Richard Thompson Ford

The ethics of characterizing difference: guiding principles on using racial categories in human genetics

We are a multidisciplinary group of Stanford faculty who propose ten principles to guide the use of racial and ethnic categories when characterizing group differences in research into human genetic variation.

BARACK IS THE NEW BLACK

Barack Obamas political strategies during the 2008 presidential election were those of a cohort of younger, new Black politicians, who have rewritten the playbook by which Blacks can win election. Their success suggests that White racism is no longer the insuperable barrier to Black success that it has been for all of American history and that the old style of Black politics, which relied heavily on racial bloc voting and influence peddling within the Black community, may be obsolete. However, Obamas strategy of not appealing to narrow racial solidarities but instead of drawing broad support from voters of all races cast a shadow of doubt on Obamas racial loyalties. It remains unclear whether the Obama phenomenon will mark the renewal of civil rights or the repudiation of its historical commitment to the most disadvantaged.

Headscarves, accommodation and the problem of joint costs

A central project of race-conscious progressive thought has been to establish that racial minorities have distinctive norms, perspectives, voices and cultural practices that might contribute to ‘diversity.’ The implicit presumption underlying the accommodationist account of discrimination is that group cultural differences are natural and authentic expressions of individual conscience and identity and that failure to accommodate these differences is a form of tyranny. Here, as in Michel Foucaults account of sexuality, we find a ‘repressive hypothesis’: power is exercised through censorship and repression, justice entails nothing more than the absence of repression, a willingness to let human nature take its course and embrace the mysterious and beautiful forces that already surround and define us. But what if our era is defined less by the repression of group difference than by its production? And what if – as in Foucaults analysis – the repressive hypothesis itself is one of the mechanisms by which this production of group difference is accomplished? Is there evidence for such a counter-hypothesis? In American society, human beings are sorted (and sort themselves) with remarkable comprehensiveness, precision and efficiency into a number of almost canonical social groups. You know what they are (and more importantly, you know who you are). By contrast, I propose that a just society should seek to speed the integration of disadvantaged and socially isolated groups, regardless of whether that requires the accommodation or the suppression of the distinctive practices of minority groups. This suggests a policy that guarantees opportunities for those minorities willing to assimilate: aggressive and comprehensive enforcement of anti-discrimination law with respect to race, ethnicity and religious faith, but not necessarily with respect to conspicuous expressive practices.

Race and the Law

This article is a revision of the previous edition article by R.T. Ford, volume 19, pp. 12684–12689,