Abstract

Almost everyone in the philosophical literature, no matter their account of racism, adopts one of two views about the immorality of racist conduct. They either take it to be a function of the attitudes that issue in it or of the societally-imposed harms that result from it. This article seeks to show that neither view captures the complete picture. To properly account for the full range of cases, it helps to invoke a distinction between two senses of “immoral”: impermissible and blameworthy. Doing so allows us to appreciate that racism is necessarily immoral, just not always in the same way.