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Letter from the Editors
It is a great honor to be able to present the inaugural issue of Critical Philosophy of Race—a new journal publishing peer-reviewed articles that explore the philosophical dimensions of race, racism, and other race-related phenomena. This special issue, “Critical Philosophy of Race Beyond the Black/ White Binary,” edited and introduced by Kathryn T. Gines (with articles by José M. Medina, Ronald R. Sundstrom, Kyoo Lee, and Namita Goswami, and a special “afterword” by Linda Martín Alcoff), also includes a featured critical commentary by Charles W. Mills and book reviews by Chike Jeffers, Tyler Griffin, and Susanne Lettow.
The critical philosophy of race consists in the philosophical examination of issues raised by the concept of race, the practices and mechanisms of racialization, and the persistence of various forms of racism across the world. Critical philosophy of race is a critical enterprise in three respects: it opposes racism in all its forms; it rejects the pseudosciences of old-fashioned biological racialism; and it denies that antiracism and anti-racialism summarily eliminate race as a meaningful category of analysis. Critical philosophy of race is a philosophical enterprise because of its engagement with traditional philosophical questions and in its readiness to engage critically some of the traditional answers. This enterprise intersects [End Page iv] with a number of already vibrant areas within philosophy including history of philosophy, epistemology, ethics, and social and political philosophy. However, the practice of critical philosophy of race is also interdisciplinary insofar as it draws heavily on a number of other subjects, including legal studies, history, anthropology, sociology, comparative literature, African American studies, Latino/a and Hispanic studies, and others. We expect that a significant part of this journal’s readership will be from these areas, and for this reason the editorial board includes representatives not only from philosophy but also from other disciplines as well.
The journal aims to provide a pluralistic forum for scholarly work in critical philosophy of race from a broad range of perspectives. This commitment to pluralism and breadth means that the journal encourages the use of a wide variety of methods and tools to study race, racism, and racialization. Accordingly, we welcome submissions from any philosophical orientation, without bias against or preference for any particular metaphilosophical orientation. We encourage research that examines the intersections of race with, for example, ethnicity, class, and gender and sexuality, as well as work that draws on or emerges from other academic disciplines provided that the work bears on philosophical questions.
The journal will publish two issues per year (spring and fall) and will include peer-reviewed articles, book reviews, and occasional critical commentaries. New submissions can be uploaded to our online system www.editorialmanager.com/cpr. The journal uses a double-blind review process so we ask authors to remove all references to or clues about your identity from the main text and footnotes. Submissions should be five thousand to six thousand words (including notes) and should be accompanied by an abstract of up to 250 words, along with one to five key words describing the article. Manuscripts must consistently conform to The Chicago Manual of Style. If you have any questions, please contact us at cprjournal@psu.edu.
Editor Contact Information
Robert Bernasconi
Pennsylvania State University
240F Sparks Bldg.
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865–6398
rlb43@psu.edu [End Page v]
Kathryn T. Gines
Pennsylvania State University
242 Sparks Bldg.
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865–1652
Paul C. Taylor
Pennsylvania State University
240 Sparks Bldg.
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 863–4243
pct2@psu.edu [End Page vi]
