Richard Rorty

From Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (paraphrased)

Personhood is a matter of decision rather than knowledge, an acceptance of another being into fellowship rather than a recognition of a common essence.

Knowledge of what pain is like or what red is like is attributed to beings on the basis of their potential membership in the community. Thus babies and the more attractive sorts of animal are credited with “having feelings” rather than (like machines or spiders) “merely responding to stimuli.” 

To say that babies know what heat is like, but not what the motion of molecules is like is just to say that we can fairly readily imagine them opening their mouths and remarking on the former, but not the latter. To say that a gadget that says “red” appropriately doesn't know what red is like is to say that we cannot readily imagine continuing a conversation with the gadget....

Attribution of pre-linguistic awareness is merely a courtesy extended to potential or imagined fellow-speakers of our language. Moral prohibitions against hurting babies and the better-looking sorts of animals are not based on their possessions of feeling. It is, if anything, the other way around....

Rationality about denying civil rights to morons or fetuses or aboriginal tribes or blacks or Martians or trees is a myth. The emotions we have toward borderline cases depend on the liveliness of our imagination, and conversely. 

James Baldwin

From I Am Not Your Negro

White people are astounded by Birmingham. Black people aren't. White people are endlessly demanding to be reassured that Birmingham is really on Mars. They don't want to believe, still less to act on the belief, that what is happening in Birmingham is happening all over the country. They don't want to realize that there is not one step, morally or actually, between Birmingham and Los Angeles.

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I don't know if white Christians hate Negroes or not, but I know we have a Christian church which is white and a Christian church which is black.... I can't afford to trust most white Christians, and I certainly cannot trust the Christian church. I don't know whether the labor unions or their bosses really hate me ... but I know I'm not in their union. I don't know whether the real estate lobby has anything against black people, but I know the real estate lobby is keeping me in the ghetto. I don't know if the board of education hates black people, but I know the textbooks they give my children to read and the schools we have to go to. Now, this is evidence.

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You never had to look at me. I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me.

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What white people have to do is try and find out in their own hearts why it was necessary to have a "nigger" in the first place. I'm not a nigger, I'm a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need him.... If I'm not the nigger here and you invented him, ... then you've got find out why.