RacIaL exPLoItatIoN ( 135 )problems to be overcome, this simple fact alone is powerful enough to
derail the whole project.
Nonetheless, the important thing is obviously to get the debate going,
so that discussion of these issues in an increasingly nonwhite United States
can move from the margins to the mainstream. Facing up to the historically
white- supremacist character of the society and the polity will be an impor-
tant conceptual move in facilitating this debate, and philosophy, committed
by its disciplinary pretensions to both Truth (getting it right) and Justice
(making it right), can and should play an important role in bringing about
this paradigm shift, even if— or rather especially since— it has been culpa-
bly absent so far.