RESCHEDULED: Epistemic Injustice and Ethnic Erasure

Legal scholars often claim that factors such as socioeconomic factors and zip codes are roundabout ways to target racial inequality. However, an overlooked consequence of this is the erosion of ethnicity.
This is particularly the case for Black Americans who are the descendants of American chattel slavery. While the plaintiffs in the SCOTUS case, Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina in late 2022, contended that such a status would be seen as a mere proxy for “Black” in the American imagination. This completely overlooks the unique culture and history this descendant community has lived and forged over its 400-year history in the United States.

Murray uses Afropessimism, African-American History, and Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice to explain why the descendant community faces this unique challenge. He later uses the Ethics of Care as formulated by Joan Tronto as a way to address an ethnic group being completely subsumed and rendered invisible within the category of race.