Who really benefits from conversations about white privilege? Philosopher Naomi Zack believes that if your goal is to fight racism, a good first step is to stop talking about privilege. She says we should instead focus the conversation on violations of rights.
In White Privilege and Black Rights Naomi Zack examines racial profiling in American policing, arguing against white privilege discourse while introducing a new theory of applicative justice.
Zack draws clear lines between rights and privileges and between justice and existing laws to make sense of the current crisis. This urgent and immediate analysis of the killings of unarmed black men by police officers shows how racial profiling matches statistics of the prison population with disregard for the constitutional rights of the many innocent people of all races.
Moving the discussion from white privilege discourse to the rights of blacks, from ideas of white supremacy to legally protected police impunity, and from ideal and non-ideal justice theory to existing injustice, White Privilege and Black Rights examines the legal structure that has permitted the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and others.
Deepening understanding without abandoning hope, Zack shows why it is more important to consider black rights than white privilege as we move forward through today's culture of inequality.
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