq.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB
on June 26, 2015 lynching, hate crimes, etc.) have only been identified as being racist (Crenshaw, 2002; Hayman

This focus on explicit acts has ignored the subtle, hidden, and often
insidious forms of racism that operate at a deeper, more systemic level.
When racism becomes invisible, individuals begin to think that it is
merely a thing of the past and/or only connected to the specific act. Rarely is
& Levit, 2002).

racism seen as something that is always present in society and in our daily lives (Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado,
1995a; Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Valdes et al., 2002).

The Alternative is to endorse anti-ethics, the axiomatic rupture

of white structures and oppressions. This allows us to remove
the obstacles that are preventing a true struggle for liberation
for the worlds darker races and for the Black body.
Curry 2,Dr. Tommy J. Curry, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Texas
A&M, "In the Fiat of Dreams: The Delusional Allure of Hope, the Reality of Anti-Black
Violence and the Demands of the Anti-Ethical", 2013 //VM
Anti-ethics; the call to demystify the present concept of man as illusion, as
delusion, and as stratagem, is the axiomatic rupture of white existence and
the multiple global oppressions like capitalism , militarism, genocide, and
globalization, that formed the evaluative nexus which allows whites to claim
they are the civilized guardians of the worlds darker races. It is the rejection
of white virtue, the whites axiomatic claim to humanity that allows the
Black, the darker world to sow the seeds of consciousness towards
liberation from oppression. When white (in)humanity is no longer an obstacle weighed against the means for
liberation from racism, the oppressed are free to overthrow the principles that suggest their paths to liberation are immoral and

To accept the oppressor as is, the white made manifest in empire, is

to transform white western (hu)man from semi-deitous sovereign citizen to
contingent, mortal, and un-otherable. Exposing the inhumanity of white
humanity is the destruction/refusal of the disciplinary imperative for liberal
reformism and dialogue as well as a rejection of the social conventions that dictate speaking as if this
white person, the white person and her white people before you are in fact not racist white
people, but tolerablenot like the racist white people abstracted from reality, but really spoken of in
conversations about racism. The revelatory call, the coercively silenced but
intuitive yearning to describe the actual reality set before Black people in an
anti-Black society, is to simply say there is no negotiating the boundaries of
anti-Blackness or the horizons of white supremacy. Racism, the debasement
of melaninated bodies and nigger-souls, is totalizing.
hence not possible.

Mounting resistance to the disciplinary structure of education

is the only way to save it. The racist power of the debate
community is sustained by debaters and will eventually
destroy our activity. Thus, the role of the ballot is to vote for
the debater who best discursively and methodologically
challenges oppression. Our discussion of the discursive
constructions that make racial domination possible is key
these discourses perpetuate the exclusionary nature of the
debate community
Reid-Brinkley 8 Shanara Rose Reid-Brinkley, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and
Communications as well as the Director of Debate at the University of Pittsburgh, THE HARSH REALITIES OF ACTING
BLACK: HOW AFRICAN-AMERICAN POLICY DEBATERS NEGOTIATE REPRESENTATION THROUGH RACIAL PERFORMANCE AND
STYLE, 2008.https://www.scribd.com/doc/93057917/Reid-brinkley-Shanara-r-200805-Phd#download //VM

The attempts at educational reform are not limited to institutional actors such as the local, state, and federal
governments. Non-profit organizations dedicated to alleviating the black/white achievement gap have also

proliferated. One such organization, the Urban Debate League, claims that Urban Debate Leagues have proven to
increase literacy scores by 25%, to improve grade-point averages by 8 to 10%, to achieve high school graduation
rates of nearly 100%, and to produce college matriculation rates of 71 to 91%. The UDL program is housed in
over fourteen American cities and targets inner city youths of color to increase their access to debate training.
Such training of students defined as at risk is designed to offset the negative statistics associated with black
educational achievement. The program has been fairly successful and has received wide scale media attention.
The success of the program has also generated renewed interest amongst college debate programs in increasing
direct efforts at recruitment of racial and ethnic minorities. The UDL program creates a substantial pool of racial
minorities with debate training coming out of high school, that college debate directors may tap to diversify their

The debate community serves as a microcosm of the broader educational

space within which racial ideologies are operating. It is a space in which academic
achievement is performed according to the intelligibility of ones race, gender,
class, and sexuality. As policy debate is intellectually rigorous and has historically
been closed to those marked by social difference , it offers a unique opportunity to
engage the impact of desegregation and diversification of American education. How
own teams.

are black students integrated into a competitive educational community from which they have traditionally been
excluded? How are they represented in public and media discourse about their participation, and how do they
rhetorically respond to such representations?

If racial ideology is perpetuated within discourse

through the stereotype, then mapping the intelligibility of the stereotype within
public discourse and the attempts to resist such intelligibility is a critical tool in the
battle to end racial domination. Education theorist Ludwig Pongratz argues that the testing focus in
the standards and accountability movement is probably the most effective means of realizing disciplinary

the contemporary reformist drive sweeping western

nations is a tool designed to replicate normative practices, values, beliefs and
behaviors consistent with the broader society . In other words, building on the work of Michel
Foucault, Pongratz argues that the educational system, including reform efforts, function as
a disciplinary apparatus that shapes and molds social bodies into normalized
social systems. 12 The disciplinary character of modern education systems do not
operate through institutional control, but instead through the positioning of social
bodies to engage in self-control, an internalization of the discourse of institutional
power. Pongratz notes that in this way, it becomes possible to integrate school pupils
into the schools institutional framework more effectively than ever before . 13
procedures. 11 He argues further that

Acclaimed French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu theory of habitus is useful here. For Bourdieu, habitas represents the

Through habitus,
social norms are incorporated in the body of the individual subject. 15 An
institution, like those attached to public education in the U.S. can only be efficacious if it is
objectified in bodies in the form of durable dispositions that recognize and comply
with the specific demands of a given institutional area of activity. 16 In other words,
the disciplinary character of the school system only functions in so much as
disciplinary parameters can be internalized by the members of a social body. What
is missing from the study of education reform and the black/white achievement
gap is an analysis of the discursive construction of racial images and stereotypes
with which the public is confronted. 17 Public discourse about education reform ,
particularly that which revolves around the black/ white achievement gap, requires the use of race ,
class, and gender imagery that is intelligible to the general public . In essence, from experts
to politicians to the news media, public representations of black underachievement and
reform efforts depend on the versatility of social and cultural stereotypes
consistent with the argumentative structures and social ideologies that make
rhetorical efforts at reform intelligible. Education reform engages in a discourse of paradigm shift.
incorporation of the social into the corporeal. 14 Gender theorist Terry Lovell argues

18 In essence there is a discursive consistency amongst education reform proponents for characterizing reform

efforts as a change in perspective from previous values and beliefs about how best to educate Americas youth.
Philosophy of education scholar Jeff Stickney argues that scholars interested in the production of education reform
discourse should be concerned with how a change of perception is to be brought about or secured. 19 In other
words, Stickney argues that the discourse supporting educational reform functions to discipline educators into a
compliance that belies any attempt to critique and engage the viability of the reform effort to the specific contexts
educators find themselves working within. 20 While Stickney is interested in engaging such discourse for the
purpose of furthering theoretical scholarship on curriculum development, his study raises the question of how the
public discourse surrounding education reform may function to discipline its differently situated stakeholders