Linda Martín Alcoff: The Return of Cultural Racism

The last event I am chairing as my tenure as The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s Academic Director comes to an end.

Cultural racism targets not people, but peoples, or forms of life and ways of existing. When biological racism lost credibility after WW2, cultural racism came to the fore as an ostensibly more legitimate ground for discrimination. It is often cloaked in concepts of ‘backwardness’ or the distinction between ‘traditional’ and ‘historical’ cultures, i.e. those that merely repeat versus those that allow innovation. This talk will explore the concept of cultural racism and argue that a renewed attention to this form, as opposed to attitudinal racism, will help us see how racism is working today. It will also help to show why the focus on cultural practices (i.e. the ‘culture wars’) is not peripheral but central to our political discourses.