Dartmouth Events

Free and open to all. Reception follows. The Sapientia Lecture Series is funded by The Mark J. Byrne 1985 Fund in Philosophy. This lecture is also co-sponsored by the Women's and Gender Studies Program, the Gender Research Institute at Dartmouth, and the #BlackLivesMatter teaching collective.

Abstract: In a recent Salon piece, “White America’s Scary Delusion: Why Its Sense of Black Humanity is So Skewed,” Brittney Cooper labels the stupefaction many White people have in the face of today’s Black rage as an “epistemology problem.” It is a problem, she explains, of people utilizing inadequate frameworks for understanding “reasonable” responses to relentless state sanctioned violence against Black people. In this paper, I lend support to Cooper’s claim by outlining the kinds of epistemic oppression that can be found in even the most seemingly “reasonable” rejections of Black rage in this moment. Particularly, I analyze Joe Scarborough’s December 3rd rant on the so-called senselessness of civil unrest around Michael Brown’s death by identifying several forms of epistemic oppression Scarborough can be said to participate in and maintain. Ultimately, I demonstrate how one of the fronts on which one must struggle for justice in the 21st century is an epistemological one.