Scientists may be approaching the finish-line in the race to understand consciousness. John Taylor introduces the contending theories, including his own. There is a sense among scientists that the time is finally ripe for the problem of consciousness to be solved once and for all. The development of new experimental and theoretical tools for probing the brain has produced an atmosphere of unparalleled optimism that the job can now be done properly: The race for consciousness is on! In this book, John Taylor describes the complete scene of entries, riders, gamblers, and racecourses. He presents his own entry into the race, which he has been working on for the past twenty-five years—the relational theory of consciousness, according to which consciousness is created through the relations between brain states, especially those involving memories of personal experiences. Because it is an ongoing and adaptive process, consciousness emerges from past brain activity. It is this highly subtle and delicate process of emergence that leads to the complexity of consciousness. Taylor does not just present another theory of consciousness, but makes comprehensible the nuts-and-bolts methodology behind the myriad attempts to win the race.

The election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the values of individualism, but a narrow understanding of them. Drawing on the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin, Turner offers an original reconstruction of democratic individualism in American thought. All these thinkers, he shows, held that personal responsibility entails a refusal to be complicit in injustice and a duty to combat the conditions and structures that support it. At a time when individualism is invoked as a reason for inaction, Turner makes the individualist tradition the basis of a bold and impassioned case for race consciousness—consciousness of the ways that race continues to constrain opportunity in America. Turner’s “new individualism” becomes the grounds for concerted public action against racial injustice.

Bringing together an impressive range of new scholarship deeply informed both by the legacies of the past and current intellectual trends, Race Consciousness is a veritable Who's Who of the next generation of scholars of African-American studies. This collection of original essays, representing the latest work in African-American studies, covers such trenchant topics as the culture of America as a culture of race, the politics of gender and sexuality, legacies of slavery and colonialism, crime and welfare politics, and African-American cultural studies. In his entertaining Foreword to the volume, Robin D. G. Kelley presents a startling vision of the state of African-American Studies--and the world in general--in the year 2095. Arnold Rampersad and Nell Irvin Painter, chart the different disciplinary and theoretical paths African-American Studies has taken since the 19th century in their Preface to the volume.

This book is the second of a two-volume anthology of primary source documents on feminism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Unique in its extensive treatment of the first-wave feminist movement in Canada, it highlights distinct elements of its origins and evolution. The book is organized into thematic rubrics that address key issues, debates, and struggles within the first wave in Canada, as well as international influences and Canadian engagement in transnational networks and initiatives. Documents by Indigenous, Anglophone, Francophone, and immigrant female activists demonstrate the richness and complexity of Canadian feminism during this period. Together with its first volume, Documenting First Wave Feminisms reveals a more nuanced picture, attentive to nationalism and transnationalism, of the first wave than has previously been understood.

With clarity, passion, and creativity, Michele Moses offers a new and promising lens for viewing the unsolved issues of race and education. In this book, Moses provides a comprehensive examination of four major race-conscious educational policies: bilingual education, multicultural curricula, affirmative action, and remedial education. She argues, convincingly, that such policies are critical to fostering self-determination and personal autonomy in students who will otherwise be left with a deficient education. Presenting a strong, theoretically grounded case for race-conscious educational policies, this volume offers a new framework for examining the complex interaction between race, education, opportunities, and justice. Some of the important questions addressed in this volume include: -- What must the educational system do to promote social justice for students of color and poor students? -- What is required to help these students to develop self-determination? -- How will race-conscious educational policies help to provide a fair education for all students?

In America today, the problem of achieving racial justice--whether through "color-blind" policies or through affirmative action--provokes more noisy name-calling than fruitful deliberation. In Color Conscious, K. Anthony Appiah and Amy Gutmann, two eminent moral and political philosophers, seek to clear the ground for a discussion of the place of race in politics and in our moral lives. Provocative and insightful, their essays tackle different aspects of the question of racial justice; together they provide a compelling response to our nation's most vexing problem. Appiah begins by establishing the problematic nature of the idea of race. He draws on the scholarly consensus that "race" has no legitimate biological basis, exploring the history of its invention as a social category and showing how the concept has been used to explain differences among groups of people by mistakenly attributing various "essences" to them. Appiah argues that, while people of color may still need to gather together, in the face of racism, under the banner of race, they need also to balance carefully the calls of race against the many other dimensions of individual identity; and he suggests, finally, what this might mean for our political life. Gutmann examines alternative political responses to racial injustice. She argues that American politics cannot be fair to all citizens by being color blind because American society is not color blind. Fairness, not color blindness, is a fundamental principle of justice. Whether policies should be color-conscious, class conscious, or both in particular situations, depends on an open-minded assessment of their fairness. Exploring timely issues of university admissions, corporate hiring, and political representation, Gutmann develops a moral perspective that supports a commitment to constitutional democracy. Appiah and Gutmann write candidly and carefully, presenting many-faceted interpretations of a host of controversial issues. Rather than supplying simple answers to complex questions, they offer to citizens of every color principled starting points for the ongoing national discussions about race.

Despite apparent racial progress in the US, this book argues that the African American community is actually in a deep crisis on many fronts.