( 112 ) Black Rights/White Wrongsto be given a different emphasis, if a case can be made that a tacitly mascu-
line experience has grounded their formation? Is the disdain for “inclina-
tion” linked with its identification with the body and the feminine? It could
be argued similarly that genuine race neutrality requires a careful rethinking
of white philosophy’s content in the light of racial domination. If nonwhite
“savagery” is the negative antipode against which civilized (white) human-
ity is going to define itself, then obviously the interlocking conceptual rela-
tionships are likely to shape how these concepts of “civilization,” and what
it is to rise above nature, develop. Both in the descriptive realm, where full
humanity is conceptualized in Eurocentric and culturally loaded terms, and
in the prescriptive realm, the implications could be far- reaching.
Finally, ignoring the racial exclusions in Kant’s (and other modern
Western philosophers’) moral and political theory obfuscates the dis-
tinctive moral topography opened up by recognizing the experience of
those persons systematically treated as less than persons. Instead of seeing
these exclusions as merely an embarrassment, we should be taking them
as a philosophical challenge. Instead of pretending that Kant was arguing
for equal respect to be extended to everybody, we should be asking how
Kant’s theory needs to be rethought in the light not merely of his own rac-
ism but of a modern world with a normative architecture based on racist
Kant- like principles. How is “respect” to be cashed out, for example, for a
population that has historically been seen as less than persons? Should it be
reconceptualized with a supplementary group dimension, given that white
supremacy has stigmatized entire races as less than worthy of respect, as
appropriately to be “dissed?” What corrective measures would be required
of the Rechtsstaat to redress racial subordination? How is cosmopolitanism
to be realized on a globe shaped by hundreds of years of European expan-
sionism? Even if we still want to call the theory “Kantianism,” it would be a
Kantianism radically transformed by the challenge of addressing the moral
demands of the sub- person population.^45
In short, the moral and political agenda of those persons not originally
seen as full persons will be significantly different from the agenda of those
whose personhood has traditionally been uncontested, and we need con-
cepts, narratives, and theories that register this crucial difference. So that’s
what.^46
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