Plato’s Cave and Antiracism Discourse

From darkness to illumination

PLATO’S CAVE AND ANTIRACISM DISCOURSE

From darkness to illumination

Arnoldo Cantú

Introduction

“Democracy Dies in Darkness”—this is the slogan adopted by The Washington Post in 2017, a first in its 148-year history. Part of its origin is said to come from the newspaper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, who used the phrase in an interview when he said, “I think a lot of us believe this, that democracy dies in darkness, that certain institutions have a very important role in making sure that there is light.” A corollary for the purpose of this essay can be “knowledge dies in darkness.”

In Book VII of Plato’s Republic, Socrates introduces the powerful Allegory of the Cave (514-517c3), which puts forth how ignorant prisoners in a cave are forced to watch shadows dancing on the wall, and mistake those shadows for reality. Eventually one prisoner escapes, climbs out of the cave, and sees the real world and the sun, and makes it his mission to return to the cave and free the others of their ignorance. Socrates also speaks to the Form of the Good and likens it to the sun. It gives intelligibility and essence to all other things, and is the ultimate source of knowledge, just as the sun is the source of illumination (see Figure 1).

He adds that in “the knowable realm, the form of the good is the last thing to be seen, and it is reached only with difficulty” (517b6-7), later bookending his allegory by arguing how once this knowable/intelligible realm is reached by the individual, he realizes how “in the intelligible realm [the Form of the Good] controls and provides truth and understanding, so that anyone who is to act sensibly in private or public must see it” (517c1-3). Said differently, once you are able to see and learn all that you have been “in the dark” about, it is hard to unlearn it or see any differently—a new kind of truth is now accessible.

Contemporary discourse and debates about particular social problems are regularly infused with rhetoric about racism, various racial groups being overlaid in dichotomous ways (i.e., oppressor versus oppressed), and anti-racist commitments. Particular views about these complex issues have taken hold in various settings and institutions such as universities, corporate America, K-12 education, politics, non-profit organizations, and social media. More specifically, there has been a steady current of people desiring and advocating for social change accompanied by activism, forceful arguments of how particular problems should be resolved, and a widespread movement for various systems and people to become “anti-racist.” However, the philosophy underpinning the predominant activist ethos of today is not commonly questioned (although the pendulum is swinging). This could be because people do not feel they have permission to challenge the status quo, or fear backlash if they do so. Others, understandably, may also perceive today’s social problems to be infinitely complex, think it is not worthwhile getting involved, or perhaps believe it is better to defer to society’s experts and public intellectuals for solutions—and likely those whose beliefs and values are most closely aligned with their own.

This essay will take a different approach. Invoking various philosophies of race, I will utilize the Allegory of the Cave to illustrate how if our freed prisoner chooses to leave the shadows behind and walk toward the exit of the cave, he may be rewarded with views about race, racism, and anti-racist practices that contradict the “anti-racism” consensus. This new knowledge has the potential to undermine all he has known “in the dark.” In an arguably more liberating fashion, I will argue how once an individual chooses to exit the cave and entertain differing views, the oft-stated phrase “once you see it, you can’t unsee it” will resonate greatly—that is, “he’d count himself happy for the change and pity the others” (516c4) who remain embroiled in the current status quo thinking about race and racism.

I will also argue that, crucially, the core concept upon which contemporary thinking about racism and anti-racism hinges—race—continues to be reified in a paradoxically harmful way. I will suggest that contemporary thinking about how to be anti-racist promotes a narrow view resulting in poor outcomes at best, and harmful, antithetical outcomes at worst—and alternatives our liberated prisoner can pursue in order to be genuinely anti-racist, should he choose to do so.

Contemporary Forms and Views about Racism

Some suggest that racism is “deeply entrenched” in the United States. Others invoke terms such as “systemic racism” or “structural racism” to denote this supposedly omnipresent reality. To make this case, people regularly point to differences or disparities among racial groups as evidence of pervasive racism. For example, some statistics suggest that “black” adults are 1.5 times less likely to have health insurance when compared to “white” adults, or “black” male offenders receive nearly 20% longer federal sentences for the same crime when compared to “white” male offenders. Another example is that some imply that “black” individuals are “kept out” of the technology industry as evidenced by disparities in representation.

One can commonly perceive the aforementioned disparities or differences—compounded by, for example, commentaries from today’s public intellectuals, images of police violence, and protests regularly shown on television—as examples that instantiate this form of racism. One may begin to form provisional opinions about what he is seeing. Some provisional thoughts and reasoning can be that certain racial groups are clearly being mistreated on a large scale as evidenced by all sorts of statistics and disparities. This can result in the conclusion that this is textbook racism at play, and that it is evidently “deeply entrenched” in the United States.

