Zack, Naomi
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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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Item Open Access The Philosophical Roots of Racial Essentialism and Its Legacy(Confluence: Journal of World Philosophies, 2016-11-16) Zack, NaomiRacial 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.Item Open Access Why I Write So Many Books About Race(Journal of World Philosophies, 2016) Zack, NaomiThis 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.Item Open Access Requirements for an Ethics of Race(Rowman and Littlefield, 2011) Zack, NaomiThe 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.Item Open Access Race, Class, and Money in Disaster(The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 2009) Zack, NaomiWe 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.Item Open Access Philosophy and Disaster(Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS), 2006-04) Zack, Naomi, 1944-Philosophers have traditionally written from the perspective of ordinary people and they are as vulnerable to fear as other members of the public. Academic philosophers can contribute to the multi-disciplinary field of homeland security and disaster studies through extensions of social contract theory from political philosophy, and applications of moral systems. The idea of a state of nature is relevant to government’s role in disaster preparation, response and planning, because disasters often result in a second state of nature. All three of the main ethical systems of virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism, are relevant to disaster-related situations in ways that suggest the importance of being able to combine all three. Both the applications of political philosophy and moral theory can be augmented by John Rawls’s idea of distributive justice and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s idea of the common good. Finally, the inevitability of human mortality, as emphasized by existentialist philosophers, can create a wider perspective on disaster.Item Open Access A Philosophically Serious Comparison of the Ontologies of Race and Gender(2005-12) Zack, Naomi, 1944-Race and gender are not ontologically or epistemologically symmetrical. Ontologies of human races are more recent historical ideas than male-female taxonomies of gender, although ontologies of gender that include intersexuals, trans-sexuals and non-sexuals are new. Taxonomies of race rely on justification from the physical sciences, while taxonomies of gender have been more dependent on ordinary life. Current biological science does not support racial ontologies, although belief in biological race is recalcitrant. I explain this with criticism of “the new biology” of race as advanced by Michael Hardimon and Robin Andreasen in recent Journal of Philosophy articles that are related to a 1999 anthology article by Philip Kitcher. It is not necessary to have a biological notion of race to talk about or oppose racism. However, even politically viable racial identities could not address that rule by men through their gender constructions, which is violent and exploitative. But with gender, post intersectionality, it may be possible to revise men’s rule given a unifying relational definition of women, based on their history. Women are those human beings who are assigned to or identify with the disjunction of biological mothers or men’s heterosexual choices or females birth designees (category FMP). As FMP, women constitute over 50% of democratic electorates and we should look toward a gender change in the now hyper-masculine constructions of high politics, via global women’s political parties.Item Open Access Human Values as a Source for Sustaining the Environment(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002) Zack, Naomi, 1944-Item Open Access Philosophical aspects of the `AAA Statement on "Race"'(SAGE Publications, 2001-12) Zack, Naomi, 1944-I apply philosophical analysis to the AAA Statement on "Race"' (American Anthropological Association, 1998) and the commentary on its earlier draft published in the Anthropology Newsletter (1997). Racial essentialism is the theory that there are distinct and general human biological traits that determine racial membership and cause the presence of specific racial traits. This theory is false, as is the belief that a taxonomy of human races, or race, exists. But the 1998 `AAA Statement on "Race"'fails to repudiate racial essentialism explicitly. Instead, the Statement denies that race determines culture or psychology and thereby misses the broad logical point that race cannot determine anything, because it does not exist. In the AN discussion of Kennewick Man, which appeared to be a debate about racial essentialism, contributors spoke past one another in confusing population-based measures of human diversity with race. The same confusion clouds contemporary concerns about the relevance of common-sense racial categories to medical diagnosis and treatment. Education is the solution to the public's ignorance about the scientific foundation for its ideas about race. It is an empirical question whether such education will remedy racism or unjust treatment based on the false racial taxonomy. Although mixed-race categories are no more real than 'pure' ones, their acceptance may help unsettle the prevailing false taxonomy of race.Item Open Access Lockean Money, Indigenism and Globalism(University of Calgary Press, 1999) Zack, Naomi, 1944-The term 'indigenism' is currently used to refer to the traditions, interests, and goals of the descendants of original, or "pre-contact," inhabitants of lands that Europeans and Americans invaded and exploited. In general, during the modern period, indigenist civilization has been oppressed by European civilization. Although liberatory critics have addressed the political and moral aspects of European colonial oppression, not much, at least by philosophers, has been written about the nature of money. Money was the nonviolent mechanism of land dispossession, which was the main material form of European oppression of indigenists.Item Open Access Race and Mixed Race(Temple University Press, 1993) Zack, Naomi, 1944-In the first philosophical challenge to accepted racial classifications in the United States, Naomi Zack uses philosophical methods to criticize their logic. Tracing social and historical problems related to racial identity, she discusses why race is a matter of such importance in America and examines the treatment of mixed race in law, society, and literature. Zack argues that black and white designations are themselves racist because the concept of race does not have an adequate scientific foundation. The "one drop" rule, originally a rationalization for slavery, persists today even though there have never been "pure" races and most American blacks have "white" genes. Exploring the existential problems of mixed race identity, she points out how the bi-racial system in this country generates a special racial alienation for many Americans. Ironically suggesting that we include "gray" in our racial vocabulary, Zack concludes that any racial identity is an expression of bad faith.