Does Defining Racism Overcome it?

A philosophical enquiry into the uses and abuses of definitions of racism

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Much of the debate around the IHRA and other definitions of racism tends to focus on the substantive content that these new definitions ought to have. Relatively little attention has been paid to how these new definitions ought to be used, whether in purely academic and informal contexts, by employers or other private entities, by policymakers, or branches of government, including, most importantly, the judiciary. Yet history shows us that the use of any given definition of racism matters as much as its substantive content, and those who ignore the abuse of such definitions do so at their peril.

At the centre of my analysis is the argument that thick description — a method introduced by anthropologist Clifford Geertz and described below — should be combined with what, following philosopher Gilbert Ryle we might call “thin” definitions, adopted by the state for legal and quasi-legal contexts in order to nuance the adjudication of racism. While a democratic legal apparatus is compatible with minimalist definitions of racism, thick description moves beyond state regulation to develop a framework for anti-racism outside legal domains.

John Rawls and the Overlapping Consensus

Before we get to Geertz and Ryle on the subject of method, we need to contend with political philosopher John Rawls and his notion of the overlapping consensus. This is a concept which has tremendous potential for coming to terms with a range of politically contention issues, including Palestine/Israel, as politician scientist Farid Abdel-Nour has shown.

Rawls conceived of the overlapping consensus, whereby “citizens affirm a political conception wholeheartedly from within their own perspectives,” often for conflicting reasons, as the dynamic operative within liberal democracies. These separate and distinct affirmations together comprise a stable whole, which serves as the foundation for a just society.

In Rawls’ formulation, an overlapping consensus is “affirmed by opposing religious, philosophical and moral doctrines likely to thrive over generations in a more or less just constitutional democracy, where the criterion of…