Another white Man's Burden

Tommy J. Curry

Description

Winner of the 2020 Josiah Royce Prize in American Idealist Thought presented by the Josiah Royce Society

Another white Man's Burden performs a case study of Josiah Royce's philosophy of racial difference. In an effort to lay bare the ethnological racial heritage of American philosophy, Tommy J. Curry challenges the common notion that the cultural racism of the twentieth century was more progressive and less racist than the biological determinism of the 1800s. Like many white thinkers of his time, Royce believed in the superiority of the white races. Unlike today however, whiteness did not represent only one racial designation but many. Contrary to the view of the British-born Germanophile philosopher Houston S. Chamberlain, for example, who insisted upon the superiority of the Teutonic races, Royce believed it was the Anglo-Saxon lineage that possessed the key to Western civilization. It was the birthright of white America, he believed, to join the imperial ventures of Britain—to take up the white man's burden. To this end he advocated the domestic colonization of Blacks in the American South, suggested that America's xenophobia was natural and necessary to protecting the culture of white America, and demanded the assimilation and elimination of cultural difference for the stability of America's communities. Another white Man's Burden reminds philosophers that racism has been part of the building blocks of American thought for centuries, and that this must be recognized and addressed in order for its proclamations of democracy, community, and social problems to have real meaning.
Preface: The Limits of Assimilative Methodologies in the Study of Race in American Philosophy

Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Royce, Racism, and the Colonial Ideal: white Supremacy, Imperialism, and the Role of Assimilation in Josiah Royce’s Aberdeen Address

2. Race Questions and the Black Problem: Royce’s Call for British Administration as a Solution to the Black Peril

3. No Revisions Needed: Historicizing Royce’s Provincialism, His Appeal to the white Man’s Burden, and Contemporary Claims of His Anti-Racism

4. On the Dark Arts: The Ethnological Foundations of Royce’s Idealism as Derivative from Joseph Le Conte’s “Southern Problems”; or The Evolutionary Basis of Royce’s Assimilationist Program

Epilogue

Notes
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophy
• Ethnic studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 27 novembre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438470740
• Langue: English

Extrait

Another white Man’s Burden
SUNY series in American Philosophy and Cultural Thought

