Abstract

It is increasingly common to hear talk of ‘racist perceptions’. While these have begun to be studied in the philosophy of mind (e.g. in debates about the border between perception and cognition), they’ve received relatively little attention in analytic philosophy of race, particularly regarding the analysis of racism. This paper advances an account of racist perceptions and draws out their implications for debates about the nature of racism. First, it argues for an account on which racist perceptions are best seen as manifesting racism rather than being racist-making. Second, it argues that views on which racist attitudes are irrational or immoral will be particularly ill-suited to handle racist perception. A desire to account for racist perception should push us towards either a bias-centred account of racism, or an ideology-based account.