"I'm Not a Racist, But...": The Moral Quandary of Race [Hardcover]

Lawrence Blum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2001 | ISBN-10: 0801438691 | ISBN-13: 978-0801438691

Not all racial incidents are racist incidents, Lawrence Blum says. "We need a more varied and nuanced moral vocabulary for talking about the arena of race. We should not be faced with a choice of 'racism' or nothing." Use of the word "racism" is pervasive: An article about the NAACP's criticism of television networks for casting too few "minority" actors in lead roles asks, "Is television a racist institution?" A white girl in Virginia says it is racist for her African-American teacher to wear African attire.Blum argues that a growing tendency to castigate as "racism" everything that goes wrong in the racial domain reduces the term's power to evoke moral outrage. In "I'm Not a Racist, But . . .", Blum develops a historically grounded account of "racism" as the deeply morally charged notion it has become. He addresses the question whether people of color can be racist, defines types of racism, and identifies debased and inappropriate usages of the term. Though racial insensitivity, racial anxiety, racial ignorance and racial injustice are, in his view, not "racism," they are racial ills that should elicit moral concern. Blum argues that "race" itself, even when not serving distinct racial malfeasance, is a morally destructive idea, implying moral distance and unequal worth. History and genetic science reveal both the avoidability and the falsity of the idea of race. Blum argues that we can give up the idea of race, but must recognize that racial groups' historical and social experience has been shaped by having been treated as if they were races.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Media, politicians, social and political groups and individuals use the term "racism" casually and inaccurately, thereby stripping the concept of its meaning, argues Lawrence Blum in I'm Not a Racist, But...: The Moral Quandary of Race. Not all interracial difficulties involve racism, he contends, but society does not have the vocabulary to discuss racial overtones with greater subtlety. Thus people and institutions fearful of being called racist feel defensive when racial issues are raised, perpetuating the status quo of race relations. Blum (Moral Perception and Particularity), professor of philosophy and of liberal arts and education at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, asserts that only "certain especially serious moral failings and violations" merit the designation "racism." Discussing various scholarly perspectives on the construction of racial categories, Blum calls for a balance between "ridding ourselves of the myth of race" and understanding the role of race in social inequality and in history.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

The term racism has been so overused that it is in danger of losing its moral significance, according to philosophy professor Blum, who argues for clearer, more precise use of the word and related terminology. Blum examines related concepts and terms --institutional racism, personal racism, racist, racist beliefs--and their interplay as he explores the moral implications of racism on a multiplicity of levels. A section on "colorblindness" is especially enlightening, given the often-contradictory use of the concept. The author surveys the history of the concept of race and its associated development with the enslavement of Africans. While he argues that "race," as we generally use that term, does not exist, racialized groups as socially constructed do, with import and consequences often associated with that term. Blum recognizes the ideal of abandoning use of the concept of race, but also acknowledges the practical need to remedy wrongs of the past and present. This is a very thoughtful work on a sensitive subject, a good and practical work for all readers interested in race relations. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 245 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (November 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801438691
• ISBN-13: 978-0801438691
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,372,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Really Important Book, March 28, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: "I'm Not a Racist, But...": The Moral Quandary of Race (Hardcover)

This book just has so much that's useful in it I forget that it's written by a philosopher; and yet everything the author says is said very carefully and is so well-reasoned. What is racism? What is race? Can blacks be racist too? These are some of the questions addressed. I really love the examples the author uses where he asks the reader to consider whether the response is "racist" or not and his references to current movies; and I don't think I've ever read a better "brief history" of race and racism. That chapter in particular is a must-read for those of us who teach sociology, psychology, or history courses in race or prejudice. His approach is so much more nuanced than most in his understanding of the social construction of race alongside his understanding that we can not forget that shared historical and social experiences mean something central to people. This book is destined to become a source that scholars and educators alike will turn to and recommend to others. Not a flash in the pan treatment of a trendy topic -- but a really important book!