Randall E. Auxier and John R. Shook, editors
Another white Man’s Burden
Josiah Royce’s Quest for a Philosophy of white Racial Empire
Tommy J. Curry
Cover art: Victor Gillam (1867–1920), “The White Man’s Burden (Apologies to Rudyard Kipling)” Judge , April 1, 1899.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2018 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Curry, Tommy J., 1979– author.
Title: Another white man’s burden : Josiah Royce’s quest for a philosophy of white racial empire / Tommy J. Curry.
Description: Albany, NY : State University of New York, 2018. | Series: SUNY series in American philosophy and cultural thought | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017041906 | ISBN 9781438470733 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438470740 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Royce, Josiah, 1855–1916. | White nationalism—United States. | United States—Race relations. | Imperialism.
Classification: LCC B945.R64 C87 2018 | DDC 191—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041906
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface: The Limits of Assimilative Methodologies in the Study of Race in American Philosophy
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Royce, Racism, and the Colonial Ideal: white Supremacy, Imperialism, and the Role of Assimilation in Josiah Royce’s Aberdeen Address
2 Race Questions and the Black Problem: Royce’s Call for British Administration as a Solution to the Black Peril
3 No Revisions Needed: Historicizing Royce’s Provincialism, His Appeal to the white Man’s Burden, and Contemporary Claims of His Anti-Racism
4 On the Dark Arts: The Ethnological Foundations of Royce’s Idealism as Derivative from Joseph Le Conte’s “Southern Problems”; or The Evolutionary Basis of Royce’s Assimilationist Program
Epilogue
Notes
Index
Preface
The Limits of Assimilative Methodologies in the Study of Race in American Philosophy
It is my belief that the integrationist ethic has subverted and blocked America’s underlying tendency toward what I would call democratic ethnic pluralism in our society. The ethic has been a historical tendency stimulated both by Anglo-Saxon political ideology, rampant industrialism, racism, and an Americanism whose implied goal has been the nullification of all competing subcultures indigenous to North America. It is my belief that both black and white scholarly rationalization have historically supported the integrationist ethic in pursuit of the ideal American creed. This approach was obviously predicated on an intellectual consensus which held that the political, economic, and cultural values of the Anglo-American tradition were sufficiently creative and viable enough to sustain the American progression to realization of its ultimate potential. But the present internal social and racial crisis we are experiencing proves beyond a doubt the failure of this integrationist ethic. As a result of this failure … we have no viable black philosophy on which to base much needed black studies programs.
—Harold Cruse, “The Integrationist Ethic as a Basis for Scholarly Endeavors,” 1969
I n Trump’s America, poor and middle class whites find unity despite their class differences. This unity is not found in race, but an ideal—the ethno-nationalist destiny of whites in the United States for generations to come. The white citizen seeks to sterilize his or her communities of racial and ethnic plurality, because such plurality is a threat to the white community, to white children, to white culture, to the true American ideals that built America. To “make America great again,” white citizens are stamping out the presence of different races. Foreigners must be assimilable, or denied entrance all together. The motivation to make America great again does not come from some mythical imagining of Donald Trump’s mind; it comes from many of the ideas and ideals promulgated by American philosophers such as Josiah Royce, Joseph Le Conte, and John M. Mecklin in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Josiah Royce embraced xenophobia. He believed that it was the trait of the Anglo-Saxon that true Americans possessed to their benefit. Can we deny that the thoughts of white American philosophers have set the stage for the reimagining and reemergence of a white ethnonationalism in America, or must we believe that such ideas were never seriously endorsed or intended by the racist assertions made by early white American thinkers? But history is not usually of any concern to the philosopher. This disciplinary maxim all too often means that whatever one may find that indicts American philosophy, as a project—be it racism, xenophobia, or imperialism—is nothing more than a historical accident and not philosophical. It is assuredly not part of the actual structure or an enduring feature of a figure’s thought. This denial should come as no real surprise given the apologetics regarding Heidegger and his Nazism. But what does it mean to think about America, to see America as the testing ground of the world’s most insidious anti-Black and genocidal racism? What does it mean to think about America as an American philosopher, or to think about America through a practice that censors that which disrupts the narrative of American exceptionalism, and ignore that which stains democracy?
American philosophy is often practiced as a kind of thinking with a unidirectional relationship to the values (e.g., democracy, diversity, liberalism, freedom, etc.) espoused. Theory mirrors disciplinary consensus much more than the textual impediments to the realization of genuine thought. The discourse of figures in American philosophy often concerns itself with the development, life, and vitality of the democratic ideal, so by consequence of that focus, American philosophers view that intellectual community as more democratic, diverse, and so forth. This is not only to be observed in the figures designated as the canon of American philosophy , but also in how the American philosopher is socialized to interpret said thinkers. The American philosophical canon is constructed such that the figures chosen for study emulate the social ethics we desire to suggest are the natural consequence of their thought. Why do we ignore Joseph Le Conte and John M. Mecklin in American philosophy? Joseph Le Conte was an avowed racist and supporter of slavery as well as a teacher of Josiah Royce. John M. Mecklin was an avowed pragmatist and admirer of William James as well as an adamant segregationist. What decides inclusion or exclusion of a figure in the field of American philosophy? These questions are rarely asked or approached in any significant way in the process of thinking through American thought. While racial segregation may be an undesirable political arrangement between Blacks and whites in twenty-first-century America, does the unpopularity of segregation’s reemergence negate the justifications and desirability of such arrangements in the various writings and lectures of American philosophers themselves? Segregation is no less American than integration, but the interpretive consensus among philosophers is that segregationist ideas are not only alien to the thought of figures such as Dewey, Royce, or Addams, but simply cannot and does not exist within the American philosophy canon itself. This fiat demands that thinking as an American philosopher displaces the actual centrality that racism, white supremacy, and imperialism occupy in the construction of America. In this way, American philosophy is forced by disciplinary decree to be incapable of destroying the ethos of empire problematized by the racialized outgroups America was constructed upon.
The discipline of philosophy insists that philosophical knowledge tends toward the good. Here the good often presents itself as some constellation of liberal political ideals or goals. Academic philosophers tend to read traditions and figures of those traditions as providing some justification for inclusion, diversity, civil and human rights, or outright political programs, such as feminism, coalitions, and so forth. In other words, philosophy is forced to be a self-justifying appeal to liberal political ends. As I have argued in previous publications, every white philosopher writing in the nineteenth century, for instance, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Josiah Royce, is interpreted to anticipate—and be acting in accordance with—integrationism, despite integration being an unintended program taken up after desegregation. As such, philosophy is never seen to be in the service of slavery, racism, or genocide but the complete opposite of those programs, since slavery, racism, and genocide emerge from the bowels of the unreasoned. Consequently, the effect of philosophy is its prima facia incompatibility with such human evils, despite the fact that every major figure in American philosophy has either been taught by someone who advocated for racist hierarchies between whites and other raced peoples, segregation, assimilation, imperialism, or slavery, or advocated for those hierarchies themselves. The turning away from historical fact is demanded so that all American philosophical thought, no matter its origin or authorial intent, resolves toward democratic inclusion and not the machinations of racist empire—segregation, ethnon