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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nMaurice Merleau-Ponty defines phenomena as a \u201clayer of living experience through which other people and things are first given to us.<\/em>\u201d Initial contact with the world occurs phenomenally, rather than already clearly distinguishable as subjective or objective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The lived world steers between the unnecessary setup of stark contrast, reducing the world to either that which exists out in the material world–the fallacy of the natural attitude–or to the projections of the inner self–the reduction to and prioritization of consciousness. The lived world is an open-ended framework with meaning complexes. Insisting that the world is already divided into the subjective and the objective misses the phenomenal quality of the world, <\/strong>the space of phenomenology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phenomena include not only the influence of the world but also that of the subject. Phenomenology asserts that experiences of the world are negotiations between the intentions of the subject and the givens of the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because race is not solely a natural difference, because the differences of race are not biologically significant, empiricist and positivist philosophical analysis cannot capture the functioning of race.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n To reconcile how people living in one society, in a shared world, can diverge and even completely disagree in understanding an experience\/event, I was inspired to explore Merleau-Ponty\u2019s phenomenology for its implications in the philosophy of race. These two branches of philosophy have had limited contact with each other. I follow the large body of feminist philosophy that engages Merleau-Ponty\u2019s work because of his focus on embodiment.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism rebuffs the phenomenal structure of race.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The aim of phenomenology as a method lies not in describing the physical natural world, nor in the search for nous, truth, or the guiding principles of the universe, but in the more constrained and limited aim of describing human being-in-the-world <\/strong>for honesty and accuracy about what we can claim to know about the world. Because race is not solely a natural difference, because the differences of race are not biologically significant, empiricist and positivist philosophical analysis cannot capture the functioning of race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because reason, universal principles, or values do not guide human understandings and reactions to race, traditional normative philosophy cannot address the functioning of race. Phenomenology, as a philosophical framework and methodology, precisely addresses the conceptual space where race functions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Race occupies the interstice within the natural and the social\u2014precisely the domain of human being-in-the-world.<\/strong> Because race is an open-ended framework, with an indeterminate meaning complex, it promises to perennially function within the social horizon. Race\u2019s persistence in its meaning\u2019s creative transformations testifies to the impossibility of eliminating it from the social horizon. Race is a phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Omi and Howard Winant define racism as essentialism. They write, \u201c[a] racial project can be defined as racist if and only if it creates or reproduces structures of domination based on essentialist categories of race.<\/em>\u201d In defining essentialism, they clarify, \u201ca key problem with essentialism is its denial, or flattening, of differences within a particular racially defined group.<\/em>\u201d Racism, as a static, repetitive refusal to see or to think otherwise about people, precisely denies race\u2019s phenomenological structure. Racism clings to the safety of a particular meaning or conception of the world.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Focusing on human relations, Helen Ngo writes, \u201c[t]he ontological violence of racism is not a violence against our subjectivity, as traditional accounts of racism would have it, but rather\u2014and more urgently\u2014a violence against our intersubjectivity. It is a violence against our embodied being-with.<\/em>\u201d Ngo posits that the overdetermined meanings of race and racialized subjects constrain our relations with each other, within already known scripts constricting our ability to get to know each other, to learn from each other, and to be surprised by the other.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n To fully appreciate Ngo\u2019s consternation regarding the violence against intersubjectivity, Jos\u00e9 Medina emphasizes social relations in our claims to knowledge, \u201cepistemic appraisals always contain an element of social systematicity, even when they appear to be quite isolated.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want the insights from women of color to influence and form my philosophical thinking.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Because what we can claim to know is social, Medina juxtaposes identity with diversity, \u201cissues of identity have to be understood as issues of diversity: the others are essential to the self . . . . In this view, diversity is the human condition.<\/em>\u201d In such emphasis on sociality and hence diversity, regarding epistemology and identity, Medina\u2019s point parallels Ngo\u2019s prioritization of the importance of building sincere relationships. <\/strong>Similarly, Mariana Ortega emphasizes building relations with others through coalition building.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This emphasis on relationality, sociality, and coalition building<\/strong> all grapple with this inherent condition of being-with-others and of being-in-the-world. Because of this ontological condition of situatedness, our knowledge claims are necessarily ambiguous, indeterminate, and phenomenal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Racism denies recognizing such relationality; instead, racism essentialistically holds as static the racialized other.<\/strong> In other words, racism foregoes acknowledging race as open-ended, changing, and relational. Racism rebuffs the phenomenal structure of race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In acknowledging the importance of our relations with others, I take seriously the question of with whom to have relations. <\/strong>Because I want to develop deeper relations with women of color, I center their works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are those with whom there is no choice but to have relations.<\/strong> One cannot avoid engaging those comfortably situated because of the power they occupy and influence, intentionally or not. But considering the importance of with whom I am being-with–for my relationships form my subjectivity and my knowledge–I want to think carefully about with whom I develop relations. I want the insights from women of color to influence and form my philosophical thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The identity is aspirational for political solidarity in the future. <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n The term \u201cwomen of color\u201d is a complicated term. Loretta Ross explains the introduction of the term in 1977 during the National Women\u2019s Conference. Ross writes that with the term, \u201cwe named ourselves.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n She clarifies that \u201cthey didn\u2019t see it as a biological designation . . . but it is a solidarity definition, a commitment to work in collaboration with other oppressed women of color who have been \u2018minoritized.\u2019<\/em>\u201d From its inception, the term was about naming oneself and building political solidarity.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The term faces some contestation because of its solid origins in the United States and the West. The term \u201cwomen of color\u201d arose from within the hegemonic western context. Acknowledging this context, the Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective<\/a> understands the term, \u201cwomen of color as a political identity-formation and not simply an identity-marker.<\/em>\u201d The Santa Cruz Feminist of Color Collective repeats Ross\u2019s initial presentation.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The term \u201cwomen of color\u201d aims to respect diversity<\/a> and name them as a unity, but this political forging identity is fragile. In respect of such fragility, I treat the term primarily as a self-ascribed term, a term a person chooses to self-apply.<\/strong> The identity is aspirational for political solidarity in the future. I utilize the term in this book<\/a>, admitting that the term faces controversy, especially in an international context, but for its initial solidarity sense, in its aspirational context, for its political identity formation.<\/p>\n\n\nRacism as Essentialism or Denying Race as Phenomena<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Foregrounding Relationality with Whom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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