This journal was started in 1999 at the dawn of the 21st Century It was aimed at providing leading edge thinking on Africa and the diaspora issues at a time when a stale orthodoxy ruled the Black academy. At the time I had a full time role as partner in a City firm and the journeying around the world consequent on the launch of the first issue made a second issue impossible! However the need for an independent and…
Avram Alpert of Princeton has written an interesting piece, ‘Philosophy’s systemic racism‘ exposing the absurd defence of establishment philosophy that the racism of major European philosophers had no impact on their philosophy. I have been studying this issue for many decades and in 1974 I described this nexus as ‘western philosophy’s self misunderstanding’. However Alpert makes a couple of wrong turns. He claims dialectic was born in Greece and is infected with racism and needs saving. Dialectic does not…
We are witnessing a sanctification. However, there are many unanswered questions about RBG. It is uncivil to speak ill of the recently departed so this will await a later period. After the movie about her was released I attended a private view for artists and writers in London. I asked some of the makers of the film who were present some hard questions about her only to be told by them and the audience that they were in no…
Baggini has written a piece in Prospect magazine ‘ Is the University of Edinburgh right to “cancel” David Hume?’ 15 Sep 2020. He is seeking to defend Hume from accusations of racism while accepting his ‘unfortunate’ statements. He writes: ‘Hume was both a product of his time and like people of every time, had his blind spots.’ This statement implies that Hume’s views were uncontroversial during his time. This is completely untrue. His views were seriously challenged and…
I am not speaking of ALL democrats but of some powerful cabal within the Democratic Party. Why should they want to loose? That is the wrong question. We have to ask: under which circumstances do they want to win? Here the question arises whether if they could only win by changing their agenda would they rather loose? We have had a similar play in the UK where it is alleged that a strong party group in the Labour Party…
Much discussion of history, particularly the history of the development of Europe and its impact on the rest of the world takes as its starting point that Europe is Christian. This is an assumption that needs to be openly challenged. Claims of a Christianity vs Islam conflict and mosts claims about the underlying valuea of the West start from the assumption that the West is Christian. The concept of apostolic succession allows the Catholic church to say ‘we are…
It is with some hesitation that we address this issue and mention names. It does seem to be both important and implausible without naming names. With the insurgency of BLM Dr Kofi Bright may be able to find some cover. On 8 November 2019 in London Dr Bright, assistant professor in philosophy at London school of Economics, gave a public lecture on ‘Why do scientists lie?’ for the Royal Institute of Philosophy. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNs1sumAT68&t=774s) Only the formal lecture is presented…
Skidelsky writes on 20 July 2020 in Project Syndicate: ‘I still regard economics’ detachment from culture as a serious shortcoming in understanding human behavior. But I now see considerable merit in this cultural neutrality, because it provides a “safe space” for thinking amid the culture wars that currently convulse the non-scientific intelligentsia and about which journalists love to pontificate.’ and later: ‘Another point in favor of economics is its valid claim to be color- and gender-blind. ‘ Skidelsky, R….
There appears to be a lot of commentators who are asleep at the wheel lately. What is happening in the US is a dangerous rerun of the past. In Chicago & Detroit many years ago during a severe crash the corporations laid off their black workers under cruel and severe conditions. The White workers showed no solidarity. Clearly they thought that it was better for them to keep their jobs and for the black workers to take the hit….
Following our earlier blog we have found further astonishing examples of the hold of alt.right editors on the content of Wikipedia. According to Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll, if we look at the list of genocides, the total death toll of native Amerians is between 12,000 and 120,000 and only occurred in California. Even Adolf Hitler knew better and praised the US where Americans had ‘gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand,and now keep the modest remnant under…
On 9 July, in a piece entitled: ‘Segregation still blights the lives of African-Americans’ The Economist wrote: “If something isn’t done, and done in a hurry, to bring the coloured peoples of the world out of their long years of poverty, their long years of hurt and neglect, the whole world is doomed,” Martin Luther King Jr told striking workers the day before he was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee. In 1968 black Americans had only just realised formal…
