Zack, Naomi

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https://hdl.handle.net/1794/3681

Naomi Zack is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Philosophy, where she taught from 2001 – 2019. She is widely recognized in the discipline of philosophy for her work on critical race theory, political and moral philosophy, and the philosophy of race.

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Browsing Zack, Naomi by Author "Zack, Naomi"

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    The Philosophical Roots of Racial Essentialism and Its Legacy
    (Confluence: Journal of World Philosophies, 2016-11-16) Zack, Naomi
    Racial essentialism or the idea of unchanging racial substances that support human social hierarchy, was introduced into philosophy by David Hume and expanded upon by Immanuel Kant. These strong influences continued into W. E. B. Du Bois’ moral and spiritual idea of a black race, as a destiny to be fulfilled past a world of racism and inequality. In the twenty-first century, »the race debates« between »eliminativists« and »retentionists« swirl around the lack of independent biological scientific foundation for physical human races and the ongoing importance of race as a social ordering principle and source of identity. Analyses of the idea of race are of philosophical concern for historical and conceptual reasons, as well as ongoing issues of contemporary identity and social injustice.
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    Race, Class, and Money in Disaster
    (The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2009) Zack, Naomi
    We are a society that treats human remains with respect. In wartime, the dead are transported home and buried with great solemnity, attended by their friends, relatives, neighbors, and public dignitaries. The flags that drape their coffins are ceremoniously folded and reverently handed to spouses, parents, or children. In the days after the World Trade Center collapsed, New York City Fire Department personnel worked around the clock, forming brigades to carefully bring out containers of human remains. During the fire fight at the Pentagon, the FBI meticulously oversaw the search for, and retrieval, documentation, and transportation of, human remains. The remains ranged in size from tissue measured in inches to intact corpses. Each set of remains was carried out of the Pentagon by at least two members the Old Guard elite ceremonial unit from Fort Myers, who were escorted in and out of the Pentagon for that purpose by FEMA officials. Great care was taken to avoid media and Internet spectacles of "body parts."1 Official efforts of this nature are intended to protect human dignity, as well as to honor those who died while serving their country.
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    Requirements for an Ethics of Race
    (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) Zack, Naomi
    The historical and contemporary reality of race in the United States encompasses race relations (interactions between different racial groups and their members), laws concerning members of different racial groups, the mores of these groups, and individual identities based on group membership. This reality is mostly a matter of mores. It is difficult to render theoretical judgements about race ethically persuasive and obligatory when such judgements conflict with the mores of either the white majority or various non-white groups. What may be genuine ethical judgements about race often sound like attacks on existing mores, because the common ground on which they can be expressed and understood, as ethical judgements concerning race, does not yet exist. Whites object to what could be ethical judgements that identify racism; non-whites object to what could be ethical judgements about racial identities and loyalties.
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    Why I Write So Many Books About Race
    (Journal of World Philosophies, 2016) Zack, Naomi
    This is intended to be a “personal essay” about my work as a nonwhite philosopher. I find the premise condescending and somewhat annoying. I would not encourage anyone else who shares my demographics to follow my example, much less emulate me, so the personal example exercise is not a medium for pride. But, I do recognize the need for nonwhite and nonmale academic philosophers to “tell their stories.” Unless they do, the small numbers of nonwhites in our profession and the disproportionately low percentage of nonmales will not change. Even with such stories it might not change, but I would hate to be responsible for even a tiny part of such ongoing exclusivity. The problem is not with either the maleness or whiteness of traditional philosophers, but with their general unexamined attitudes toward, and indifference about, the problems of women and nonwhite people in the world, as well as the academy. So I feel compensated that a task which annoys me insofar as I am making a spectacle of myself might be even more annoying to some of the spectators.