Racism as a Call to Deception

Part One: Preparatory: Discuss some issues related to causation

I. Sketch some problems of causation from Aristotle through Hume and Whitehead
II. Explain some of the problems of applying causal theory to the human
III. Review overdetermination and multiple causation. Use analogy of cancer and it multiple causes. Over determination as applied to Racism, making sure to clarify the distinction between the necessary and the sufficient

Part Two: Some aspects of a metapsychology of self-deception
I. Calls

A. Review concept of the call (Campbell)

B. Introduce concept of the false call

II. Defense Mechanisms: Purpose and function of protecting ego (the importance of importance)

A. Rationalization (coming up with what look like reasons to "Explain away" ego threatening behavior

B. Projection: experience internal problems as out there

C. Displacement (due to comment by J. Fiorito); directing negative responses away from their sources to less threatening ones.

III. Discuss my current assumptions about human possibility and plasticity

A. Use example of literacy and numeracy (perhaps also discuss briefly Gardner's multiple intelligences and effects of training, e.g., in artistic skill among children).

B. Discuss Plasticity and Discounting assumptions
C. Radical challenges presented by certain religious and philosophical anthropologies

IV. The threat of possibility

A. De Beauvoir on the challenge of one's own choices and the temptation to being a thing

B. Scott Peck on inertia (in The Road Less Traveled

C. The perception of Malcolm Little as object in The Autobiography (see p. 26), and deception in M. Scott Peck's People of The Lie.
D. The importance of learning to play the piano in Manchild in the Promised Land.
E. Radical challenges presented by certain religious and philosophical critical theories.

V. Racism

A. here thought of in terms of effective prejudice, a prejudice (stereotyped belief against an identified "racial" group accepted on extremely poor evidence) which leads to negative outcomes for its objects); and

B. as prejudice supported by power structures.

VI. Racism as deception which (especially in extreme cases of demonization) but even in milder cases) supports

A. treating oneself or others as things (succumbing to the temptation that De Beauvoir and Peck warn us about)

B. justify our lack of efforts to change our selves and outer world;

1. allows us to rationalize our advantages due to the fixed special human nature of our group; BLAME THE VICTIM

2. allows us to rationalize our disadvantages due to

a) the fixed human nature of our group

b) or the oppression of another

3. may allow us to avoid difficult thought or action

M. Kagan, for Philosophy 403, Fall 1996; last revised 3/6/2007.

See Simone De Beauvoir's The Second Sex for her discussion of the temptations of objectification; and M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled, for his argument for the importance of laziness and inertia to the development of evil.
See Lewis Gordon's Bad Faith and Antiblack Racism for what, according to a reviewer (Cleavis Headley) appears to me to be a similar account. (Reviewed in Teaching Philosophy 19:4 (December1996) 403-406).

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