Mullings Leith Interrogating Racism Toward an Antiracist Anthropology

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Interrogating Racism:Toward an AntiracistAnthropologyLeith MullingsDepartment of Anthropology, Graduate School and University Center, CityUniversity of New York, New York, NY 10016-4309; email: [email protected]

Annu. Rev. Anthropol.2005. 34:667–93

The Annual Review ofAnthropology is online atanthro.annualreviews.org

doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093435

Copyright c© 2005 byAnnual Reviews. All rightsreserved

0084-6570/05/1021-0667$20.00

Key Words

race, social movements, color blindness, globalization, antiracism

AbstractOver the past several decades, global manifestations of racism haveundergone significant transformations. The anticolonial struggle,the civil rights movement, and the antiapartheid offensive have chal-lenged the former established racial regimes. But the consolidationof global capitalism has also created new forms of racialization. Avariety of antiracist strategies and interventions have emerged toconfront new racisms. Analyses of racism have sought to interrogateits history and contemporary manifestations, how it is maintainedand reproduced, and to predict its future. Anthropologists and othersocial scientists are challenged to develop theoretical perspectivesand methodological approaches to advance our understanding ofthese new manifestations of race and racism.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 668A Very Short History of

Anthropology, Racism, andAntiracism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 669

HISTORICIZING RACISMS. . . . . . . 670Contesting Racialization . . . . . . . . . . 673

CONTEMPORARY RACISMS . . . . . 674Global Conditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 674Concealing Racisms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 677Reproducing Racism: The

United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 679AGAINST RACISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681

The Future of Race . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 681Contemporary Antiracisms. . . . . . . . 682Anthropology and Antiracism:

An Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 684

INTRODUCTION

Over six decades ago, Gunnar Myrdal de-scribed racism as “an American dilemma”stemming from the contradiction between theU.S. ideology of equality and its practicesof racial segregation and discrimination. Ahalf century later, this dilemma echoed pro-foundly at the United Nations World Confer-ence Against Racism, Racial Discrimination,Xenophobia and Other Forms of Intoleranceconvened in August, 2001, Durban, SouthAfrica, where representatives of the racial-ized global south sought to renegotiate theirunequal relationship with the states of Eu-rope and the Americas. The conference andits accompanying meeting of nongovernmen-tal organizations was attended by more than8000 representatives and delegates from over160 countries. The delegates included notonly African-descended and indigenous peo-ples from all over the globe, but also the Dalitsfrom the Indian subcontinent, the Burakuminof Japan, the Roma of Europe, and Palestini-ans from the Middle East.

Racism is a widely used concept, bothby academics and the broader public. How-

ever, it is a relatively recent term, cominginto common use during World War II (seeFredrickson 2002). In the American histori-cal literature, two distinct perspectives aboutthe source of racism materialized. The “nat-ural racism thesis” (see Allen 2002) generallyconceptualized racism as a set of psychosocialorientations, prejudices, and beliefs, linked toin-group/out-group phenomena, the sourceof which is human nature, considered to beinnate, natural, or primordial.1 The more per-suasive perspective links racism to structuresof power that emerge through processes ofaccumulation and dispossession within localand transnational contexts. This approach ap-pears in the writings of such social theorists asEric Williams (1944), W.E.B. DuBois (1946),Oliver Cox (1948), St. Clair Drake (1987),Walter Rodney (1972), and their intellectualdescendants. It is within the latter perspectivethat most contemporary anthropological, so-ciological, and historical work on racism is tobe found, and this article privileges work inthis tradition.

