Shannon Sullivan, Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Philosophy and Health Psychology at UNC Charlotte, presented the Jerry Jackson Lecture in the Humanities at Western Carolina University on November 3, 2016.
Sullivan spoke on “Good White People,” the subject of her acclaimed book, Good White People: The Problem with Middle Class White Anti-Racism. Named a 2014 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title, and a Ms. Magazine Must-Read Feminist Book of 2014, it also was awarded The Society of Professors of Education 2016 Outstanding Book Award.
Her research offers a theoretical, practical instrument for understanding and finding new ways to address white privilege. The book outlines four ways that well-intentioned middle-class white people seek to establish their anti-racism, documenting how these can distance and distract people from addressing systemic problems.
Sullivan’s discussion was part of the Jerry Jackson Lecture in the Humanities series. Her talk was co-sponsored by the Honors College, Intercultural Affairs and the Department of Philosophy and Religion.
She teaches and writes at the intersections of feminist philosophy, critical philosophy of race, American pragmatism, and continental philosophy. She also wrote Living Across and Through Skins: Transactional Bodies, Pragmatism and Feminism (2001), and Revealing Whiteness: The Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege (2006) and is co-editor of several books including Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (2007) and The Physiology of Sexist and Racist Oppression (2015.)
