Racist, Not Racist, Antiracist by Leland Harper & Jennifer Kling

Author:Leland Harper & Jennifer Kling
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: LEXINGTON BOOKS
Published: 2022-09-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

Shifting Toward Democracy and Justice

What we speak becomes the house we live in.

—Sufi poet Hafiz1

In previous chapters, we argued that the semantics of racism fall squarely into the political realm, as well as the ethical realm, because the semantic false trinary of racist/not racist/antiracist partially undergirds and perpetuates the existence of the dynamic disaster of racism, which in turn supports two political systems in the United States: democracy for whites, and authoritarianism for Blacks. In this chapter, we first borrow from W. E. B. Du Bois’s understanding of democracy to deepen and extend this argument, contending that democracy for all requires an expanded semantics of the sort we describe. The political institution of democracy demands community; and to build community in the United States, given its history and ongoing racism, we need new and better ways of talking to each other about racial oppression and injustice.

However, we are sensitive to the concern, prominently expressed in Charles Mills’s The Racial Contract, that liberal democracy has white supremacy woven through it.2 Although Mills himself doesn’t do so, this worry has led many to reject democracy as an ideal. So, we turn in the latter half of the chapter to Iris Marion Young’s model of justice, which is concerned not with democracy specifically, but rather with moving societies away from injustice and oppression more broadly. Following Young, we have an obligation to work toward justice in a variety of ways, because we are responsible—in the sense of being accountable—for the presence of injustice in our societies. One way of moving toward justice is to create the expanded semantics we describe, in order to generate the sorts of conversations that are likely to lead to more just practices and social structures. Ultimately, if you care about the attainment of democracy for all, or more broadly about justice more equally enjoyed by all (and you should!), an expanded semantics of racism is a necessary stepping stone to these goals.

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