In my last post, I proposed that lecturers warn their students if they might encounter racist language in the assigned readings. In this post I want to explain what I mean by that.

Yesterday, I attended a panel on anti-discriminatory university environments. Discussing our experiences, I recalled how reading a racial slur in Hume’s Enquiries was like a sucker punch and that I didn’t really want to read any further, as I was afraid to encountering more. The lecturer, a friendly young woman, who also attended the panel sent me a private message, apologising. I offered her to talk for a moment after the panel and she explained to me, that she usually reads the seminar texts way in advance. She also told me that she is usually on the lookout for sexist remarks and also explicitly addresses them in her seminars.

Let us grant that she has the same awareness for racist remarks as she has for sexist: How can we make sure that these remarks don’t go under the radar? Create a reading habit like this:

• Annotate them the same way as you would annotate other important passages in the text. Use a sticky note, a different colour or make annotations in the margins. Do whatever makes you find them when you are skimming the text.
• Write the positions down with your other notes or directly insert them in your syllabus draft.
• Categorise them: Is it a racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory slur? remark? description?

This not only makes discriminatory content easier to find for yourself, but (once mentioned in the syllabus), serves as a warning for marginalised students.
This presupposes the following:

Treat discriminatory remarks with the same importance as theses and arguments.

Do NOT overlook them, assuming that „everybody would know that they are nonsense“, as a white male lecturer proposed in the panel. It is not at all obvious that „everybody would know that they are nonsense“. Who is everybody? All the white male people not affected by racist and sexist remarks? They are not nonsense to those oppressed and discriminated against through these very slurs. And especially because the number of these people is small in philosophy, we should do the most to create a non-discriminatory environment.
Further, oftentimes you won’t find discriminatory language by accident. It is seldom the case that a philosopher is just randomly dropping the N-Word (though it can sometimes happen). Instead, discriminatory slurs or descriptions are often integrated in arguments and counter-arguments that wouldn’t hold if it wasn’t for the discriminatory assumptions.

My proposed reading habit does not come with a lot of effort, yet it’s influence is far from small: Discriminatory language and content is no longer overlooked but made explicit as such. This invites ALL to a critical reflection on marginalisation and oppression. Finally, it takes those affected seriously