Color Conscious

by Kwame Anthony Appiah, Amy Gutmann, David B. Wilkins (Introduction)

In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious , K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most vexing problem.


Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life.


Gutmann examines alternative political responses to racial injustice. She argues that American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice. Whether policies should be color-conscious, class conscious, or both in particular situations, depends on an open-minded assessment of their fairness. Exploring timely issues of university admissions, corporate hiring, and political representation, Gutmann develops a moral perspective that supports a commitment to constitutional democracy.


Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race.

Genres: Race, Philosophy, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Kwame Anthony Appiah, the president of the PEN American Center, is the author of The Ethics of Identity, Thinking It Through: An Introduction to Contemporary Philosophy, The Honor Code and the prize-winning Cosmopolitanism. Raised in Ghana and educated in England, he has taught philosophy on three continents and is a former professor at Princeton University and currently has a position at NYU.

Series:
* Sir Patrick Scott Mystery (as Anthony Appiah)

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

TWO ‘PASSIONATE DEMOCRATS’ PROVIDE SOME ‘TOOLS’ FOR THINKING ABOUT THESE PROBLEMS

Kwame Akroma-Ampim Kusi Anthony Appiah (b. 1954) is an English-born philosopher teaching at New York University; he previously taught at Princeton, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, and the University of Ghana (his father is from Ghana). Amy Gutman (b. 1949) is an academic and diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to Germany (2022-2024), and as the president of the University of Pennsylvania (2004-2022). She also previously taught at Princeton University.

David B. Wilkins wrote in his Introduction to this 1996 book, “In 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois proclaimed that ‘the problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color-line.’ … the accuracy of Du Bois’s prophecy is beyond dispute… [For] Supporters of affirmative action or multiculturalism … ‘color blindness’ in our political and moral discourse has been little more than a smoke screen for the pervasive ‘color consciousness’ (and, more specifically, white supremacy) that has been a dominant feature of the American saga… If we are to fare any better… we must create a discourse about race that acknowledges both parts of America’s racial heritage. This volume is an attempt to create such a discourse. It does so by bringing together two leading scholars and … ‘passionate democrats,’ to ask the kind of probing and critical questions about the meaning and significance of race that are rarely addressed in our sound bite culture.” (Pg. 3-4)

Appiah wrote in the opening chapter, “the term ‘race’ [is] unlike many other terms in our language… Some people might want to defend the word ‘race’ against scientific attacks on its legitimacy by denying, in effect, that semantic deference is appropriate here… Of this strategy, I will make just this observation: If you’re going to go that route, you should probably offer some criteria---vague or strict---for applying the term. This is because… the arguments against the use of ‘race’ as a scientific term suggest that most ordinary ways of thinking about races are incoherent.” (Pg. 42)

He says of cultural critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). “What Arnold lays out … is the essence of what I call ‘racialism.’ He believed---and in this he was typical of educated people in the English-speaking world of his day---that we could divide human beings into a small number of groups, called ‘races,’ in such a way that members of these groups shared certain fundamental, heritable, physical, moral, intellectual, and cultural characteristics with one another that they did not share with members of any other race.” (Pg. 54)

Later, he explains, “The biological notion of race was meant to account only for a narrower range of characteristics, namely, the biological ones, by which I mean the ones important for biological theory. There are certainly many ways for classifying people for biological purposes: but there is no single way of doing so that is important for most biological purposes that corresponds, for example, to the majority populations of each continent or subcontinent. It follows that on an ideational view, there are no biological races, either: not in this case, because nothing fits the loose criteria but because too many things do.” (Pg. 72)

He summarizes, “I have insisted that African-Americans do not have a single culture, in the sense of shared language, values, practices, and meanings. But many people who think of races as groups defined by shared cultures, conceive that sharing in a different way. They understand black people as sharing black culture BY DEFINITION: jazz or hip-hop belongs to an African-American, whether she likes it or knows anything about it, because it is culturally marked as black. Jazz belongs to a black person who knows nothing about it more fully or naturally than it does to a white person… this view is an instance of what … [Henry Louis] Gates has called ‘cultural geneticism.’ On this view, you earn rights to culture that is marked with the mark of your race---or your nation---simply by having a racial identity. For the old racialists, as we saw, your racial character was something that came with your essence; this new view recognizes that race does not bring culture, and generously offers, by the wave of a wand, to correct Nature’s omission. It is as generous to whites as it is to blacks. Because Homer and Shakespeare are products of Western culture, they are awarded to white children who have never studied a word of them, never heard their names. And in this generous spirit the fact is forgotten that cultural geneticism derives white people of jazz and black people of Shakespeare. This is a bad deal…” (Pg. 90)

He critiques Charles Taylor’s book ‘Multiculturalism,’ as when Taylor wrote, “The white society, the white culture, over against which an African-American nationalism of the counterconventional kind poses itself, is therefore not part of what shapes the collective dimension of the individual identities of black people in the United States.” Appiah replies, “This claim is simply wrong. And what shows it is wrong is the fact that it is in part a recognition of black identity by ‘white society’ that is demanded by nationalism of this form. And ‘recognition’ here means that Taylor means by it, not mere acknowledgment of one’s existence. African-American identity, as I have argued, is centrally shaped by American society and institutions: it cannot be seen as constructed solely within African-American communities. African-American culture, if this means shared beliefs, values, practices, does not exist: what exists are African-American cultures, and though these are created and sustained in large measure by African-Americans, they cannot be understood without reference to the bearers of other American racial identities.” (Pg. 96)

