Dear all, This is to remind you that Jenny Saul (University of Sheffield) will be speaking at MSC tomorrow. Her talk is entitled 'Norms of Racial Discourse in the Age of Trump' and her abstract is as follows:
Once upon a time, not too long ago, it was accepted wisdom that overt racism would doom a candidate for national political office in the United States. Of course, there was still a good deal of racism among white Americans—but a politician who openly espoused obviously racist views was thought to be unelectable. Elaborate signaling strategies were developed as ways of playing on these racist sentiments for political gain without being too obvious about it. Political psychologists studied these strategies, though philosophers tended to focus on vastly more obviously racist speech: slurring or derogatory terms. Just as philosophers were starting to explore these signaling strategies, however, something happened. The world changed dramatically in a way fundamentally at odds with the previously accepted wisdom: Donald Trump was elected President, despite very overt expressions of racism. New, and deeply pressing questions emerged. Chief among them, of course are (1) the descriptive question of how what seemed like fixed norms have come to be, apparently, smashed; and (2) the normative question of how we should respond to our new reality. This paper focuses on (1), exploring in depth how what political psychologists said could not happen happened. I will argue that a norm against racist speech is still (as I write this, anyway) widely though not universally in force; but that it is not nearly as effective as we might have thought that it was. The meeting will be held from 2:30 until 4:15 in the Jane Harrison Room at Newnham College, and will be followed by tea and coffee. *If you would like to have dinner with the speaker in the evening following the talk, please email the secretaries of the club *( [email protected]) *by noon today*. This dinner is open to anyone who has attended the talk and those who sign up for dinner will be notified of the details closer to the time. Best wishes, Annie Bosse, Benjamin Marschall and Lucy McDonald Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
