I am currently working on a book about five issues in applied ethics that involve race: slave reparations, affirmative action, hate speech restrictions, hate crime laws, and racial profiling.  The book attempts to defend what I (and, I hope, some other people, too) take to be a fairly moderate set of views on these issues.  In particular, it attempts to develop a defense of slave reparations that doesn’t entail a defense of the views of its most extreme proponents, a position on affirmative action that manages to navigate a middle way between its supporters and its opponents, opposition to hate speech codes but support for hate crime laws, and a limited but nonetheless substantive defense of the permissibility of racial profiling under certain sorts of conditions.  Taken individually, some of these positions may at first seem somewhat immoderate.  And taken as a whole, the positions in combination may well initially seem inconsistent.  But I try to establish that these positions do, indeed, offer a way to develop a moderate, coherent and reasonable response to these various issues by trying to argue from permises that most people, on both sides of these various debates, already accept.

For reasons I won't go into here, I am now in the process of trying to divide the book up into two smaller books.  One book will focus on slave reparations and affirmative action.  The other will focus on hate speech restrictions, hate crime laws, and racial profiling.  I have now finished producing revised chapters for the second book, tentatively entitled Targeted By Race: The Moral Problems of Hate Speech, Hate Crime and Racial Profiling.  You can click here to go to a directory of the latest versions of these chapters.  The document called "TARGET 1" is a very short introduction.  TARGET 2 and TARGET 3 are on hate speech restrictions, TARGET 4 and TARGET 5 are on hate crime laws, and TARGET 6 and TARGET 7 are on racial profiling.  I hope to post a reorganized set of chapters on slave reparatoins and affirmative action at some point in the next few weeks.  For now, anyone interested in looking at the drafts of the chapters on those subjects should look at the documents called 2 - reparations part one, 3 - reparatoins part two, and 4 - affirmative action.  They can be found at the same directory. 

I am trying to write this book for a broad audience.  My hope is that it will be accessible to, and of intererest to, non-academics as well as to philosophers and other people who study some of these issues.  I am also trying to adopt a relatively moderate tone.  I picture the book as defending a kind of centrist position, and so it should appeal to those who view themselves as racial moderates, but I am trying to write it in a way that is sufficiently respectful of other points of view so that people further to the left or right of me on these issues will also find the book engaging and worthwhile.  With these goals in mind, here's what you can do to help me write this book:

1. click here to go to a directory of the latest versions of the chapters that are currently available online, along with the table of contents and bibliography
2. read as much of the manuscript or as little as you like.  Other than the two chapters on slave reparations, which obviously go together, all of the chapters are self-contained and can be read in any order.  It 
    would be great to get feedback on the introductory chapter, but the substantive chapters that follow can be read without really reading it.  So feel free to jump in with whatever issue interests you the most
    (the chapter titles will make clear which chapters are about which topics). 
3. as you are reading the manuscript, keep in mind the following sorts of issues that I am particularly eager to get feedback about:
          - quality of argumentation: how rigorous and convincing are the arguments I develop and the objections I raise against other arguments?
          - accuracy: do I do a fair job of representing the various positions and writings I refer to?
          - readability: I'm particularly concerned to make this readable for non-philosophers and general readers.  Any comments about style, pacing, word choice, etc. would be greatly appreciated.
          - further reading: before I started working on this book, I knew virtually nothing about the relevant literature (a limitation that didn't stop me from writing my last two books!).  I have a list of
                                       books and articles on these issues that I still haven't read, but any suggestions for more to add to the list would be great.
          - titles: I'm still not crazy about the title and am open to other ideas.  I'd also be happy to get suggestions for improving some of the chapter and section titles.
4. when you're finished, send me your comments at David.Boonin@Colorado.Edu and let me know how you came across my manuscript.   I'm hoping to finish a final draft by December 2009, so any  
    comments that reach me before that would be great.
5. send a message with a link to this page to anyone you know -- philosophers and non-philosophers alike -- who might also be interested in providing me with critical feedback.

Thank you very much for your interest in helping me with my project, and please let me know if you have any questions,

    - David