There are, however, contending conceptu-alizations of racism within this massive corpusof scholarly literature (Taguieff 2001, Winant2000, Wodak & Reisigl 1999). Some scholars

1This debate took place largely in American historiogra-phy with reference to the enslavement of African Amer-icans. Historians frequently made reference to anthropo-logical work on race, and anthropologists such as MarvinHarris (1964) were active contributors to demonstratingthe weakness of the primordial approach. Winthrop Jor-dan (1968) and Carl Degler (1971) were two influentialscholars whose work supported the “natural racism” hy-pothesis. This perspective opposed the thesis of Mary andOscar Handlin (1950), suggesting that before 1660 AfricanAmerican bondsmen and women had basically the samestatus as European-American bond laborers and that rulingclass policy, rather than a preconditioned race conscious-ness, was responsible for later transformation in their sta-tus. The important issue is that this debate took place in thepost-World War II context of demands for racial equality.The debate posed critical questions: If racism was natu-ral or primordial, was an end to racism possible? If racismarises under specific historical circumstances, could policiesbe implemented that would reduce, if not eliminate, racialinequalities? (See Allen 2002 for a discussion of these per-spectives.) In anthropology, similar discussions were takingplace with reference to the primordial nature of ethnicity.

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consider the term “racism” to be of limitedanalytic value (e.g., Mason 1994, Wacquant1997); others believe that the concept shouldbe essentially limited to an ideologicaland/or subjective experience (e.g., Bonilla-Silva 1996); still others, although concurringthat ideological and structural forces mutuallyshape racism, insist that the structural frame-work is the driving force (e.g., Stavenhagen1999, Wade 1997). There are also manyunanswered questions and significant areasof theoretical debate and controversy. When,how, and why does racism emerge histori-cally? What are the varieties, directions, andmanifestations of racism in the contempo-rary world? What do we know about howracism is maintained and reproduced? Howdoes racism intersect with other forms of in-equality such as class and gender? What arethe strategies and tendencies against it?

As compared to its sister disciplines of so-ciology and history, anthropology’s contribu-tion to the study of racism in the last sev-eral decades has been modest. At the sametime, key anthropological concepts of race andculture have been central to rationalizing in-equality. Harrison’s 1995 article provided acomprehensive review of the history of therace concept and anthropology, as well as thesignificant literature on race and racism tothat point. Following Stavenhagen’s observa-tion that “Race does not beget racism, butrather racism generates races” (1999, p. 8),my concern in this review is not to debatethe social construction of race but to considerhow scholars have attempted to grapple withracism. Although race may be socially con-structed, racism has a social reality that hasdetrimentally affected the lives of millions ofpeople. An article of this limited length ob-viously cannot do justice to this importantsubject. I therefore highlight anthropologicalcontributions to the study of racism wheneverpossible but draw heavily on related works inhistory, sociology, and other disciplines. Thereview focuses primarily on English languagework, with some emphasis on the researchof U.S. scholars. Because other chapters in

this volume review specific aspects of race andracism as they relate to archeology, criticalrace theory, indigenous policies and move-ments, Latin America, language, migrationand immigration, disease and public health,my treatment of these areas is limited. Fol-lowing a brief discussion of anthropology andantiracism, a selected body of work is reviewedas it addresses the questions posed above.

A Very Short History ofAnthropology, Racism, andAntiracism

Although anthropologists have written exten-sively about race, anthropological contribu-tions to the study of racism have been sur-prisingly modest. Perhaps this is due, in part,to anthropology’s contradictory heritage. Onone hand, it is the discipline that once nur-tured “scientific racism” and the racial worldview that provided a rationale for slavery,colonialism, segregation, and eugenics (Baker1998, Blakey 1994, Mukhopadhyay & Moses1997, Smedley 1993). On the other hand, an-thropology also has a significant antiracist tra-dition, most notably during and shortly fol-lowing World War II, as racism’s genocidalconsequences became all too clear.

In the 1940s and 1950s, the theoreti-cal work of such anthropologists as FranzBoas, Gene Weltfish, Ruth Benedict, AshleyMontague, Robert Redfield, and others wascritical to challenging the scientific justifi-cation for racial segregation in military ser-vice and to mounting an initiative aroundthe highly contested United Nations Educa-tional, Scientific, and Cultural Organization’sStatement Against Racism. The 1960s schol-arship of Ashley Montague, Frank Living-stone, and Sherwood Washburn calling intoquestion the concept of race was also a ma-jor contribution to the declining influenceof racial determinism (Baker 1998, Harrison1995, Lieberman 1997).

