PPECMC2022Sextons

 I am in love with this pieceeee... in this blog I'll be answering some of the questions posed by Zac in pers post using examples from "The Vanishing Half" by Britt Bennett (199.9999% recommend reading)  Zac's Questions:  - What does it mean to be recognized as white?  - What does it mean to be white?  "But when Stella based her decision on an obligation to family? That was heart space. And maybe it had always been her head guiding her. She had become white because it was practical, so practical that, at the time her decision seemed laughably obvious. Why wouldn't you be white if you could be?... She had just made the rational decision" (The Vanishing Half pg. 168)  This excerpt is from the inner dialogue of Stella, one of the main characters in the Vanishing Half. Stella was raised in a town where everyone was Black (very light skinned Black) but as she grew older and moved away, she chose to use her light skin to pass as white. Stella was forced to dro...

 One quote that really caught my attention: “Property is nothing but the basis of expectation, according to Bentham, consisting in an established expectation, in the persuasion of being able to draw such and such advantage from the thing possessed...The law has recognized and protected even the expectation of rights as actual legal property” (1729). Harris means that privileges are so ingrained in the identity of whiteness that it is culturally appropriated that whiteness is guaranteed with more privileged property rights. This reminds me of a conversation that we had at the end of our last tutorial session. We discussed how sometimes white people feel disqualified to discuss racial suppression when they are the ones enjoying the privileges. It seems more culturally appropriate or politically correct for racial minorities to fight against racism, while in people’s perception, the white people had no similar experiences of racial suppression to speak the same. This phenomenon defin...

In most history textbooks in the United States, we read about how Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark case that overturned Plessy and ruled that separate facilities were inherently unequal (separate but equal is wrong). However, I thought it was interesting how Harris provided a different perspective on the case, explaining how although it removed de jure segregation, it completely failed to address de facto segregation. By emphasizing how the case eliminated school segregation, it gave people the idea that the problem was solved. This in turn gave rise to a new form of white privilege, where substantial inequality and material inequalities became normalized. Even today, we often read or hear arguments where people believe racial discrimination is no longer an issue because of the Reconstruction Amendments and cases like Brown v. Board . It is common for people to misinterpret proper allocation of resources in the presence of racial oppression as reverse discrimination. As Har...

  Harris bases her argument in Whiteness as property on the idea that the problematic relationship between property and race comes from the law understood as the set of rules that we must follow. These laws were later on ratified and given particular explanations but, in her opinion,  it was “the law [that] established and protected an actual property interest in whiteness itself, which shares the critical characteristics of property” (1724). The problem is seen in the law itself sharing similar characteristics as law, which involves property.     In my opinion, the law itself does not bring that much change. One example of it is when it is not exercised it just becomes a dead direction to the society. Just because certain laws which are created share similar characteristics, it does not automatically make them create the same regime for both of the objects involved. I think that we should rather put more emphasis on the institutions that create and execute the law....

Throughout Whiteness as Property, Harris argues for a conception of whiteness as a kind of property—one deliberately created and enforced by a state operating on white supremacist assumptions about personhood and rights. In this blog post, I want to analyze Harris’ conception of whiteness as property with John Locke’s classical conception of property as described in his Second Treatise.  Harris develops a conception of property flows from an understanding that society is structured such that, “white privilege became an expectation and…whiteness became the quintessential property for personhood” (1726). In her article, she argues that whiteness as a kind of property is a kind of legal and societal construct. Whiteness stems from pre-existing beliefs about the superiority of white people compared to others. However, in this stage, it is merely a prejudice, not a policy. Harris continues by arguing that the legal system explicitly defines, recognizes, and protects this whiteness as a ...

Harris identifies that whiteness is property. She writes, “White identity and whiteness were sources of privilege and protection; their absence meant being the object of property” (Harris 1721). Whiteness gave people the right to control their life and liberty as well as greater access. Blackness on the other hand left man’s life and liberty in a precarious state and excluded him from segregated institutions. Whiteness in itself is not property. Once a society grants white people a superior degree of rights and excludes black people from those rights, whiteness becomes property. As Harris says, “whiteness and property share a common premise… a right to exclude” (Harris 1714). In China, the government has instituted a social credit system. In short, each individual is assigned a numerical score. If one acts in a way that the government considers favorable, his score increases. If one acts in an unfavorable way, his score decreases. People with good social credit scores are able to m...

