Tina Fernandes Botts and colleagues have recently posted a fascinating analysis of the shockingly low numbers of black- or African-American- identified philosophers in the United States. According to their data,
1.3% of U.S. philosophers self-identify as black (compared to
13% in the general U.S. population).
Now I was all set today to work up some speculations on why philosophy is so different from the other humanities and social sciences in this regard (a favorite hypothesis: a disciplinary addiction to the cult of genius plus a high degree of implicit bias in anointing geniuses). Then I went to the Survey of Earned Doctorates to look up some of the raw data. There, I found that the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy is not so unusual among the humanities, if one digs down into the subfield data.
Since I suspect some other philosophers might also be surprised to discover this, I thought I'd aggregate the three most recent years' data by humanities subfield (U.S. citizens and permanent residents only), considering only subfields with consistent SED classifications across the period and excluding general and catch-all categories.
Starting with philosophy we see:
84.5% white
6.8% Hispanic
3.0% Asian
2.0% black or African-American
0.0% American Indian
3.6% multi-racial, other, or unknown
(Respondents describing themselves as Hispanic were not counted toward any other category.)
Looking only at "white" and "black", here are all the other coded humanities, bolded if either the white percentage exceeds or the black percentage falls below that in philosophy:
Foreign Languages:
French & Italian literature: 87% white, 3.4% black
German literature: 91% white, 1.2% black
Spanish literature: 51% white, 0.9% black (45% Hispanic)
History:
American history (U.S. and Canada): 82% white, 7.3% black
Asian history: 53% white, 0.8% black (38% Asian)
European history: 90% white, 1.6% black
History, science, technology, and society: 85% white, 2.7% black
Latin American history: 50% white, 6.6% black (41% Hispanic)
Middle/Near-East studies: 84% white, 0.0% black
Letters:
American literature (U.S. and Canada): 78% white, 6.6% black
Classics: 91% white, 0.4% black
Comparative literature: 73% white, 4.0% black
English language: 79% white, 7.1% black
English literature (British and Commonwealth): 86% white, 1.7% black
Other humanities:
American/U.S. studies: 60% white, 14.6% black
Archaeology: 85% white, 1.6% black
Art: 81% white, 1.5% black
Drama/theater arts: 78% white, 5.8% black
Music: 77% white, 2.7% black
Musicology/ethnomusicology: 78% white, 2.6% black
Music performance: 79% white, 2.2% black
Music theory and composition: 87% white, 0.5% black
Religion/religious studies: 81% white, 4.3% black
These data thus stand in sharp contrast to the gender data, where philosophy is unusual among the humanities in remaining overwhelmingly male. Philosophy is joined by French, German, and Italian literature, English literature, classics, European history, archaeology, and music theory in being mostly non-Hispanic white folks.
Now in a way it's not too surprising that the study of German and Greek literature, European history, etc., should tend to disproportionately attract white folks. After all, the average white person probably identifies with such literatures and histories as part of her own ethnic or cultural heritage more than does the average non-white person. Perhaps, then, the best explanation of the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy is similar: Despite aspiring to be a broad, topically-driven inquiry into fundamental questions about truth, knowledge, beauty, and morality, perhaps philosophy as currently practiced in the U.S. is experienced by students as something closer to the study of a piece of ethnically European cultural history.
-----------------------------------------------------
Also see:Why Don't We* Know Our Chinese Philosophy?and
Citation of Women and Ethnic Minorities in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[Cross-posted at The Splintered Mind.]
Recent Comments