Philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah offered a timely commentary while delivering the latest of MIT’s Compton lectures on Thursday, outlining a framework for understanding racism as a tool for social control, and not simply as an expression of prejudice. “Racism is an ideology, whose effect is to oppress people of one racial identity or maintain unjust advantages for those of another,” Appiah said. “What makes people, beliefs, feelings, institutions, and practices racist is that they contribute to that wrong.” This view, he said, has multiple implications. For one thing, racial thinking…