At this point, the individual will use this form of “systemic” or “structural racism” to advocate for a concomitant intervention; that is, a particular kind of anti-racism to redress identified inequities. For many, ways in which these approaches have been materializing are heavily influenced by Ibram X. Kendi who has suggested, “The only remedy to past negative racist discrimination…is present positive antiracist discrimination toward equity. The only remedy to present…racist discrimination…is future positive antiracist discrimination.” And then there’s Robin DiAngelo, who makes the substantively profound claim that “all white people are racist.”

Emerging from the Cave

In the Dark

Contemporary thinking about race and racism has reached a fever pitch and taken a stronghold in everyday discourse. Consequently, challenging or questioning popular anti-racist methods, approaches, or views can be perceived as sacrilegious. For example, when University of Central Florida psychology professor Charles Negy tweeted (on his personal account) critical thoughts about the ethos of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, he was fired in early 2021 (he was later reinstated in Fall of 2022 after his firing was overruled by an arbitrator). This has coincided with alarming rates of not only the public engaging in self-censorship, but students and professors across university campuses doing so as well.

Given the predominant view about social problems, coupled with a fear of speaking out and a very real “cancel culture,” I contend that there is an even more pernicious consequence unfolding as a result of being unable to see or hear different viewpoints—that of many people being forced to remain “in the dark.” At this point, let us invoke Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to help paint a picture. Suggesting what it would be like to experience a lack of education, Socrates makes the following allegory:

[C]ompare the effect of education and of the lack of it on our nature to an experience like this: Imagine human beings living in an underground, cavelike dwelling, with an entrance a long way up, which is both open to the light as wide as the cave itself. They’ve been there since childhood, fixed in the same place, with their necks and legs fettered, able to see only in front of them, because their bonds prevent them from turning their heads around. (514a)

Describing how these prisoners have only seen the shadows in front of them created by other people hidden by a wall located behind the prisoners (see Figure 1), Socrates adds how “Then the prisoners would in every way believe that the truth is nothing other than the shadows of those artifacts” (515c). This, in effect, is the experience of many kept in the dark. Relegated to being able to see only what is in front of them curated by a de facto echo chamber influenced by popular or dogmatic beliefs, the prisoner is not only unable to hear other differing views and opinions about anything, but he is also unable to develop and evolve his own perspectives in response to those of other people.

Education as Liberation: Philosophies of Race

Once a prisoner is unshackled and makes his way toward the exit of the cave, noticing what really produced the shadows on the wall, he begins to see things as they really are with the help of education. For someone mired in contemporary thinking about race, racism, and anti-racism, hearing about statistical disparities among racial groups and seeing the mistreatment of certain “races,” he could now be able to make a crucial pause and philosophical pivot: instead of unquestionably believing and thinking this is the product of today’s popular form of racism—and, taking a further step back, instead of automatically assuming that the “races” he is seeing are real—he would ask himself, “What am I seeing or perceiving when I look at different racial groups? What is ‘race’ in the first place?” Said differently, our prisoner can choose to not only engage in critical thinking about the predominant form of “racism,” but he can also choose to hold its accompanying concept of “race” up to scrutiny.

Figure 1

His experience of being “pained and dazzled and unable to see the things whose shadows he’d seen before” (515c6) would be alleviated by learning of various philosophical views about “race.” He would learn that although there are those who believe that “race” is physically real in a biological sense (i.e., the “naturalists”), there are others (i.e., the “constructionists”) who suggest that “race” is merely an idea socially created and maintained by language and our imagination—that what he sees when he looks at others are labels he has been taught and conditioned to reflexively apply, presumably based on one’s phenotypical characteristics such as skin color. However, perhaps in the most liberating—and maybe dazzling—way, he would also learn that there are others (i.e., the “skeptics”) who outright reject any notion of “race” in any sense of the word.

As if that was not destabilizing enough, he would then be able to ask himself, “Well, how did ‘race’ come to be in the first place?” He would begin to learn about the process of “racialization”:

1. Selecting some human characteristics [e.g., skin color] as meaningful signs of racial difference;

2. Sorting people into races on the basis of variations in these characteristics;

3. Attributing personality traits, behavior, and other characteristics to people classified as members of particular races;

4. Essentializing purported racial differences [e.g., rank order, status] as natural, immutable, and hereditary;

5. Acting as if purported racial differences justify unequal treatment.

He would, then, learn about how through the act of racialization, for example, “[A]ncestors of today’s African Americans were not enslaved because they were black. They were eventually deemed to be racially distinct, as black people, to justify their enslavement” [emphasis added]—a post hoc justification for the use of race categories. Or as Sheena Mason has put it on the Free Black Thought Podcast, “race/ism (i.e., racism) is a socially constructed system of economic and social oppression that requires the belief in human races and the practice of racialization to reinforce various power imbalances.”