       With Locke fresh in the mind, I noticed contradictions in its interpretation by the founders in Harris's example the colonizers' treatment of Native American land. Through force, Indian traditions were replaced with those of the colonizers. They found this as a legitimate action because conquest itself promoted legitimacy. Furthermore, Harris explains how they heavily relied on Lockean labor theory because it "confirmed and ratified their experience"(Harris 1728). The law's interpretation of these encounters as legitimate is what Harris sees as ultimately leading to whiteness as property.      I saw Locke's theories of labor and possibly a degree of picking and choosing by the founders in order to  ratify their experience. Certainly, the argument that this land was not "being used" by the Native Americans, at least not in a sense that the Europeans would see, would be backed by Lockean labor theory. If there was land not being used/attribut...

  Cheryl Harris’s “Whiteness as Property” puts forth an explanation as to how racial identity formed and was translated into property interests protected by law. Harris draws heavily upon the history of interracial interaction in the United States to construct this explanation. She not only chronicles the events that formed racial identities, attached economic value to racial identity, and legitimated that economic value through law, but she also at times ascribes motivation to these events and speculates at the intentions behind the choices made in the United States. This attribution of motivation is a key part of Harris’s description of slavery.      Harris points to a time where black slaves and white unfree laborers were both part of the working force. Though the two groups could be distinguished from one another, there was not yet a notion that all black people were slaves. This distinction between the two groups grew, however. White laborers were indentured f...

  In Whiteness as Property by Cheryl Harris, Harris illustrates how the concept of race, specifically whiteness, permeates throughout society, and how the legal system has often protected whiteness as a property interest, resulting in the material conditions that exist for people of color (especially Black people) today. Harris provides a compelling explanation as to how racism can be baked into the basic foundational principles of society (in this case conceptions of property), thus allowing for systemic racism to flourish without individuals needing to actually be racist. Even if individuals do not intend to be racist, due to the systems in place, they can inadvertently reinforce the racist material conditions and dynamics at hand. I believe an interesting implication of Harris’ analysis of whiteness is that whiteness, while it most certainly functions as a form of property in many regards, also functions as an entitlement. Entitlement is defined as “any government-provided or go...

Whilst reading through Whiteness as Property , one topic of interest that stood out to me was the evolution of the underlying rationales Whites have historically used to justify the racial hierarchy in American society. In particular, I found it interesting that the original rationale was as simple as "it was their racial otherness that came to justify the subordinated status of Blacks" (Harris 1717). In this instance, I couldn't help but recall Hobbes's theories on equality, and how moral notions such as justice are only in place due to consensus within an individual commonwealth (Hobbes 78). What this means is that the notions of "justice" only extend as far as "membership" within the commonwealth, which could be gatekept with whatever arbitrary metric the commonwealth sees fit. As such, when applying this theory in real life, we see that the "in-group" is the Europeans, while the "out-group" consists of everyone else, includi...

  Near the end of Whiteness as Property, Harris brings up different cases on Affirmative Action to show the inconsistencies behind supreme court justices arguments against Affirmative Action. The courts concluded “race-conscious remedial measures are unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment” (Harris 1767). Harris believes this conclusion stems from the court rationalizing these arguments with the beliefs that white people have expectations and benefits that shouldn’t be “taken” away through these policies.  She provides supreme court case examples which undergo different reviews. One of these is extending the strict scrutiny review for whites, which Harris states “is a further legitimation of whiteness as identity, status, and property” (Harris 1775). She further states that extending the strict scrutiny review for whites is wrong since it's in place to protect disadvantaged groups who have been subordinated by white supremacy. Harris ...

Prelude: I remember in my intro to philosophy class the Professor taught Hume’s Problem of Induction. They repeatedly corrected a popularized misinterpretation of the argument: inductive reasoning employed in science can never prove a 100% causal link, and can only prove strong correlational evidence that imply usually X corresponds with Y. Rather the devastating implication of Hume’s problem of induction is that past evidence has no bearing whatsoever on future occurrences, there is no reason to believe that gravitational forces will operate the same tomorrow as today. In other words causation is not just to 100% prove, but there is no reason correlational evidence has any effect on the strength of a causal link. The reason I recall this example, is because I’ve observed a similar gap in understanding accounts of structural discrimination particularly accounts like Harris which criticize neutrality and colorblindness. Like the scientist, people are incredibly willing to accept the...

