Sabbatical Proposal
to the Faculty Development Committee
of the Creighton College of Arts & Sciences
by Kevin M. Graham, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Philosophy
Creighton College of Arts & Sciences
Proposal Title: “Whiteness that’s not a shade of pale: Philosophical reflections on
race, color, and identity”
Specific Period of Leave Planned: Spring and Summer 2005
Proposal Description
Specific goals for the sabbatical leave period
I want to immerse myself in the rich and growing literature of the social history
of race in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. I propose to explore how
existing critical theories of race developed by philosophers, political theorists, and
sociologists do or do not account adequately for the various ways that racial identities
such as white, black, French-Canadian, Irish, and Jewish have been constructed over
the course of this history. I hope that this project of immersion and exploration will
enable me to establish a knowledge base and a conceptual framework for a book
project with the same working title as this proposal. I also plan to compose two essays
that will form the beginning of this book project, and to present each of those essays to
two international scholarly conferences.
Project description.
Existing critical theories of race assume a concept of race that makes physical
appearance, and especially skin color, central to racial identity. This is not particularly
surprising, since these theories were developed in response to the social setting of the
United States of the late twentieth century, where the racial landscape is powerfully
shaped by the legacies of African slavery and segregation, institutions constructed on a
concept of race defined by skin color and other associated physical features.
It is not, however, necessary that skin color play a leading role or, indeed, any
role in marking a group racially. Irish immigrants to the US in the early 19th century
moved from a British colony where they were racially marked as non-white on the basis
of culture, language, and religion to a US society where they were marked as white on
the basis of skin color. European and US Jews in the 20th century gradually shifted from
being racially marked as non-white on the basis of culture and religion to being racially
marked as white on the basis of skin color. In late 20th century Canada, FrenchCanadians gradually shifted from being racially marked as non-white on the basis of
culture, religion, and especially language to being racially marked as white on the basis
of skin color.
The social history of race in the US, Canada, and Great Britain raises deep
philosophical questions. What does it mean for a social group to be marked racially
rather than in some other way? How can our existing concepts of race and racism be
revised to take account of the rich and terrible social history of race? These are among
the questions I hope to address by undertaking this project.
Project timetable
March 2004
May-July 2004
July 2004
August 2004
January-May 2005
March 2005
May 2005
June 2005
June-August 2005
June-July 2005
July 2005
August 2005
Preparation of a proposal for an essay about the conceptual
challenges that the social history of race poses for critical race
theory. Submission of this proposal to the 21st International Social
Philosophy Conference.
Composition of this essay.
Presentation of this essay to 21st International Social Philosophy
Conference.
Revision of this essay. Submission of this essay to the 2005 Annual
Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
Reading broadly and deeply in the following areas:
1 existing critical theories of race
2 social histories of in the US, Canada, and Great Britain
 French-Canadian racial identity
 Irish-American racial identity
 Jewish-American racial identity
 African-American racial identity
Preparation of a proposal for an essay about the racial marking of
French-Canadians as non-white on the basis of culture, religion,
and especially language in Canada prior to 1968. Submission of
this proposal to the 22nd International Social Philosophy
Conference.
Presentation of an essay about the conceptual challenges that the
social history of race poses for critical race theory to the 2005
Annual Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
Revision of this essay. Submission of this essay for publication in a
peer-reviewed journal such as Social Theory & Practice or Journal
of Social Philosophy.
Drafting of a book outline and proposal with the same scope and
title as this sabbatical project.
Preparation of an essay about the racial marking of FrenchCanadians as non-white on the basis of culture, religion, and
especially language in Canada prior to 1968.
Presentation of this essay to the 22nd International Social
Philosophy Conference.
Revision of this essay. Submission of this essay to the 2006 Annual
Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association.
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Bibliography
Critical Race Theory
Essed, P., and Goldberg, D. T., eds. Race Critical Theories: Text and Context. Malden,
Mass.: Blackwell, 2002.
Lott, Tommy L. The Invention of Race: Black Culture and the Politics of Representation.
Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 1999.
Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Mills, Charles W. Blackness Visible: Essays on Philosophy and Race. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1998.
Omi, Michael, and Winant, Howard. Racial Formation in the United States: From the
1960s to the 1990s. New York: Routledge, 1994.
General Social History of Race
Allen, Theodore W. The Invention of the White Race, Volume One: Racial Oppression
and Social Control. New York: Verso, 1994.
Roediger, David R. Toward the Abolition of Whiteness. New York: Verso, 1994.
Roediger, David R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American
Working Class. New York: Verso, 1991.
Saxton, Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass
Culture in Nineteenth-Century America. New York: Verso, 1990.
African-Americans
Malcomson, Scott L. One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race. New
York: Farrar, Straus, and Giruox, 2000.
French-Canadians
Bergeron, Leandre. Why There Must Be a Revolution in Quebec. Toronto: NC Press,
1971.
Dickinson, John, and Young, Brian. A Short History of Quebec. Third ed. Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003.
Roussopoulos, Dimitrios I., ed. Québec and Radical Social Change. Montréal: Black Rose
Books, 1974.
