Monthly Archive for February, 2011

From Mary E. Church Terrell in Emerson Kent

Washington D.C. has been called The Colored Man’s Paradise.

Whether this sobriquet was given to the national capital in better irony by a member of the handicapped race, as he reviewed some of his own persecutions and rebuffs, or whether it was given immediately after the war by an ex-slaveholder who for the first time in his life saw colored people walking about like free men, minus the overseer and his whip, history saith not.

It is certain that it would be difficult to find a worse misnomer for Washington than The Colored Man’s Paradise if so prosaic a consideration as veracity is to determine the appropriateness of a name.

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By Bhikhu Parekh, in The Philosopher’s Magazine

Western thought has long been dominated by the view that while error is plural, truth is singular. We can be wrong in many different ways but can be right in only one way. According to this view, which we might call monism or singularism, there is only one correct way of understanding the world, only one true system of morality, only one true way of leading the good life, only one true religion, only one correct way of organising society, and so on. We are supposed to arrive at truth, be it cognitive, moral or religious, by means of reason, which is understood as a transcendental and quasi-divine faculty rising above the psychological, social, cultural and other constraints. This view has had both good and bad consequences. It has inspired most rigorous intellectual inquiries, rules of rational debate, and a determination to expose and fight errors. It has also however led to arrogance, intolerance, failure to appreciate differences, tendency to equate diversity with deviation, and much violence.

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By Alan Posener, in Sign and Sight

The French writer Pascal Bruckner wants to forbid a word. Which sounds more like a typically German obsession. But for Bruckner, “Islamophobia” is one of “those expressions which we dearly need to banish from our vocabulary”. One asks oneself with some trepidation which other words we “dearly need” to get rid of: Right-wing populism? Racism? Relativism?But let that ride. Bruckner’s essay has the advantage of stating the case against “Islamophobia” clearly and concisely and thus allowing those who – like myself – propose to hang on to the word until a better one comes along to answer in a similar clear and concise way.

Let me present Bruckner’s arguments in his own words:

“Iranian fundamentalists invented the word Islamophobia, formed in analogy to ‘xenophobia’, in the late seventies. The aim of this word is to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist.”

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