Race, Erasure, inequality

Race, Erasure, Inequality: Studies in Theory and
Resistance


This course examines the roots and history of
racism in the United States,
from the era of slavery during the country's early
days as a revolutionary
liberal democratic republic, to today, with a view
to provide context for
understanding 20th and 21st Century anti-racist
resistance. Central to this
inquiry will be considerations of the forms and
norms of racist discourse
and practice and the relationship of those norms
to the law. Racism, here
understood as the theory, discourse, and practice
of white supremacist
racialization, served in the United States as an
enabling mechanism of
domination that enlisted and conscripted the white
population to structure,
enforce, and manage the kidnapped African
population and their
descendants, who served as the foundational, slave
labor force within an
emergent capitalism. Racism as a labor and
property control mechanism
was part and parcel of the class structure
attendant to this country's
capitalist economics. It was also a regulatory
system that ordered, as a
matter of law, the behavior of white people in
their relations with nonwhite
people.


Anti-racist response has structured itself around
these constraints. The
post-slavery era persistence of racist thought,
discourse, and practice in
this country has been enduring and consequential,
and has continued to
influence and structure political and other social
relations. One feature of
the life of racism has been its status as the
always present, ever denied
indicator of socioeconomic domination and
political and social division,
privileging racism while denying agency to the
racialized. Class readings
will examine racism's deployment of presence and
erasure, through a
survey of the historical uses of racism, racism
and anti-racism in U.S. law,
politics, economics, public and private discourse,
and consciousness. Part
of this inquiry will look into the idea of caste
as an analytical tool for
enhancing our understanding of the new and
challenging forms of
racialization that have survived into this
ambiguously "post-racial" era. The
course will conclude with a review of contemporary
anti-racist practice,
including the Movement for Black Lives and other
initiatives.