A lesser known stream of anthropologicalwork focused more explicitly on the struc-ture of racism. Key within this tradition were

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African American anthropologists such as St.Clair Drake (1962) and Allison Davis (1941),whose work in the 1930s and 1940s interro-gated structures of racial inequality in the U.S.north and south. Analyses of racism in south-ern communities by Hortense Powdermaker(1939) and Eleanor Leacock’s examination ofracism in stratified education (1969) strength-ened this body of work. But despite an im-pressive early antiracist tradition and signifi-cant mobilization around the critique of the“culture of poverty,” anthropological analysisof racism failed to become a major current inanthropology.

There are a number of issues that bearon this. First, anthropologists do not agreeabout the roles of race and racism within thediscipline or in the society as a whole. Al-though most anthropologists reject biologicalrace and racism (Lieberman 2001), and othershave explored more meaningful ways of un-derstanding human variation (e.g., Goodman2001, Gould 1996), a consistently large mi-nority (40%) of physical anthropologists makeuse of the race concept in gathering and ana-lyzing data (Cartmill 1999), and some con-tinue to defend the value of the conceptof biological race as an important mecha-nism for understanding human variation (e.g.,Shipman 1994). Many cultural anthropolo-gists, in distancing themselves from the trulybarbaric consequences of biological racism,have become “race avoidant” (Brodkin 1999,p. 68), considering race to be socially con-structed, but in the process ignore racism. AsShanklin put it, “American anthropology wonthe battle and lost the war” (1998, p. 670). Fur-thermore, as anthropologists focused on eth-nicity, rather than analyzing how categories ofrace emerge and persist, racism continues tobe undertheorized in anthropology.

Several anthropologists (Baker 1998,Brodkin 2001, di Leonardo 1998,Visweswaran 1998, Willis 1972) in retrospecthave argued that the theoretical weaknessesinherent in Boasian liberalism made it im-possible to sustain a focus on racism. Boasand some (not all) of his students largely

interpreted racism as a matter of ignorance,rather than as a fundamental element of thesocial structure; they consequently favoreddirecting antiracist initiatives largely towardeducating whites, rather than addressing theunderlying historical and structural forcesthat created and sustained racism. Further-more, the antiracist work in the discipline wasdisproportionately undertaken by women(Lieberman 1997), who were sometimesmarginalized by the discipline, and by peopleof color, who were often marginal to orexcluded from the academy. Finally it is es-sential to underscore the massive institutionaland financial support for scholarly studiesbuttressing biological determinism (Baker1998, Blakey 1994, Tucker 2002).

The publication of Gregory & Sanjek’sedited volume, Race, in 1994 represented animportant milestone in renewing anthropolo-gists’ attention to the study of racism. Despiteits checkered history and late entry into thefield, anthropology has the potential to makea central contribution to the critical study ofracism.

HISTORICIZING RACISMS

Notwithstanding Stoler’s trenchant critiquethat “histories of racism often appear as nar-ratives of redemption” (1997, p. 185), thereis a very important body of recent researchgrappling with the history of racism that isuseful to anthropologists as they try to makesense of contemporary racism. There is afairly broad consensus that racism is asso-ciated with modernity and that it is linkedto European expansion and consequent en-slavement of Africans, colonialism, and im-perialism. Most historians agree that racism(a) is inextricably bound with the historicalemergence of nation states, (b) is frequentlybuilt on earlier conflicts, and, furthermore,(c) emerges amid contestation. However, notsurprisingly, there is some difference of opin-ion about the precise dating, the centralityof racism to modernity, and the roles and

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directions of causality of particular aspects ofmodernity.

