On the Alleged Inadequacy of Psychological Explanations

Philosophers and other researchers interested in race have often ignored the explanations of racism developed by psychologists (for some recent exceptions, see Glasgow 2009; Blum forthcoming). We have argued elsewhere that this disregard of psychology has impoverished the arguments and considerations philosophers have relied upon (Faucher and Machery 2009; Kelly et al. in press). However, not everyone agrees with our assessment: Other researchers dismiss psychology from philosophical discussions about race, explicitly claiming that psychological explanations are doomed to inadequacy or worse, given the agendas of those concerned with race and racism. Our goal in this article is to examine and rebut some of the most important arguments in support of this cluster of claims. We will mainly discuss sociologist David Wellman’s (2007) work. We focus on Wellman’s arguments because contrary to other philosophers or social scientists, many of whom simply toss psychology aside as irrelevant or naive, he engages with, and is admirably explicit about what he sees as the shortcomings of, psychological explanations of racism. Accordingly, Section 1 will review Wellman’s claims and arguments against psychological explanations of racism. Each remaining section, then, focuses on one claim in turn, and lays out our reasons for rejecting it. In Section 2, we focus on the claim that psychology is badly equipped to explain important instances of racism; in response, we illustrate how many other important instances of racism are best explained by appeal to psychological causes (independently from or in conjunction with social causes). In Section 3, we examine the worry that psychological explanations of racism are detrimental to attempts to deal with racism through social action, either because they depict racism as inevitable, or construe it as a completely individualistic problem (rather than a social or political