The Color of Mind Discussion (Chapter Nine)

 CGC Notes: February 20th, 2023

Introductory Questions: 

1. Can we discuss status equality? Who is being referenced in relation to this term?

2. [pg. 147] Why is ‘color of mind’ ideology necessary for Derrick Darby’s argument? Why not rely on other notions like ‘institutional racism’? 

3. [pg. 153] Do the authors underestimate white backlash?

4. [pg. 148] Does their separation of sorting from the history of white supremacy weaken the normative weight of their argument?  

5. Tracking vs. merit based argument. Is this a question of self-respect? Is self-respect missing from the conversation of egalitarianism? 

6. [pg. 145] What might it mean to say that the Color of Mind embodies, causes, and is caused by social inequality? 

On the topic of status equality (question one): Dignitary inequality is a status inequality, meaning that it is not distributive, political, or opportunity inequality. Is it self-transparent what that means? Status may be a participatory notion, or an issue of recognition. This seems like a weak definition of status inequality. It has something to do with aspiring to achieve as well. 

One way that we could approach this concept is by tracking the embodies, causes, and is caused by tripartite definition of status equality by analyzing whether the Color of Mind really does appeal to these three criteria. 

Where does the choice come from for students of color to separate themselves in terms of classes? It is something caused by or perhaps something which embodies unjust social relations? But what is a practice which embodies social inequality? There is an example on page 145. It seems like what it means to embody something has much to do with persistent instantiation — or episodic instantiation. 

Example of caused by: x chooses a non high-performing track because of past experience of exclusion. Example of cause: the same case, because some time in the future x is not recognized by their peers as a high-performing student. Example of embodies: white and black students in an AP class have difficulty recognizing one another as peers. There is a breakdown of recognition. 

What about an example where, in a classroom, students self-segregate? This could be a good example of embodying inequality as well. 

Status inequality is more fundamental, it is a different question, than distributive inequality. We would not have distributive inequality without status inequality, and this may be a reason why Darby is focusing on the question of status. It is normatively prior. But don’t we understand status equality only retroactively through the realization of distributive inequality? Well, let’s look at Cornell West’s example of the racist cabbie. That an affluent black man might struggle to find a cab in New York City is an example of inequality which cannot be understood through distributive injustice, but of status. 

Going to a different question (number 2): why is the ‘Color of Mind’ concept necessary for this argument? Is it because perceptions are being mediated through conceptual content, and that means that to describe racist perceptions means understanding racist conceptual content, e.g. the color of mind? Racism is something other than practice. It may be because they want to focus only on the school. 

What does true integration mean within the school context? It may mean integrating materially, through something like statistical equality through equal enrollment in higher level classes — but it would also mean undoing ideologies and myths. Systemic practices does not only refer to material realities, but also the ideologies that cause these material realities. But aren’t there structural status inequalities that don’t require the possession of racist beliefs? 

Historiographically, where does one locate evidence for the existence of ignorance — and particularly if it is not overt in the practice? It may be discoverable through a limitation on imagination. For instance, the fact that school leaders cannot imagine a school in which black students are just as likely to sign up for AP classes as white students. This limitation to imagination might be where ideologies like ignorance or the Color of Mind are discoverable. Of course, this would be a difficult position to adopt about ideology, because it falls into the problem of the ideology critic knowing something which the actors themselves could not know — its a self-fulfilling idea.