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    Philosophy Is Incredibly White — but This Does Not Make It Unusual Among the Humanities

    Tina Fernandes Botts and colleagues have recently posted a fascinating analysis of the shockingly low numbers of black- or African-American- identified philosophers in the United States. According to their data, 1.3% of U.S. philosophers self-identify as black (compared to 13% in the general U.S. population).

    Now I was all set today to work up some speculations on why philosophy is so different from the other humanities and social sciences in this regard (a favorite hypothesis: a disciplinary addiction to the cult of genius plus a high degree of implicit bias in anointing geniuses). Then I went to the Survey of Earned Doctorates to look up some of the raw data. There, I found that the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy is not so unusual among the humanities, if one digs down into the subfield data.


    Since I suspect some other philosophers might also be surprised to discover this, I thought I’d aggregate the three most recent years’ data by humanities subfield (U.S. citizens and permanent residents only), considering only subfields with consistent SED classifications across the period and excluding general and catch-all categories.

    Starting with philosophy we see:

  • 84.5% white
  • 6.8% Hispanic 
  • 3.0% Asian
  • 2.0% black or African-American
  • 0.0% American Indian
  • 3.6% multi-racial, other, or unknown



    • (Respondents describing themselves as Hispanic were not counted toward any other category.)


    Looking only at “white” and “black”, here are all the other coded humanities, bolded if either the white percentage exceeds or the black percentage falls below that in philosophy:

    Foreign Languages:

  • French & Italian literature: 87% white, 3.4% black
  • German literature: 91% white, 1.2% black
  • Spanish literature: 51% white, 0.9% black (45% Hispanic)



    • History:

  • American history (U.S. and Canada): 82% white, 7.3% black
  • Asian history: 53% white, 0.8% black (38% Asian)
  • European history: 90% white, 1.6% black
  • History, science, technology, and society: 85% white, 2.7% black
  • Latin American history: 50% white, 6.6% black (41% Hispanic)
  • Middle/Near-East studies: 84% white, 0.0% black



    • Letters:

  • American literature (U.S. and Canada): 78% white, 6.6% black
  • Classics: 91% white, 0.4% black
  • Comparative literature: 73% white, 4.0% black
  • English language: 79% white, 7.1% black
  • English literature (British and Commonwealth): 86% white, 1.7% black



    • Other humanities:

  • American/U.S. studies: 60% white, 14.6% black
  • Archaeology: 85% white, 1.6% black
  • Art: 81% white, 1.5% black
  • Drama/theater arts: 78% white, 5.8% black
  • Music: 77% white, 2.7% black
  • Musicology/ethnomusicology: 78% white, 2.6% black
  • Music performance: 79% white, 2.2% black
  • Music theory and composition: 87% white, 0.5% black
  • Religion/religious studies: 81% white, 4.3% black



    • These data thus stand in sharp contrast to the gender data, where philosophy is unusual among the humanities in remaining overwhelmingly male. Philosophy is joined by French, German, and Italian literature, English literature, classics, European history, archaeology, and music theory in being mostly non-Hispanic white folks.

    Now in a way it’s not too surprising that the study of German and Greek literature, European history, etc., should tend to disproportionately attract white folks. After all, the average white person probably identifies with such literatures and histories as part of her own ethnic or cultural heritage more than does the average non-white person. Perhaps, then, the best explanation of the overwhelming whiteness of philosophy is similar: Despite aspiring to be a broad, topically-driven inquiry into fundamental questions about truth, knowledge, beauty, and morality, perhaps philosophy as currently practiced in the U.S. is experienced by students as something closer to the study of a piece of ethnically European cultural history.

    —————————————————–

    Also see:
    Why Don’t We* Know Our Chinese Philosophy?
    and

    Citation of Women and Ethnic Minorities in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

    [Cross-posted at The Splintered Mind.]

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    11 responses to “Philosophy Is Incredibly White — but This Does Not Make It Unusual Among the Humanities”

    1. Alex Hughes Avatar
      Alex Hughes

      I’d guess that a lot of students do think this, since if Americans have views about what philosophy professors do (assuming that the view is not that professors of philosophy study psychology), they tend to think that philosophy professors study the views of long dead – usually white – guys. The question on airplanes is rarely ‘what is your philosophy?’, but ‘which philosopher do you study?’ or ‘who is your favorite philosopher?’.

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    2. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Yes, Alex, I agree, that does seem like supporting data. Thanks!

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    3. Daniel Nagase Avatar
      Daniel Nagase

      I wonder if there isn’t an economic correlation as well? Supposing that the majority of philosophers are from middle or upper-middle classes, and that there is still a class distribution along color lines (which I don’t know if it holds in the USA; it definitely holds in Brazil), then there could be an economic factor playing along as well.

