What’s Wrong with Antiracism

Despite the failure of the racial reckoning to live up to its name, the idea that racism is objectionable remains a fixture of mainstream politics. Some people endorse the idea only in public, while refusing or ignoring it in private. Others extol the virtues of racism to anyone who will listen. But all of these people, committed racists and their fair-weather rivals alike, know what more ardent opponents of racism also know, even if they find the knowledge lamentable: promoting racism is a problem in what most people regard as polite company.

Why, then, has anti-racism fallen on such hard times? The familiar forms of anti-anti-racist backlash politics are easy enough to anticipate and explain. But anti-racist activity, especially as practiced by anti-racism experts and diversity consultants, has come under fire from a surprising variety of ideological directions. “What’s Wrong with Anti-Racism” will map and explore some prominent critiques of anti-racism and consider their significance for broader questions of social ethics.

About Paul C. Taylor

Paul C. Taylor is the Presidential Professor of Philosophy at UCLA. He received his formal training at Morehouse College, the Kennedy School of Government, and Rutgers University. His research focuses primarily on aesthetics, philosophical race theory, American philosophy, and Africana philosophy. His books include Black is Beautiful: A Philosophy of Black Aesthetics, which received the 2017 monograph prize from the American Society for Aesthetics, and Race: A Philosophical Introduction. He is a newly elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

About the Spinoza Lectures

Since 1995, the Philosophy Department of the University of Amsterdam has annually appointed a foreign philosopher to the Spinoza chair. As part of the appointment, the Spinoza professor gives a number of lectures intended for a broad audience that wants to stay informed about contemporary developments in philosophy.