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Facing up to Ignorance and Privilege: Philosophy of Whiteness as Public Intellectualism
Author(s) -
MacMullan Terrance
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
philosophy compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.973
H-Index - 25
ISSN - 1747-9991
DOI - 10.1111/phc3.12238
Subject(s) - ignorance , privilege (computing) , intellectualism , sociology , field (mathematics) , context (archaeology) , white (mutation) , pragmatism , invisibility , epistemology , political science , philosophy , law , history , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , mathematics , archaeology , optics , gene , pure mathematics
This article offers an overview on current trends and future research possibilities within the philosophy of whiteness. It examines the sub‐field of the philosophy of whiteness within the context of the larger field of the philosophy of race in order to assess the viability and relevance of this field of study. Some of the topics on whiteness examined in the article include the problems of white ignorance and privilege, the invisibility of white supremacist racism to white people, and how all these problems can be understood either as examples of epistemologies of ignorance or as unexamined habits in the sense used by pragmatist philosophy. The article argues that the current state of this field calls for a greater emphasis on public intellectualism on whiteness that would incorporate many ideas that are widely accepted by critical race scholars into the under‐informed public discourse on race and whiteness. It also argues that the increasing prevalence of negative liberty movements in the United States should be examined in light of established research on the philosophy of whiteness.