Sheltering Xenophobia

Abstract What is xenophobia? Why is xenophobia immoral? How is xenophobia's conceptual and moral meaning diminished? Investigations of these questions would invigorate xenophobia as a topic in public morality and discourage the public's acquiescing to xenophobia's new prominence. This paper focuses on the third question, the diminishment of xenophobia. In the first section, I outline a general conception of xenophobia. In the second, I explain how theories of membership in liberal democratic societies relegate xenophobia to a minor moral concern. And, in the third, that the conflation of xenophobia with racism disadvantages the former. How liberal Democratic nations imagine membership (not surprisingly) and how those nations imagine racism (surprisingly) shelters xenophobia.