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply Superb, February 20, 2006

By 

David Schraub "The Crit" (Bethesda/Northfield MD/MN) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I'm Not a Racist, But . .: The Moral Quandary of Race (Paperback)

A clear, engaging, and sophisticated analysis of America's most confounding problem. Blum outlines a progressive and compelling structure of how race works in America, how race talk is stifled, and how we overuse the term "racism." The most important thing his book adds to the discussion is not just that "racism" is an overloaded term. It's the call for a "more complex vocabulary" to deal with race. That is, in the status quo, one is either "racist" (evil) or not racist (good). This makes the definition of "racist" a scorched-earth battle, because the winner takes all. Blum argues convincingly that we should consider acts of racial insensitivity or subconscious racial prejudices to be really bad things, and work proactively to eliminate them, but should not necessarily tag them with the label of "racist". The simultanously concedes and turns the conservative objection that progressive race scholars are always "playing the race card" because it shifts the frame of debate--we need to discuss race issues, so we'll change the rhetoric we use, but we're not going to excuse bad conduct on your part just because it doesn't rise to the moral evil of slavery or Jim Crow.

11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ounce of Clarity is Worth a Pound of confusion, January 30, 2007

By 

Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: I'm Not a Racist, But . .: The Moral Quandary of Race (Paperback)

This is a mature, if not a rather sophisticated treatment of a painful subject in a society whose reality and consciousness still rests comfortably on a "soft Apartheid-like racist" social order. Very gently, Professor Blum, a renowned philosopher, guides and clarifies as he enlightens. In the process of stripping away some of the emotion-laden baggage associated with the word "racism," he shows that even in a race-based society there is considerable room for clarity and nuance.

This is a very useful contribution, especially in the way he makes us aware of how our hypersensitivity to the way the word "racism" is used, itself continues to play an important but unconscious role in helping to maintain and protect social advantages and at the same time continues to help stifle a smooth transition to full equality between the races. This is a powerful message all by itself and is alone worth five stars.

My only complaint about the book is that there IS such a thing as "nuance overkill," -- of achieving just a bit too much subtlety. After all, the conservative ideologue, Denesh d' Sousa, in his book "The End of Racism," speaks of his own shades and nuances of the word racism. He uses the euphemisms "strategic," "defensive," and "situational" racism, with equal facility and with equal claims to a need for clarity. According to him, these are also clarifications that fit the reality of many whites - people who just coincidently also happen to be those Americans anxious to avoid having the "albatross of racism" hung around their necks.

I do believe that the word "racism" can be sliced-and-diced, peeled back, and parsed and finessed so much that it is bleached of all its affective content - and is thus rendered into an emotionless abstraction. Now tell me, honestly, whose interests does this bleaching process really serve? Do we really want to do that in a race sensitive culture?

Are we pretending not to know that on the backside of all the emotion packed into the use of the word "racism" is also built a "moral hammer." The job of that hammer is to not allow whites to remain too snug in their comfort zone of continuing to impose "the ways of racism" on the rest of us. In a real sense, it is the only moral hammer that remains in American society. It is the only thing between us becoming a neo-racist and Fascist society, and one that continues to move "ever-so-imperceptively" towards the equality the U.S. Constitution was intended to achieve.

But more than this, at some point one must sit back and "call a spade a spade." And here the double entendre is not intended to refer only to blacks, but also to whites, who continue to be sensitive to the word "racism" primarily because of the guilt it induces about their passive roles in maintaining a race-based culture.

No whites should be allowed to forget or allowed to miss the point that the word "racism" recalls how much the very idea of whiteness, (upon which most Americans identities -- and indeed the very essence of their humanity rest), continues to ride on the crest of a mostly false history that has allowed them to accumulate and store enormous "racist" advantages.

Thus the word, "racism," no matter how it is parsed, no matter how nuanced, no matter how much subtlety is added to the soup of our national discourse, will always retain a sensitive spot in the white psyche. The word "racism" cannot be further "purged" or "defanged." There is a natural end point to this process of parsing the word racism. Beyond that, the circle of re-empowering racists begins all over again.

As Albert Einstein is reputed to have once said, "we should make things as simple as possible, but not simpler than necessary." The same applies to the word "racism." Sometimes, an ounce of clarity is worth a pound of confusion. At other times, too much clarity can falsify reality in unintended ways.

Still the best book on the subject in print. Five Stars