Should Race Matter?: Unusual Answers to the Usual Questions

David Boonin

Nov 2011 · Cambridge University Press

About this eBook

In this book, philosopher David Boonin attempts to answer the moral questions raised by five important and widely contested racial practices: slave reparations, affirmative action, hate speech restrictions, hate crime laws and racial profiling. Arguing from premises that virtually everyone on both sides of the debates over these issues already accepts, Boonin arrives at an unusual and unorthodox set of conclusions, one that is neither liberal nor conservative, color conscious nor color blind. Defended with the rigor that has characterized his previous work but written in a more widely accessible style, this provocative and important new book is sure to spark controversy and should be of interest to philosophers, legal theorists and anyone interested in trying to resolve the debate over these important and divisive issues.

About the author

David Boonin is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado. He is the author of Thomas Hobbes and the Science of Moral Virtue (1994) and the prize-winning books A Defense of Abortion (2002) and The Problem of Punishment (2009), all of which were published by Cambridge University Press. He is also the author of a number of articles on issues in applied ethics and the co-editor of the popular applied ethics textbook What's Wrong? (2009).