White Privilege and Black Rights

Naomi Zack is professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon. She is author and editor of a dozen books, including The Ethics and Mores of Race: Equality after the History of Philosophy (2011) and Ethics for Disaster (2009).

• Chapter 1. White Privilege, Entitlements, and RightsChapter 2. Black Rights and Police Racial ProfilingChapter 3. Black Injustice and Police Homicide

Lucid assessment...[of racism] is hard work and not for the faint of spirit. Naomi Zack’s White Privilege and Black Rights: The Injustice of U.S. Police Racial Profiling and Homicide is a case in point. It consists of three essays plus a preface and conclusion. Remarks by the author indicate it was prepared in the final weeks of last year, with the events in Ferguson, Mo., fresh in mind. But don’t let the title or the book’s relative brevity fool you. The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of Oregon -- and when she takes up terms such as 'white privilege' or 'black rights,' it is to scrutinize the concepts rather than to use them in slogans. Despite its topicality, Zack’s book is less a commentary on recent events than part of her continuing effort to think, as a philosopher, about questions of race and justice that are long-standing, but also prone to flashing up, on occasion, with great urgency -- demanding a response, whether or not philosophers (or anyone else) is prepared to answer them.