Understanding White Superagency

Abstract

According to the dominant structuralist view of racism, racist outcomes can be explained by a combination of the following behaviors and phenomena: policies, rules, norms, institutional acts and objects, and implicit bias. Thus, on this view what accounts for a particular racist outcome or the continued reproduction of racist outcomes despite reform are a product of unwitting individuals following bad rules unknowingly causing harm, i.e., harm manifests as the result of complex interactions among well-meaning individuals and institutions. In chapter 1, I argue that this view cannot explain what a theory of racism should fundamentally explain, the apparent persistence of racist outcomes despite reform that has mostly ridden formal rules of racism. I argue that there is a sense in which white people in America simply are the structure. More specifically, whites can employ the structure when they need it to effect changes in the social world that they desire. Indeed, white racists are not beholden to structure (e.g., laws) at all: social structure is there to satisfy their will. Call this the superagential account of racism. I will identify three different ways through which it manifests: vigilantism by proxy, the perpetuation of racist outcomes, and white advantage despite reform. In chapter 2, I examine the overrepresentation of Black boys in the “judgment” categories within special education. None of the prevailing views sufficiently explain the resilience of racist outcomes in the face of reforms enacted to address this overrepresentation. I use a superagential analysis to better explain why Black children, especially boys, are put into these categories that “pipeline” into prison. The problem is not simply the institutional rules or assessment implements, but the professionals who exercise an extraordinary amount of discretionary power over the lives of these children. In chapter 3, I challenge some basic assumptions within the philosophy of migration. I question the easy equation between anti-racist politics and (more) open borders. Paying particular attention to the historical relations between new immigrant groups and the Black population, however, my claim is that this position erases Black interests, and therefore represents a racist view of how to be an anti-racist.