Abstract
This paper explores the conscious visual experience of seeing race. In everyday occurrences, racialized seeing involves the capacity for a subject to simply “see” that someone she encounters belongs to a racial category. I bridge research in analytic philosophy of perception and accounts from phenomenologists and critical race theorists on the lived experience of racialized seeing. I contend that we should not trust our visual experiences of racialized seeing because they provide, at best, incomplete information on a target’s racial identity. I make a case for a version of perceptual learning that I think both captures actual experiences of racialized seeing and is empirically plausible. Finally, I follow work of critical race theorists in suggesting that normative constraints surrounding racial identity and privilege are built into our experiences of racialized seeing. Both types of racialized seeing are subject to social norms and practices and, thus, aid in perpetuating racial hierarchies.
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Notes
Fanon 2008, p. 95.
I borrow this terminology from Siegel 2010.
Some philosophers deny that perceptual experiences have any content, that perception is nonrepresentational. See, for instance, Campbell 2013. I am assuming some version of representationalism in this paper.
He calls the two positions “liberal” and “conservative”, but I will stick with the rich/thin terminology.
Connolly also suggests that perceptual learning would be a useful tool for understanding social perception. See Connolly 2019.
Macpherson considers this a case of genuine cognitive penetration. I follow Arstila 2016 in arguing that this is more readily explained as a case of perceptual learning.
[Acknowledgments].
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Tullmann, K. The contents of racialized seeing. Phenom Cogn Sci 20, 723–741 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09674-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-020-09674-2