"American Caste, not Race"

Dr. Lionel McPherson will present his paper, "American Caste, not Race"

 This event is also available virtually via Zoom: 

https://lafayette.zoom.us/j/91611471016

In his forthcoming book, The Afterlife of Race: An Informed Philosophical Search (OUP, fall 2023), Lionel McPherson argues that the perpetual stigmatized, wealthless condition of Black America is best understood as a caste phenomenon. Caste calls attention to intergenerational nature and national specificity of the Black American situation, rooted in inherited slavery and enforced segregation; “race,” by contrast, traffics in flat blackness. As McPherson explains it, race intrigue functions as a distraction—from the subjugation, exploitation, and nonrepair of the historical American “Slaves” caste—by (mis)directing focus to some global antiblack racism phenomenon of lesser importance.