He summarizes, “In policing this imperialism of identity---an imperialism as visible in racial identities as anywhere else---it is crucial to remember always that we are not simply black or white or yellow or brown, gay or straight or bisexual, Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Buddhist, or Confucian but that we are also brothers and sisters; parents and children; liberals, conservatives, and leftists; teachers and lawyers… amateurs of grunge rock and lovers of Wagner; movie buffs; MTV-holics… surfers and singers… friends and lovers. Racial identity can be the basis of resistance to racism; but even as we struggle against racism---and although we have made great progress, we have further still to go---let us not let our racial identities subject us to new tyrannies.” (Pg. 103-104)

Amy Gutman explains, “If we are considering a case of preferential hiring, then the preference would be based on reasons other than the candidate’s qualifications for the job in question. (If the preference is based on a candidate’s greater qualifications for the job by virtue of being black, then it is misleading to call the practice ‘preferential hiring.’) The practice of giving preference to some basically qualified candidates for a job [than] other better qualified candidates is what defines a policy or practice of preferential treatment and allows us to distinguish it from cases where color, gender, geographical distribution, or some other characteristic is reasonably considered a qualification for carrying out the social function of this particular job.” (Pg. 130)

She suggests, “But color conscious policies are not nearly enough. We should embrace a multiplicity of means, including significant educational and economic reforms, such as making work pay and providing an adequate education for every child, that are not color conscious. We should also welcome the discovery of other policies---whether they be color blind or color conscious---that can bring us closer to a society in which color conscious policies will no longer be necessary.” (Pg. 178)

Appiah concludes in his Epilogue, “Because Amy Gutman and I are both passionate democrats, we believe deeply in the importance of reasonable public debate about the problems and the possibilities that face this nation. Much of what is written and spoken about race in our current debates is dishonest, confused, ill-informed, unhelpful… this book does not offer answers to all or even most of the problems of race that confront Americans today. But it does, we hope, contribute some tools for thinking about those problems and some context for reflecting on them… We hope, in short, to contribute to the discourse of a great nation facing the challenge of living up to its best principles.” (Pg. 182)

This book will be of great interest to those studying African-American issues, race matters, etc.

[A YOGAM · Rating 4 out of 5]

Der Essay „Race, Culture, Identity: Misunderstood Connections“ bildet das argumentative Herzstück von Kwame Anthony Appiahs Sammelband Color Conscious – und zugleich dessen schärfste Schneide. Ursprünglich als Teil seiner Tanner Lectures von 1994 konzipiert, entfaltet Appiah hier eine philosophische Abrissbirne gegen das biologische Konzept der „Rasse“, verpackt in die Eleganz einer präzisen, fast chirurgischen Analyse.
Appiah seziert das hartnäckige Missverständnis, Kultur sei eine zwangsläufige Folge biologischer Abstammung, und entlarvt „Rasse“ stattdessen als ein machtvolles soziales Konstrukt: ein Skript, das Gesellschaften ihren Mitgliedern als Identitätsvorlage anbieten – mitsamt Erwartungen, Zuschreibungen und Sanktionen. Rasse wirkt nicht, weil sie natürlich ist, sondern weil Menschen an sie glauben und ihr soziale Konsequenzen verleihen. Damit verschiebt Appiah die Debatte von der Biologie zur Bedeutungsproduktion und zeigt, wie tief diese Skripte in Alltag, Politik und Selbstwahrnehmung eingreifen.
Während wir bei Molefi Kete Asante gelernt haben, den epistemischen Kompass nach Süden zu drehen, erinnert uns Appiah hier an etwas ebenso Grundlegendes: Die Koordinaten unserer Identität sind nicht in der DNA eingeschrieben, sondern entstehen in sozialen Praktiken, historischen Narrativen und kollektiven Deutungen. Gerade darin liegt die politische Sprengkraft des Essays: Er zeigt, wie man die Realität des Rassismus ernsthaft bekämpfen kann, ohne der wissenschaftlichen Fiktion von „Rasse“ selbst aufzusitzen.
Als Beitrag in der „Bibliothek der Befreiung“ fungiert dieser Text damit als unverzichtbares Korrektiv. Er erlaubt, zugleich antirassistisch und antirassistisch präzise zu sein: Rassismus bekämpfen, ohne seine ontologischen Voraussetzungen zu reproduzieren. Appiah liefert keine moralische Beschwörung, sondern ein analytisches Werkzeug – kühl, klar und von nachhaltiger politischer Wirkung.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Conceptual Clarity The main concepts presented in the book are defined early on and used consistently. The author ensures that the reader understands the terminology and the basic premises of the work. This clarity helps in navigating through the more complex sections of the text. Check the link for a simplified guide to the book's concepts. >>> https://script.google.com/macros/s/AK...

[Aaron Horton · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book really captured my attention.

[Megan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dry, monotone, and lacking clear proof or definition.

[beth · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first introduction to Appiah and probably my favorite so far. He just stretches your mind!