Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience
Contributions by Linda Martín Alcoff Hunter College, Ronald Robles Sundstrom Professor of Philosophy, University of San Francisco, Gabriella Beckles-Raymond, Marina A.L. Oshana, Jennifer Lisa Vest, Tina Fernandes Botts, Naomi Zack Lehman College, CUNY, J. L. A. Garcia, Celena Simpson, Timothy J. Golden, Jason D. Hill Edited by Tina Fernandes Botts
Publication date:
21 January 2016Length of book:
334 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksDimensions:
233x161mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781498509428
Philosophy and the Mixed Race Experience is a collection of essays by philosophers about the mixed race experience. Each essay is meant to represent one of three possible things: (1) what the philosopher sees as the philosopher’s best work, (2) evidence of the possible impact of the philosopher’s mixed race experience on the philosopher’s work, or (3) the philosopher’s philosophical take on the mixed race experience. The book has two primary goals: (1) to collect together for the first time the work of professional, academic philosophers who have had the mixed race experience, and (2) to bring these essays together for the purpose of adding to the conversation on the question of the degree to which factical identity and philosophical work may be related. The book also examines the possible relationship between the mixed race experience and certain philosophical positions.
In these essays, mixed-race philosophers address the impact of this phenomenological experience on their philosophical work—analyzing, critiquing, and reflecting on the mixed-race experience as viewed personally, historically, socially, politically, and philosophically. Rich insights into the nature of the 'lived experience' of being a 'mixed person' are on display, as are various troubling questions raised by the very existence of mixed-race persons. Is social categorization contradictory, and does it cause self-alienation by demanding monoracial identification of persons who have multiple experiences and multiple social and self ascriptions? Is race a matter of lineage, appearance, or culture? Who decides on race and for what purpose? Do mixed-race persons cause discomfort, threatening both the borders of white identity and black emancipatory projects and indigenous sovereignty? Do mixed-race persons symbolize traumatic conquest and the slavery experience? Is mixed-race experience a way to engage in interracial repair and open up different ways of knowing and being? Is it the way to a new universal humanism or virtue cosmopolitanism? This is a valuable and challenging resource. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above.