he charge of racism is a very bizarre charge.  That is, it is not all together clear what follows if the charge is an accurate one.   For with the exception of KKK and neo-Nazi folks, it is arguable that no one is a thorough going racist.  And I am sure that even individuals who fall into either of these two camps have redeeming qualities in other aspects of their lives.  For instance, there is no incompatibility at all between being a good provider of the family and a KKK member or a neo-Nazi person. 

In their very important essay “Kant and Race,” Thomas Hill and Bernard Boxill acknowledge that, in his anthropological writings, Kant says things about non-whites—blacks, in particular—that are objectionable.  Now, from this truth there are two camps in philosophy that have developed.  On the one hand, there is Camp Indictment, which holds that Kant’s objectionable remarks about blacks taints all that he says.  Hence, even Kant’s majestic remarks that all human beings are members of the Kingdom of Ends must be read in light of his unsavory remarks about non-whites.  On the other hand, there is Camp Progressive, which holds that Kant’s untoward remarks about blacks must be cast aside or at least bracketed because (i) Kant surely recognized that blacks have just as much of a claim to being human beings as other groups have and (ii) Kant opposed slavery.

My own view is that neither position is correct.  For the Camp Progressive folks, Kant’s untoward remarks are an embarrassment.  But they want to say that he was just having a bad moment in his thinking.  Perhaps he hadn’t digested his food well that day.  Or, perhaps he was ill and was not at his best.  Camp Progressive wants to say this Kant’s untoward remarks do not reflect his mature view about non-whites.  And it is his mature views that count.  Period 

Camp Indictment won’t have any of this.  Its adherents insist that Kant meant what he said about blacks and, therefore, his moral views do not have the universality that is claimed on their behalf either by him or others. 

As far as I can see, Camp Indictment goes too far.  Suppose I offer a theory of speech, but wrongly suppose that an identified group of people is incapable of speech.  Well, it hardly follows from this that my theory of speech is wrong or that it cannot be accurately applied to the very group of people whom I have supposed is incapable of speech. 

My problem with Camp Progressive is that it protests too much.  Indeed, my problem is that this camp seems to subscribe, however unwittingly, to the view held by Camp Indictment that if Kant said anything racist, then his entire intellectual edifice crumbles.  For the intellectual effort that is employed to defend the view that in his mature thought Kant held that blacks were no less human than whites is most problematic.  I shall return to this point in just a moment.

My view is that we should do with Kant’s moral theory roughly what we do with the words of Thomas Jefferson regarding equality.  The very best evidence makes it clear that he did not mean blacks when he wrote “All men are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights”.  But so what?  That is no reason whatsoever for folks nowadays not to apply these remarks to blacks.  Nor, again, is this a reason for blacks not to avail themselves of these remarks.  Part of moral progress consists in reading Jefferson’s remarks with a richness that he surely did not intend.  There is no need to insist that somehow, someway, he also meant blacks when he penned those majestic words.  And their majesty today most certainly is not lost just because he did not mean blacks when penned those words.  It would be just plain silly to argue that Jefferson took blacks to be the moral and intellectual equal of whites merely because, after all, he wrote “All men are created equal”.

Let me return to Kant by way of Alex de Tocqueville.  Tocqueville wrote the following:

If the black were to become free, his independence would be a greater burden then slavery itself.  This is because throughout his existence the black has learned to submit to himself to everything but reason.  Thus when reason should become his only guide, the black would not have the wherewithal to recognize reason’s voice (Democracy in America Bk. I, Part II, chap. x). 

The point here is a very simple one: The thesis that a people are human beings, leaves entirely unsettled the extent to which the individuals in question are capable of reasoning.  Neither Jefferson nor Tocqueville ever doubted that blacks were human beings.  As I observed in Vessels of Evil, the nanny role of slavery was reserved for human beings—not animals.  And the very point of Tocqueville’s remarks is that one can recognize that a people are human beings without at all supposing that they have the intellectual wherewithal to reason properly. 

Camp Progressive is way too satisfied with the truth that Kant held that blacks were human beings as if that truth settled everything.  Unfortunately, it settles very, very little.  Kant’s anthropological writings are not a problem for his moral theory.  Not at all.  They are, though, a problem for his official view of the intellectual wherewithal of non-whites.  And that, in turn, could be a problem for how just how applicable he took his theory to be to non-whites, as opposed to our own grasp of its applicability to all. 

Nowadays, Kant's views about blacks being intellectually inferior, if indeed he thought that, has no bearing whatsoever on the applicability Kant’s theory to non-whites.  None whatsoever, precisely because the issue of intellectual ability on the part of blacks is a non-issue nowadays.  And it is mindless posturing, to say nothing of a waste of intellectual energy, to go on as if Kant himself had to have held that his theory was applicable to non-whites in order for we today to hold that the theory us.  

Camp Indictment holds this silly view.  And the surprise is that Camp Progressive behaves as if it does. 

Obviously, it would be absolutely wonderful and marvelous if it could be shown that Kant held that non-whites—blacks in particular—to be the intellectual equal of whites.  But this issue is utterly independent of the soundness of his moral theory, as Hill and Boxill rightly point out in their essay “Kant and Race”. 

Kant was brilliant.  He was not, however, a particularly brilliant anthropologist, just as Einstein was not a particularly brilliant composer of music and Beethoven was not a particularly brilliant physicist.  And the argument, obviously, cannot be that everything one says has to be right in order for it to be the case that anything one says is right.  Neither Camp Indictment nor Camp Progressive can properly hold that silly view. 

Camp Indictment would have to show that Kant’s moral theory when applied to non-whites misses something that is utterly fundamental with regard to the life of non-whites and only non-whites.  And no critic of Kant in this regard has come even remotely close to showing that.  Camp Progressive, then, would do well to draw attention to this truth rather than spend all of its time arguing that Kant himself held that blacks had the intellectual wherewithal in virtue of which his moral theory was no less applicable to them than to those to whom he obviously deemed the theory applicable. 

The charge of racism, then, is proving to be most dangerous.  Not because the charge is never appropriate, as it most certainly is in some instances, but because nowadays folks of goodwill have become more concerned with the charge itself than with cultivating the good that has been made available to them. 

History reveals that every group of every persuasion and hue has held misconceptions about other groups.  And one such misconception is that a group has nothing to offer us unless it has been morally flawless.  For that line of thinking is incompatible with humanity as it should be, which is to exercise reason to discriminate between the good and the bad rather than to become fixated with the bad.