In other words, racism created race categories—and therefore, the continued use of “race” categories will maintain the racism inherent in them, with that racism being camouflaged by the use of “race.” This deceptive act is powerfully described by Barbara and Karen Fields’s concept of racecraft:

Racism is not an emotion or state of mind, such as intolerance, bigotry, hatred, or malevolence…Racism is…a social practice [that] takes for granted the objective reality of race…The shorthand transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss.

In other words, as our liberated prisoner continues to emerge from the cave and sees all that is illuminated in front of him, he will learn how racialization can be understood as (in Mason’s words) the “systematic practice of marking out groups of people as the subjects or presupposed perpetrators of violence and oppression based largely on ancestry and phenotype.”

He will eventually understand an alternative view that the process of racialization and sustained belief in “race” is itself racism—with racism hiding behind race. After all, how else could “races” have come into existence? Racism preceded racial categories; the “ism” in “racism” speaks to the “act, practice, or process of doing something” such as racialization. As such, he will learn how it can be more productive to instead consider how the particulars should be reversed: that is, to scrutinize “race” itself and how racialization/racism is baked into it.

Maybe systemic racism (i.e., the obsessive use of race categories) is occurring at scale, but not in the ways we are being told nowadays?

Anti(race)ism

After allowing himself “time to get adjusted before he could see things in the world above” (516a3-4), our liberated prisoner would eventually be able to understand how contemporary anti-racist practices can, paradoxically, inflict more harm on others. Recognizing that, philosophically and fundamentally, their aims continue to reify the form of “race” that has racism baked into it, he would be able to engage with ideas such as “eliminativism” or “abolitionism.” As he approaches a different kind of understanding, he would now be able to consider how it might be a worthwhile undertaking—given their historical trappings that cannot be disentangled—to discard the concept of “race” entirely and oppose the racial categorization ideology. He could consider himself to be raceless.

Lastly, to avoid being accused of neglecting or ignoring concerning statistics that others incontestably argue are instantiations of racism, our liberated prisoner could learn that the logic behind presuming disparate treatment (i.e., “racism”) as the main cause of disparities in outcomes among different “racial” groups can be considered suspect, at best. As Thomas Sowell explains, “‘Disparate impact’ statistics have for decades been used, in many different contexts, to claim that discrimination was the reason why different groups are not equally represented.” However, in reality, expecting equal outcomes or, at minimum, outcomes representative of the “racial” makeup of a population is unrealistic:

The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population. But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct.

Concurrently, Sowell has argued that not only does equal treatment not guarantee equal outcomes, but—preceding any kind of treatment—believing that individuals can enter the world with equal chances is also fallacious. As a result, our liberated prisoner could, then, be compelled to think about what other factors (e.g., class, culture, natural differences among individuals, etc.) might be at play contributing to differences in outcomes among different “racial” groups—and if “race” can, instead, be more accurately seen as a proxy for something else, “such as ethnicity, such as culture, social class, economic class or racism itself.”

Conclusion

Socrates contends that without the light produced by the sun, “when we turn our eyes to things whose colors are no longer in the light of day but in the gloom of night, the eyes are dimmed and seem nearly blind, as if clear vision were no longer in them” (508c2-4). Making a comparison with the soul, he adds:

When it focuses on something illuminated by truth and what is, it understands, knows, and apparently possesses understanding, but when it focuses on what is mixed with obscurity…it opines and is dimmed, changes its opinions this way and that, and seems bereft of understanding. (508d2-6)

In this essay I attempted to use Plato’s Allegory of the Cave to not only elucidate how many of us are likely being kept “in the dark” when it comes to contemporary discussions and explanations of race, racism, and anti-racism, but also to contend that learning of different philosophies of race can feel truly liberating for an individual.

Being able to hear differing opinions as well as voicing one’s own without fear of censorship can help in contributing to our epistemic commons, that is, the “stock of evidence, ideas, and perspectives that are alive for a given community.” This requires an exiting of the cave in the pursuit of truth, and to be allowed—by others and our own selves—to “see” all that the light illuminates, lest we allow knowledge to die in darkness.

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Arnoldo Cantú, LCSW is a clinical social worker and psychotherapist with experience in school social work, private practice, community mental health, and primary care behavioral health seeing children, adolescents, families, and adults. He was born in Mexico and considers Texas home, having grown up in the Rio Grande Valley, though he currently resides in northern Colorado. He has been the lead and co-editor of several volumes in the Ethics International Press Critical Psychology and Critical Psychiatry Series. He’s written critically and philosophically not only about the idea of so-called mental disorder, but also the idea of race categories. He is also critical about ideological bent and the lack of viewpoint diversity in his profession of social work.