Initially, Locke and Hobbes appear to proceed from relatively similar starting assumptions—however, their subsequent conclusions and reasoning diverge greatly. Specifically, both Locke’s and Hobbes’ arguments stem from similar beliefs in the initial conditions of humanity. Although, both agree that it is a state of almost unmitigated freedom, where the absence of an external coercive power presupposes significant restrictions on one’s liberty. Both thinkers seem to agree that a certain kind of equality exists in this state. However, the diverge as to origin and consequences of this equality. Locke argues that the state of nature is one of equality, “wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another” (Locke, 101). Likewise, Hobbes states that, “when all is reckoned together the difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he” (Hobbes, 74). H...

This is following the thoughts introduced last class on whether Indigenous people really sold Manhattan to colonialist... Connection to the land sits at the core of indigenous culture and sets their belief on property. To Indigenous folk, the land carries their ancestors, language, practices, and identity. When the two are so closely bonded, I think it not a stretch to say that the land and the people are one. If we take this perspective, we can apply Locke’s freedom of nature which states that “for a man, not having the power of his own life,   cannot , by compact, or his own consent… put himself under the absolute, arbitrary power of another, to take away his life, when he pleases.” Just as Locke contends that one has not power over their life, Indigenous folk contend that they have no power of the land and through that same logic cannot transfer this power over to another to do as they please with it. Additionally, Locke’s account of property only accounts for private prope...

 

Interestingly both Locke and Hobbes point out to forces that restrain our actions in the state of nature, but their reasoning is widely different. Hobbes believes that your self-interest is the most important and thus an individual won’t engage in activities that will not contribute to their preservation. Therefore, we are constrained by ourselves and will not be able to engage in an act that might bring us different emotions, which could enrich our lives, but would not contribute to our self-interest.   Whereas Locke sees that we are constrained by the “liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession” (Section 6, Chp 2). An individual cannot conduct any action that will inflict harm on another person’s “life, health, liberty, or possessions” (Section 6, Chp 2). This argument is the opposite of what Hobbes is saying as in his understanding everything can be done if it preserves self-interest even when it involves inflicting harm on another person posse...

  In Chapter V of Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, Locke argues that “before the desire of having more than man needed had altered the intrinsic value of things, which depends only on their usefulness to the life of man…the same plenty was still left to those who would use the same industry” (Section 37). Prior to the creation of money and the agreement to give it value, Locke believed there to have been a time where people would only take what they “needed.” However, this means there was a point where human greed did not exist. I do not view this as plausible because people have different definitions of need, and even when people were simply acquiring what they could to survive, concepts of jealousy and desire still existed and pushed them to believe they “needed” their neighbor’s land or cattle. Furthermore, as written in Hobbes’ Leviathan, “passions that incline men to peace” include “things that are necessary to commodious living, and a hope by their industry to obtain th...

    According to  Smith, it cannot be contract that causes obedience to government. That reasoning would only explain why the individuals who originally entrusted the government with certain powers obey its laws. Only those original individuals can be said to have engaged in a contract. Unconscious of any contract, those individuals' descendants would have no reason obey the government. Since we know through observation that the descendants do obey the government, it seems that contract is not the cause for obedience to government.      In defending the contractarian account, one could argue that a descendant consents to be governed and consents to be bound by a contract by remaining in the country. Smith refutes this claim, rightfully noting that an individual has no say in where he is born and may lack the language skills or financial means to relocate (Smith 403). Smith does admit, though, that one who does leave the state "expressly declare[s]...

  Locke argued that property was appropriated by men from the common state of nature through their labor. Men unquestionably owned their labor and as a result, were able to use it as a tool to “annex” something from the common state of nature and possess it. While the amount of labor a man can do is relatively infinite, the amount of property they can acquire is not. The property must be kept “within the bounds, set by reason, of what might serve for his use” and there must be enough of the property left for everyone else to have a “good and enough” amount of it as well (21). In Locke’s state of nature, property usually referred to perishable goods (as demonstrated by him referring to acorns and poultry), so the idea was that one would only have enough property that “any one can make use of [it] to any advantage of life before it spoils.”    Given that these conditions seem to create an equitable distribution of property, the question arises as to why there is rampant ine...

This blogpost was influenced by the reading and Timon's blog post and my comment/reaction (I write this presuming no context from reading either). Excerpt from Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence. In Lectures on Jurisprudence Smith writes on citizens born into social contracts without consenting to the terms of the social contract. This may not initially appear to be an issue, but not only is the born citizen unable to renegotiate the terms of the social contract, they are rarely able to leave either. Thus the citizen is fundamentally coerced into accepting the terms enforced upon their birth. The state then ensures this acceptance as a reinforcement of its continued legitimacy, via force and unequal bargaining power rather then true voluntary contractual agreements.  To expand beyond Smith's point, the connection between citizenship and land ownership is rather strange when reflected upon. Functionally, you belong to the nation who owns the land upon which you were born. Why...

