ABSTRACT
In the preceding three chapters of this book we have expended considerable eort in getting clear about what we think race is, what its social elements are and what we think its long-term prospects should be. In this chapter we turn our attention to the question of racism. Racism is clearly an important topic and, in many ways, it is a crucial reason for our concern with race – it is because so many injustices and inequalities occur in the name of race that we are concerned with what it is and whether we should reject it, retain it or rebuild it. But from a more philosophical point of view we face some similar dilemmas and concerns here as we did when we began looking at race. When we look around the world we feel quite condent that, for the most part, we can point to racism when we see it, and that we know when we’ve seen an instance of racial prejudice. We may not always be right, but we know what we’re looking for. However, when we are asked to give a precise account of what racism is, we might well be stumped. And the reason is that in our day-to-day encounters we may have no more than a gut feeling that something is racist. To give a precise denition that captures that is going to be dicult for most of us. To see what we mean here consider the following three cases.
