A related issue is the trend of philosophy textbooks to create narratives of the history of philosophy as completely white and male, then towards the end of the anthology, in a wholly transparent exercise in plausible denial, place a short excerpt or two from a philosopher of color and/or a woman philosopher. Why would deBois be included in an Intro textbook? Philosophical inquiry transcends issues of race, of course!

A pet hunch of mine is that the lack of discussion about issues of race in ethics and Philosophy in general may be due to an unspoken understanding that the question of racism is “easy”, that is to say, that we all agree racism is bad, therefore, what else is there to say? Of course, this is an attitude you can only have if you know nothing, or very little, about what contemporary anti- racist discourse looks like and what the current battles are concerned with. Issues like white privilege, and what to do about it, issues like mass incarceration, particularly with an emphasis on disproportionate sentencing. Issues confronting implicit bias research and how to overcome our implicit biases. Things of the sort that are nowhere to be seen in any standard ethics course. I wager the best explanation is not that these issues don’t present any serious philosophical issues to be discussed (since they obviously do), but rather that philosophers simply don’t know much, if anything, about these issues, so they take the “problem of racism” as essentially solved. And to them, “the problem of racism” amounts to nothing more than “Yeah, minorities deserve equal rights, duh”. And if your conception of racism is that shallow, it’s little wonder you think the answers are easy and already settled.

‘they take the “problem of racism” as essentially solved’

– in the same way in which ‘they’ take themselves to have ‘solved’ the problem of ‘slavery’ . . .