Thomas Hobbes famously argued that man’s natural state is war. Man is at war because he seeks to protect himself and his interests, which conflict with other men’s. Hobbes breaks it down into three categories: Man is at war because of “competition, diffidence, and glory” [Hobbes 76]. In other words, man is at war because he desires the same things as other men, he fears other men, and he wants other men to fear him. Hobbes claims that the only thing that can end the state of war is “assurance to the contrary” [Hobbes 76]. In other words, an assurance of peace is the only thing that will keep men from being at war with one another. John Locke pushes back on Hobbes’ argument that war is the natural state of things. He argues that men originally live in peace with one another. Their reason impels them to respect one another's property, which becomes theirs as a result of appropriation through labor. When one man usurps what rightfully belongs to another, he breaks this natural order. ...

 Chapter II “Of the State of Nature” in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government is particularly interesting to me. Here’s to briefly summarize the chapter in a premise-conclusion form. Locke argues that all men are naturally born in a “state of perfect freedom”, where we have “uncontrollable liberty” to dispose of ourselves and our possessions, and a “state of equality”, wherein no more has more power or liberty over another (8-9). But Locke particularly distinguishes the state of perfect freedom from the state of license: people can dispose of themselves and their possessions but they cannot destroy themselves or their possessions. No one ought to harm not only others but also themselves. Because people can only choose to “wish to receive good” (8), we cannot do so unless we are careful about satisfying the “like desire” to receive good, given the premise that we are naturally in the state of equality and the nature of our desires are identical. If one does harm others, because we l...

While reading through Adam Smith's Lectures on Jurisprudence, I found it interesting when he brought up the idea that latter generations within a "civilized" society had no mechanism by which they could consent to the "social contract". This obviously poses an issue because as mentioned by Hobbes in the Leviathan, "whensoever a man transferrth his right or renounceth it... it is a voluntary act... the mutual  transferring of right is that which men call contract" (Hobbes 82). In reality, however, Smith points out that although "when certain powers of government were at first entrusted to certain persons upon certain conditions ... that the obedience of these who entrusted it might be founded on a contract, their posterity have nothing to do with it" (Smith 403). What Smith seems to be suggesting here is that the social contract, whereby one would transfer some of their rights in exchange for a system of governance, is not binding to later gen...

  While reading Locke’s Second Treatise, I was interested in his discussion about money in Chapter V, On Property. He argues that humans consented to the use of money “thus came in the use of money, some lasting thing that men might keep without spoiling, and that by mutual consent men would take in exchange for the truly useful, but perishable supports of life” (Locke 46). Locke states that “everyone has a right to as much as he can use, and property in all that he can effect with labor” (Locke 46). When a person makes too much, they don’t want their goods to perish, and thus they seek out ways to maintain this value with non-perishable items (money). With money, people, through agreement, put value on these nonperishable items that are actually less useful than perishable items. Further, this introduction of money and its value lead people to be inclined to enlarge their possessions, past their natural rights. Thus, people have tactically consented to money which leads to...

Group A: Zac Rukmini Kenneth Grace Marta Frank Group B: Timon Nicole Kara Trevor Scarlett Zane Initial Pairings: Zac and Zane Rukmini and Trevor Kenneth and Nicole Grace and Timon Marta and Scarlett Frank and Kara Work out a set of workable tutorial times with your partner; we will set tutorial times during seminar tomorrow.

    SYLLABUS   Courses: PPE Philosophy Seminar and Philosophy Tutorial Seminar Time: Thursday (and sometimes on Tuesday) 1:15-4:00 Seminar Place: Kravis 100 (when not online or outside) Tutorial Time: Tuesday, by appointment Professor: Paul Hurley Contact Info: paul.hurley@cmc.edu Office Hours: W 3:00-5:00, F 3:00-5:00, ABA   INTRODUCTION This is the syllabus for both the PPE Philosophy Tutorial and the PPE Philosophy Seminar.   Our focus will be on areas of philosophy of particular relevance to economics and politics – ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and the philosophy of law.   It is important to keep in view throughout these courses one distinctive contribution of philosophy to the PPE triad.   Economics and political science are disciplines that are by their own methodological assumptions descriptive rather than prescriptive (political theory and jurisprudence are outliers here).   The...