Pragmatism and the Problem of Race (review)

Pragmatism and the Problem of Race, edited by Bill Lawson and Donald Koch, should be of interest to any philosopher and poses crucial problems concerning race and identity that must be addressed by pragmatist philosophers in particular. Readers of this valuable anthology will gain an appreciation for the continued relevance of the pragmatist tradition as well as a sense of the complexities that problems of race bring to philosophy.

One of the best features of this collection is that its contributors resist the temptation to write hagiographies of the classical American pragmatists. It maintains instead a critical respect for the pragmatist tradition: respectful of the promise we can find in the works of pragmatist pioneers, but critical of their shortcomings and even failures to meet their own standards. The editors set this balanced tone early when they state, "contemporary pragmatists must ask themselves whether they are content to restate the old ideas of the founders of the movement or use these ideas to work out the reconstruction of pragmatism to deal with contemporary problems and issues" (1). This work, like all works that combine race and pragmatism, stands in the long shadow of Cornel West's The American Evasion of Philosophy, and the editors accordingly frame their collective work as the efforts of Westian organic intellectuals and are rewarded with an interview of West himself for their afterword.

The essays are divided into two sections, with the first composed of essays that look at pragmatism and the problem of race on a large scale and demonstrate pragmatism's suitability for addressing complex social problems like those imbricated with race. Michael Eldridge's piece on Dewey and social change is an apt start for the anthology as it argues that it is not only appropriate but necessary for pragmatists to address problems of race despite the difficulty of such a project. The difficulties range from the relative dearth of writings about race by most of the early pragmatists to the "less-than-admirable material" from Dewey's letters that Eldridge reviews in his first unflinching section (12). Eldridge claims that we should not look for any particular pearls of wisdom regarding race among Dewey's writings, but that "the Dewey to whom we should be turning is primarily the social theorist" who offers more general suggestions about social strife (19). In the following essay, Gregory Fernando Pappas asks what, if any, role a philosopher generally or a pragmatist specifically must play in the solution of the race problem. His answer is a careful description of pragmatist philosophy as a balance between attention to method and a kind of distance. Pappas's piece is the most Socratic in style and leaves the reader nourished by a rich analysis yet hungry for answers after a meal of mostly well-placed questions.

The next two essays, written by Donald Koch and John Shook, relate Dewey's work on education and democracy to the problems of race. Koch's move is thoroughly Deweyan: he starts with the seemingly intractable debate between those who say there is no persistent problem of race and those who say there is, and then, instead of taking one side over the other, shows the fruitlessness of the conflict and asks us all to "instead focus upon the task of securing adequate education for all people" (34). Universal and uniform education, he argues with Dewey's help, is not only a crucial requirement for general human flourishing and a successful democracy, but will go a long way toward addressing the "difficulties" disproportionately faced by African Americans, including higher unemployment, substandard healthcare and less formal education (35). John Shook argues that Dewey's work on the relationship between public education and democracy leads us to reconstruct public education in order to more fully manifest the principle of equal opportunity that is so essential for democracy. His essay is a detailed scholarly exploration...