Roundtable
on Race and Racism -An Interdisciplinary Conversation
Nov.
13, 2004
OSU
Memorial Union Rm 209, 1-5 PM
Bill
Uzgalis, Philosophy
"Locke
on race and the multi-cultural state"
I will
take a few minutes to summarize and explain four conclusions I have come
to in my long study of Locke and race.
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The first
of these is that, though a colonial administrator as well as a philosopher,
Locke's account of slavery in the Second Treatise of Government
would condemn and not justify the institutions and practices of Afro-American
slavery in the 17th-18th century.
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Second that
all of the arguments that go to show that Locke was a racist on biological
grounds fail.
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Third, that
all attempts to show that he is a racist on cultural grounds also fail.
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Fourth, and
finally, that Locke explicitly rejects and indeed condemns the seizure
of Indian lands on grounds of religion.
This brings
me to the passage in the first Letter on Toleration that I will
focus on -- a striking passage in which Locke forcefully condemns those
who would seize Indian lands on the grounds that the Indians are not Christians.
He uses this example as an analogy for the relation between dissenters
and Anglicans in England. He makes it plain that these are examples that
illustrate a general rule. I will point out the connections between the
Second
Treatise of Government and the first Letter on Toleration and
argue that what we have here is the beginning of a Lockean theory of the
multi-cultural state. This is a work in progress, and I will be attempting
to see if this way of looking at the multi-cultural state answers any of
the standard criticisms of the liberal theory of the multi-cultural state.
I don't know if it does or not, but I think it is worth taking a look.
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