PHIL 405: Political Philosophy of Race

Winter 2025

Instructor: José J. Mendoza  

Email: josejm@uw.edu

Office: Savery Hall 385

Office Hour: Thursday 3:30-5:30pm

Course Description

This course will explore the philosophical issues that arise in pursuit of racial justice. The course will begin with the larger question: what is racial justice and how (if at all) is it different from justice as traditionally conceived by the Western philosophical tradition? For example, does a Rawlsian approach to "ideal" justice help or hurt in our efforts to redress racial injustice? The course will then look into the merits of more specific arguments for reparations, affirmative action, neighborhood integration, school reform, criminal justice reform, racial profiling, prison abolition and the efficacy of protest as means to achieve racial justice.

 Required Texts

All Texts will be available on Canvas.

Grading

Reading Quizzes (25% of course grade or 1.0 of the 4.0 total)

Three Short Writing Assignments (each worth 25% of course grade or 1.0 of the 4.0 total)

Readings for the Course

All readings will be available online. So, there are no books to buy for this course.

Course Reading Schedule:

Week One: The Racial Contract 

Tuesday (Jan 7): Introduction to the course

Thursday (Jan 9): Charles Mills, “Race and the Social Contract Tradition”

Week Two:  Rawls and Racial Justice

Tuesday (Jan 14): Charles Mills, “Race and the Social Contract Tradition”

Thursday (Jan 16): Tommie Shelby, “Race and Social Justice: Rawlsian Considerations”

Week Three:  Rawls and Racial Justice

Tuesday (Jan 21): Charles Mills, "Retrieving Rawls for Racial Justice?"

Thursday (Jan 23):Tommie Shelby, "Racial Realities and Corrective Justice"

Week Four:  Reparations

Tuesday (Jan 28): Derrick Darby, "Racial Reparations" (Chapter 3 of A Realistic Blacktopia)

Thursday (Jan 30):  Jennifer Page, "Reparations for White Supremacy?"

Week Five:  Affirmative Action

Tuesday (Feb 4): Andrew Valls, "The Libertarian Case for Affirmative Action"

Thursday (Feb 6): Kristina Meshelski, "Procedural Justice and Affirmative Action"

Week Six: Civic and Social Integration

Tuesday (Feb 11): Elizabeth Anderson, “The Future of Racial Integration”

Thursday (Feb 13): Tommie Shelby, “Integration, Inequality, and Imperatives of Justice”

Week Seven: Education and Racial Justice

Tuesday (Feb 18): Lawrence Blum, "Race and K-12 Education"

Thursday (Feb 20): Quentin Wheeler-Bell, "We Aren’t All Integrationists"

Week Eight: Racial Profiling

Tuesday (Feb 25): Annabelle Lever, "Racial Profiling and the Political Philosophy of Race"  

Thursday (Feb 27): Adam Omar Hosein, “Racial Profiling and Inferior Political Status”

Week Nine: Racism and Prisons

Tuesday (Mar 4): Tommie Shelby, "The Uses and Abuses of Incarceration"

Thursday (Mar 6): Tommie Shelby, "A Broken System? Racism and Functional Critique"

Week Ten: Protesting Racial Injustice

Tuesday (Mar 11): Juliet Hooker, “Black Lives Matter & Paradoxes of U.S. Black Politics”

Thursday (Mar 13): Open