The local anti-discrimination effort, Not In Our Town (NIOT), is hosting Dr. Alison Bailey at 7 p.m. on July 1, at the Bloomington Public Library Community Room, 205 E. Olive St., Bloomington, to discuss her new book, The Weight of Whiteness.
Dr. Bailey will present her book and then participants will engage in small group discussion. Because of room capacity, pre-registration is required at niotblm@gmail.com.
Dr. Bailey is a professor of philosophy at Illinois State where she directs the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. In her new book, The Weight of Whiteness: A Feminist Engagement with Privilege, Race, and Ignorance, Dr. Bailey explores the ways white supremacy and privilege operate like anesthesia, desensitizing white people to the inherited damage of whiteness on collective humanity. After a presentation by Dr. Bailey, participants will have time for small group discussion on the topics raised and then ask general questions.
Dr. Bailey’s scholarship engages issues at the intersections of feminist theories, philosophy of race, critical whiteness studies, and social epistemology (especially epistemic injustice and ignorance). She gave the spring College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Lecture in 2019. Her recent work on anger and epistemic injustice appears in the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s supplemental volume on “The Harms and Wrongs of Epistemic Practice,” and in The Logic of Racial Practice: Embodiment, Habitus, and Implicit Bias. She co-edited The Feminist Philosophy Reader (2007) with Chris J. Cuomo.
NIOT is a 26-year, all-volunteer Bloomington-Normal community effort to stop hate, address bullying, and build a safe and inclusive community for all. NIOT regularly sponsors discussions, forums, vigils, marches, and other events.
