Blacks and Social Justice

By Bernard R. Boxill

Book Overview

Delineate the principal arguments for and against the major racial issues of our time.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847677109
• ISBN13: 9780847677108
• Release Date: August 1992
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.9" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

AN IMPORTANT ARGUMENT BY ONE OF THE GREATEST BLACK PHILOSOPHERS

Bernard Boxill is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition to this book (1984; revised edition 1992), he has also edited Race and Racism (Oxford Readings in Philosophy). In the Introduction, boxill states, "The first aim of this book is to rebut or defuse these and other charges being leveled against the color-conscious policies that have been threatened by Ronald Reagan's administration." In the chapter, "The Color-Blind Principle," he states that "My object in this chapter is to demonstrate that the color-blind principle, which considers all color-conscious policies to be invalid, is mistaken." In his illuminating chapter, "Black Progress and the Free Market," he criticizes black economists Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams (who have minimized the effect of discrimination, on the grounds that employers in a free market would have economic incentives to not discriminate), by stating, "An employer may decide that he had better not hire blacks, even if he neither dislikes them nor believes them to be incompetent, because he perceives that the public would rather not be served by blacks, either because IT dislikes them (pure discrimination) or thinks them incompetent (perceptual discrimination).... for, just as there are situations in which the free market makes it costly to discriminate, in the situation cited the free market makes it costly not to discriminate." In his chapter "Marxism, Justice, and Black Progress he writes, "I am defending color-conscious policies in this book, both on the grounds that they are just and on the grounds that they are to the advantage of blacks." In his chapter on "Separation or Assimilation?" he writes, "I am proud that St. Augustine was a black man, but I am sure that my culture is not his, and I am not less proud---for I do not really care---that his The Holy City shows no traces of Negritude." This is a tightly-argued, very illuminating book that will be essential reading for anyone interested in Black/Africana philosophy.