The Racism Dialectic

“In the contemporary political landscape, racism seems to be an indefatigable issue. I have noticed that those who advocate anti-racism, ironically, have a tendency to fight fire with fire—that is, racism with racism.”

Let us begin with Hegel. Hegel is a famous German philosopher who wrote most of his works during the early part of the 19th century. You might recall his name in relation to a triadic formula that runs like this: thesis —> antithesis —> synthesis. Yet, this formula was not Hegel’s. It was developed by a contemporaneous philosopher named Johann Fichte. Hegel’s conception of dialectic is similar, to be sure, but important differences remain.

Hegel’s dialectic is a logic of concepts. In that way, it is distinct from the Platonic dialectic; whereas Plato’s dialectic is contingent on discovering intuitions via dialogue, Hegel’s dialectic is necessitated by an internal conceptual process. Heuristically, you might think of Hegel’s dialectic like a mathematical or logical equation. The conclusion follows from the premises. But, instead, it deals with the process of conceptual formation.

The process of Hegel’s dialectic has three moments: (1) Moment of Stability, (2) Moment of Instability, and (3) Moment of Unity.

Take, for instance, Hegel’s famous example: the concept of Being. First, there is the moment where Being is established as a stable concept. Once this occurs, the first moment passes into its opposite: the concept of Nothing.

What happens here is perhaps the most important aspect: the process of sublation. Hegel’s technical German variant of sublation is aufheben; it means two things—(a) to cancel, and (b) to preserve. It is an aptly paradoxical definition, to say the least. Thus, Nothing cancels out Being, but it does so while preserving Being in its conceptual constitution; for to know Nothing is simultaneously to know Being. To attempt it more clearly: once Being is determined as a concept in a moment of understanding, its one-sidedness leads it to push itself into its opposite.