Irish-Americans
Ignatiev, Noel. How the Irish Became White. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Jones, Katharine W. Accent on Privilege: English Identities and Anglophilia in the U. S.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001.
Kenny, Kevin. The American Irish: A History. New York: Longman, 2000.
Jewish Americans
Brodkin, Karen. How Jews Became White Folks and What That Says About Race in
America. New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1998.
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Anticipated Tangible Products
I anticipate producing several tangible products during this sabbatical leave.
First, before the actual period of my leave begins, I plan to begin work on a general
conceptual essay on the challenges that the social history of race in the US, Canada,
and Great Britain poses for existing critical theories of race. I plan to present versions of
this essay to the 21st International Social Philosophy Conference in July 2004 and to the
2005 Annual Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association. During my sabbatical
leave, I plan to revise the essay in light of the feedback I receive from those two
conference audiences and to submit the essay for publication in a peer-reviewed journal
such as Social Theory and Practice or Journal of Social Philosophy.
Second, during the period of my leave, I plan to compose an essay on the
specific challenges that the racial identity of French-Canadians in Canada prior to 1968
poses for existing critical theories of race. I plan to present versions of this essay to the
22nd International Social Philosophy Conference in July 2005 and to the 2006 Annual
Congress of the Canadian Philosophical Association. Subsequently, I plan to revise the
essay in light of the feedback I receive from those two conference audiences and to
submit the essay for publication in a peer-reviewed journal such as Dialogue: Canadian
Philosophical Review or Philosophy and Social Criticism.
Third, during the period of my leave, I plan to draft an outline and proposal for a
book project on the subject of this sabbatical leave proposal. I do not plan to submit
the outline and proposal to prospective publishers until all of the chapters exist in at
least draft form and until I have received feedback from conference audiences about
versions of most of those chapters. I do hope, however, that the book outline and
proposal will serve as a road map for my research for the next several years.
Relation between Project and Current Trends in the Discipline
Since its inception in the 1960s, critical theory in philosophy, political theory, and
sociology has focused on understanding forms of social injustice related to economic
and social class. During the 1980s, some critical theorists began to work on forms of
social injustice related to race and racism. As the field of philosophy of race emerged as
a recognized sub-discipline in philosophy during the 1990s, these existing critical
theories of race influenced its development and shaped its conceptual frameworks. As a
result, current philosophy of race is extensively and consciously influenced by critical
theories of race developed primarily by sociologists and political theorists.
The philosophy of race has not, however, been extensively influenced by the
extensive literature in the social history of racial formation that has developed during
the 1990s and the first decade of the 21st century. As a result, scholars working in the
field of the philosophy of race typically think of our current conception of race in the
US, which is so closely tied to skin color and other aspects of physical appearance, as a
fixed reality rather than as a product of a long historical development. They do not
typically realize that in other societies and at other times, race has been much more
closely linked to culture, language, and religion than to physical appearance. As a
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result, they have a conceptually and historically limited idea of what race is. The overall
goal of this project is to help philosophers of race to achieve a less limited conception of
race and to recognize the philosophical, social, and political implications of such a less
limited conception.
How the Project Enhances My Scholarship
Since I was appointed to the faculty of Creighton University in 1996, I have been
working on a research project on forms of social injustice related to racism and the
limits of liberal political philosophy. I am now beginning to wind up this research project
by developing the essays that have resulted from it into a book project tentatively titled
Thinking Race, Conceiving Justice: Race, Liberalism, and Social Justice.
I intend to use this sabbatical leave to establish a knowledge base and a
conceptual framework for a new research project on the nature of racial identity. I hope
that this new research project will eventually lead to the publication of a second book,
some chapters of which will be published in advance as articles in peer-reviewed
journals.
The proposed sabbatical leave project will allow me to immerse myself in the rich
and extensive literature in the emerging field of the social history of race, a literature
with which I currently have only limited familiarity. This, in turn, will permit me to help
philosophers of race to understand the philosophical significance of the insights of social
historians of race. This is personally appealing because I enjoy doing this sort of
interdisciplinary research. It may also be professionally advantageous because I am not
aware of any other philosophers who are currently doing similar work.
Whiteness that’s not a shade of pale:
Philosophical reflections on race, color, and identity
by Kevin M. Graham, Ph.D.
Abstract
Existing critical theories of race assume a concept of race that makes physical
appearance, and especially skin color, central to racial identity. It is not, however,
necessary that skin color play a leading role or, indeed, any role in marking a group
racially. Irish immigrants to the US in the early 19th century, for instance, moved from a
British colony where they were racially marked as non-white on the basis of culture,
language, and religion to a US society where they were marked as white on the basis of
skin color. French-Canadians and Jewish Americans have undergone similar
transformations in their racial identities. The social history of race in the US, Canada,
and Great Britain raises deep philosophical questions. What does it mean for a social
group to be marked racially rather than in some other way? How can our existing
concepts of race and racism be revised to take account of the rich and terrible social
history of race? These are among the questions I hope to address by undertaking this
project.
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