Does Mills’ epistemology suggest a hermeneutic injustice of White Afroscepticism?

Journal of Philosophy of Education 57 (4-5):826-841 (2024)
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Abstract

Charles Mills posits an epistemology of ignorance that underwrites the complicity of Whites, or people of Western European descent, as signatories of the racial contract. There is prevailing discourse about the complicity of White persons in perpetuating racism and whether they can experience epistemic injustice. In this paper, the claim to hermeneutical injustice, in particular, makes a further assertion that moral blameworthiness is mitigated for a subcategory of White Americans because of being socialized into a White-dominant culture of caste-based Afroscepticism. I argue, based on Peirce's conceptualization of doubt, as against Descartes, that Afroscepticism is a totalizing belief system predicated on a racial group-based social epistemology and maintains a settled stance of questioning the commensurate citizenship of Blacks or American descendants of slaves. These perceived social costs warrant educational interventions that can dismantle its reasoning architecture. White Afroscepticism poses a barrier to the teacher’s efforts to cultivate the democratic habitus in students; however, educator preparation that takes its existence into account can build on the standard classroom practices of critical social justice that promote equity, critical multicultural education, and critical thinking.

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Some consequences of four incapacities.Charles S. Peirce - 1868 - Journal of Speculative Philosophy 2 (3):140 - 157.
Ideology, racism, and critical social theory.Tommie Shelby - 2003 - Philosophical Forum 34 (2):153–188.
White Ignorance.Charles Wright Mills - 2007 - In Shannon Sullivan & Nancy Tuana, Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. State Univ of New York Pr. pp. 11-38.
On Race and Philosophy.Lucius Outlaw - 1995 - Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal 18 (2):175-199.

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