(Re-)Defining Racism, 1st ed. 2020 A Philosophical Analysis African American Philosophy and the African Diaspora Series

What is racism? is a timely question that is hotly contested in the philosophy of race. Yet disagreement about racism?s nature does not begin in philosophy, but in the sociopolitical domain. Alberto G. Urquidez argues that philosophers of race have failed to pay sufficient attention to the practical considerations that prompt the question ?What is racism?? Most theorists assume that ?racism? signifies a language-independent phenomenon that needs to be ?discovered? by the relevant science or ?uncovered? by close scrutiny of everyday usage of this term. (Re-)Defining Racism challenges this metaphysical paradigm. Urquidez develops a Wittgenstein-inspired framework that illuminates the use of terms like ?definition,? ?meaning,? ?explanation of meaning,? and ?disagreement,? for the analysis of contested normative concepts. These elucidations reveal that providing a definition of ?racism? amounts to recommending a form of moral representation?a rule for the correct use of ?racism.? As definitional recommendations must be justified on pragmatic grounds, Urquidez takes as a starting point for justification the interests of racism's historical victims.

Part I: Racism Without Ontology

Ch.1. Introduction: Summary of the Argument

Ch. 2. Introduction: Toward a Conventionalist Framework

Ch. 3. Re-defining “Definition”: An Argument for Conventionalism

Ch. 4. Re-defining “Meaning”: Defending Semantic Internalism Over Externalism

Part II: Theorizing Conceptual Disagreement

Ch. 5. Re-defining “Disagreement”: Rationality Without Final Solutions

Ch. 6. Re-defining “Philosophical Analysis”: Not Descriptive Analysis, Or Conservatism, But Pragmatic Revisionism

Part III: Toward a Prescriptive Theory of Racism

Ch. 7. Adequacy Conditions for a Prescriptive Theory of Racism: Toward an Oppression-Centered Account

Ch. 8. Racial Oppression and Grammatical Pluralism: A Critique of Jorge Garcia on Racist belief

Ch. 9. Concluding Note

Alberto G. Urquidez is currently a CFD Postdoctoral Fellow in Philosophy at Bowdoin College, USA. .

Analyzes the concept of racism from a philosophical perspective

Develops a Wittgenstein-inspired framework that illuminates the use of terms, like “definition,” “meaning,” “explanation of meaning,” and “disagreement,” in respect to contested normative concepts

Written for philosophers of race and racism, philosophers of language and Wittgensteinian philosophers, and metaphilosophers interested in the nature of conceptual analysis