"Structural Racial Injustices and Lamentable Necessities: Past, Present, Future", a talk by Dr. Janine Jones

Cherished and valued conditions enjoyed by some today in the United States were made materially possible by past racial injustices, for example, white housing covenants against black people. What if "we" could go back in time and undo those past racial injustices? Would we do so if our actions would bring it about that the cherished, valued conditions enjoyed by some would thereby fail to emerge? A similar question can be raised regarding the present. Targeted incarceration of black people—an ongoing structural legacy of black enslavement and the convict leasing system—is a reality of the present that creates various types of value for some. If "we" fail to act to overturn this present structural racial injustice because the value it creates is more important to "us" than the racial injustice that value depends on for its existence, then, arguably, we do not rationally regret it. "We" accept it as a lamentable necessity.

Janine Jones is an associate professor of philosophy at UNC-Greensboro. She is coeditor of Pursuing Trayvon Martin: Historical Contexts and Contemporary Manifestations of Racial Dynamics and is author of "Disappearing Black People Through Failures of White Empathy," Feminist Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press, 2022. She serves on the Simone de Beauvoir Studies (SdBS) journal editorial board and is guest editor of the forthcoming special issue "Sites of Coercion: Plantation, Colony, Metropole." Professor Jones is interested in black girls and Black Girl Studies. Her piece, "Learning from Scratch: What I've Learned or Unlearned from Black Girls" is forthcoming in Black Women Who Study Black Girls, Peter Lang Publishing. She is engaged academically, and in community, with problems that lie at the intersection of imagination, language, perception, and embodiment, especially as applied in the worlds of structural-systemic antiblack racism in which we live.

Academic Affairs | Website | View More Events

Contact the organizers