Colloquium: Jose Jorge Mendoza, University of Massachusetts Lowell
Biography:
José Jorge Mendoza is an assistant professor of philosophy and co-coordinator of the Race and Ethnic Studies Minor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is also the co-editor of Radical Philosophy Review. His primary areas of research are in moral and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and Latin American philosophy. He is the author of the book The Moral and Political Philosophy of Immigration: Liberty, Security, and Equality, which is focused primarily on making a philosophical case for immigrant rights and arguing against unjust forms of immigration enforcement.
“GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM!”: RACISM, XENOPHOBIA, AND WHY IT MATTERS:
Due to the fact that immigrants have been the primary targets of the recent upsurge in white supremacy, many have argued that this anti-immigrant hostility ought to be called out as racism. Others, however, have argued that, for the sake of conceptual clarity, we ought to instead refer to it and condemn it as a form of xenophobia. The reason for this is the fact that the primary targets of this hostility have not been traditional racial groups per se (e.g., Blacks, Asians, or Native Americans) but instead members of racially heterogeneous groups (e.g.,Latinx and Muslim communities). In this essay I offer a third alternative. I argue that while this hostility is better referred to as xenophobia rather than racism, it nonetheless ought to merit the same sort of moral approbation since, as I will show, it is still a form of white supremacy.