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    4. Bharath Vallabha Avatar
      Bharath Vallabha

      It doesn’t have to be an either/or, as in either the students experience philosophy as topical inquiry or as European cultural history. More perniciously, the experience could be of both at the same time, as in doing European cultural history is the only path to the topical inquiries, that we are studying Plato and Kant, but not philosophers from other cultures, because Plato and Kant transcended their cultural contexts in a way philosophers in other traditions didn’t.
      This more pernicious idea is incredibly widespread, and students are apt to think it because most professors express that idea in the set up of their classes. For example, is reading Strawson on Kant in class engaging just with ideas or doing cultural history? The default in most classes, it seems to me, is to treat it as just engaging with ideas of transcendental arguments, etc. But if the professor is pressed on why we are reading only European authors, the professor might respond that we are focused on “Western philosophical tradition”. So, which is it? The idea of a “neutral” philosophy class which focuses just on ideas, but which is also focused on only Western authors is, to use Sellars term for sense-data, a “mongrel” concept; one which is supposed to be a reason and a cause at the same time, but where the understanding of reason and cause are actually in tension with each other. In this sense, I would say most philosophy classes are mongrel-classes, as in they are meant to transcend cultural contexts while being immersed in just one cultural context.

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    5. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Daniel: Your conjecture is correct for the U.S. too. Here’s a good article on that topic:
      http://astro.temple.edu/~kgoyette/major.pdf
      In what is surely a multi-causal picture, I suspect that one factor is that the perceived “impracticality” of philosophy makes it proportionately less attractive, on average, to students from lower SES backgrounds than it is to students from higher SES backgrounds; and of course white people in the US have higher average SES than black people.

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    6. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Bharath: I agree. Well put.

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    7. Catarina Dutilh Novaes Avatar
      Catarina Dutilh Novaes

      Yep, the Humanities is to a great extent a ‘game for rich kids’. I know of a few cases of people from lower SES backgrounds who go into philosophy (or other fields), but if you are a smart kid from a poor family, the more obvious thing to do is to opt for a career that will likely offer you ample opportunities for a more comfortable life. That may be good for the smart kid, but it’s definitely bad for the Humanities, as we are losing diversity in perspectives which is in fact at the core of the very idea of ‘Humanities’.
      This is not to discount the effects of the well-documented gate-keeping mechanisms that keep non-whites out of these fields, but as you say yourself, it’s going to be a multi-causal story.

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    8. Anand Vaidya Avatar
      Anand Vaidya

      Not that I think it is completely inappropriate to put philosophy in the humanities category. But what does the data look like if we compared philosophy with math, physics, chemistry, economics, and psychology?
      We are surprised that philosophy is just as white as compared to other humanistic disciplines. The idea being that we thought philosophy was far more white than literature by a lot. Would we be surprised to find out that philosophy is far more white than mathematics or chemistry?

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    9. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Anand: Apologies for the slow comment approval! Most of the sciences you mention are less white than philosophy. Physical sciences 77%, Psych 74%, Math 78%, Econ 71% (2012 data only). Looking at black scholars, the numbers in those fields somewhat exceed those in philosophy: 3.3% physical sciences, 5.8% psych, 2.7% math, 2.3% econ.
      And these data exclude the relatively larger proportion of non-US residents getting PhDs in these areas compared to philosophy, which I would guess would increase the rate of minority participation in those fields if they were factored in.
      Thus, all these fields seem to be somewhat less white, and a little more black (possibly within statistical error), than philosophy.
      So… I’m not sure exactly what to make of these data, or what you make of them. But there they are.

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    10. Anand Vaidya Avatar
      Anand Vaidya

      Eric. Thanks for the data. I guess my point was simply the following. I think much of analytic philosophy makes it look more like mathematics and science, then literature. Take for example contemporary work in metaphysics surrounding objects, possible worlds, counterfactuals, grounding, essence, or structure. And consider the fact that formal epistemology is largely mathematical. and experimental philosophy is largely psychological. And philosophy of science and mathematics is almost completely mathematical and scientific. I think it is pretty easy to make it the case that much of analytic philosophy is, for lack of a better term, scientific-mathematical philosophy. Now I don’t think that is a bad thing at all. I think it is good that we teach and do a lot of stuff that makes our work mathematical and scientific. But I do think we are in a position to ask the critical question: what is the reason for such a higher percentage of non-whites in math and psychology and economics compared to philosophy? Is it simply post degree employability? That could be the answer. But it could also be something else.
      Using data from the other humanities to show that philosophy is just as white as other humanities disciplines, such as literature, is useful. But I think putting that info against the other set of information is useful also. It contextualizes the information, since arguably many areas of philosophy look more like math and science.
      Thanks for finding the data Eric. I appreciate this post and discussion.

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    11. Eric Schwitzgebel Avatar
      Eric Schwitzgebel

      Yes, Anand, that seems right. My own view is that philosophy is pretty much just “very theoretical anything” (as Alison Gopnik put it in an article we co-authored), so it will sometimes be very theoretical math and physics, sometimes be very theoretical social science, sometimes be very theoretical humanistic reflection, etc.
      Sorry for taking so long to approve your comment! Since I’m only about a monthly contributor, I check the comments feed only sporadically except for the couple days after the original post.

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