Below is the audio recording of Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Berggruen Prize Lecture, given at the 2024 Pacific Division Meeting and made possible through the generosity of the Berggruen Institute. The talk is titled “What Is Racism?” and in it Appiah uses the murder of George Floyd as a starting point to explore the broader issue of racism in America. He notes the lack of consensus on the definition of racism and proposes an account of it as an ideology involving beliefs in inherited racial essences and the superiority or inferiority of different races. This ideology then manifests in discriminatory attitudes, feelings, and institutional practices that serve to oppress certain racial groups. Appiah argues that to address racism, we must dismantle the racist ideologies that sustain this oppression in order to build a more just and equitable society.
The audio of the lecture is available here:
“What Is Racism?” by Kwame Anthony Appiah
Kwame Anthony Appiah is Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center Human Values Emeritus at Princeton University. He holds a BA and a PhD in Philosophy from Clare College, Cambridge University. Appiah has served as president of the APA’s Eastern Division (2007–2008) and chair of the APA board of officers (2008–2011), as well as on the boards of the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, New York’s Public Library, the Public Theater, and the PEN American Center. In 2012, President Obama presented him with the National Humanities Medal. His publications include Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers, Lines of Descent: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Emergence of Identity, As If: Idealization and Ideals, and The Lies That Bind: Rethinking Identity, along with three novels.
Learn more about the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture and Berggruen Prize Essay Competition.