Inconsistencies in dating can be attributedin part to different conceptualizations ofracism and how it is distinguished from otherforms of discrimination, such as xenophobia,cultural, ethnic, and class prejudice, as wellas whether racism is defined as a fully devel-oped ideology and system of domination ora modern manifestation of ancient phenom-ena of tribalism and group identity. For exam-ple, Snowden (1995), Fredrickson (2002), andWinant (2001) argue that there is no equiv-alence of race in the Greco-Roman world,nor among early Christians. In contrast Is-sac (2004), in a book entitled The Inventionof Racism in Classical Antiquity, contends thatsignificant examples of “proto-racism” are tobe found in Greek and Roman literature, de-spite his observations that racism did not ex-ist in its current form of biological deter-minism, nor was there systemic persecutionof any ethnic group by another. At issue isthe relationship between “proto-racism” andmodern racism. Most panoramic treatmentsof racism find it useful to mark a qualita-tive distinction between “prototypical forms”(Fredrickson 2002, p. 7)2 or “significant re-hearsals” (Winant 2001, p. 38) and the system-atic racial classification that took center stagein the past two centuries (e.g., Fredrickson2002, Goldberg 1993, Holt 2002, Smedley1993, Solomos & Back 1996, Winant 2001)—a worldview that speaks to a notion of pri-mordial ties but is a fully modern invention.3

2Fredrickson (2002) argues that modern racism has twostrands: anti-Semitism and white supremacy. Racism takesa prototypical form in the fourteenth and fifteenth cen-turies, when exclusions were rooted in religion rather thannatural science. At the point when eliminating Jews becamepreferable to converting them—based on the presumptionthat their essence makes them incapable of conversion—ethnic prejudice became racism. Fredrickson traces theemergence of this view in medieval Spain, underscoringthe historical contingency, in contrast to the primordialcharacter of racism.3Wieviorka (1995) proposes that we distinguish amongdifferent levels of racism, which he identifies as infra-racism (characterized by primarily xenophobic prejudices),

However, scholars may attribute different de-grees of significance to the precise roles ofsuch characteristics as the concern for orderand classification (Goldberg 1993); the ide-ological mediation of the contradiction be-tween Christian universalism and Enlighten-ment notions of equal rights and freedom onone hand, and exclusion and inequality onthe other (Fredrickson 2002); or slavery andabolition (Holt 2002).

Contesting the thesis that race and racismwere a by-product of, or contradictory to,modernity, recent work has underscored thecentrality of African enslaved labor to thedevelopment of the modern capitalist worldeconomy (Brodkin 2000, Holt 2002, Rigby1996, Winant 2001). Winant (2001) asserts,“modernity itself was. . .a worldwide racialproject, an evolving and flexible process ofracial formation. . . .” (p. 30). Holt describesthe ways in which the transatlantic slave trade“redefined the very conditions of possibil-ity for production and consumption, formsof labor mobilization, the shape of revolu-tion and reaction, as well as fundamental no-tions of personal and political identity” (Holt2002, p. 31). As African and African Americanlabor became the basis for the developmentof much of the Western hemisphere and anengine for the expansion of capitalism inEurope, the attendant accumulation createdthe conditions for the rise of the modernworld system. Racialized labor was enabledby other features of modernism, and race andracism were made, transformed, and remadethrough slavery and the struggle against it(Brodkin 2000, Holt 2002, Winant 2001).

There is consensus that modern racismemerged in the context of European expan-sion. In fact, Wade (1997) suggests that thephysical differences that are cues for contem-porary racial distinctions may be seen as socialconstructions built of phenotypic variations,

fragmented (disjointed) racism, political racism, and totalracism, reflecting increasingly organized and state involvedracisms.


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which correspond to the “geographic encoun-ters of Europeans in their colonial histories”(p. 15). One interesting theme is the muta-bility and historical contingency of the mean-ing of these perceptions and distinctions andhow they are organized. English, French, andDutch travelers portrayed Pacific Islandersdifferently at various points in time depend-ing on prevailing global and regional agen-das. Gailey (1996) notes that their willingnessto reduce judgment to skin color was associ-ated with the rise of capitalist slavery in WestAfrica and settlement colonization elsewhere.Hence, the skin color of Pacific Islanders isdepicted as markedly darker over 35 years ascolonialism develops (Gailey 1996). Similarly,Daniel (1996) describes a gradual process of“aryanization” of the Sinhala people duringthe eighteenth and nineteenth centuries asthey appropriated Western racial categoriesin the context of colonialism and the spreadof scientific racism. In the recent massacres inSri Lanka, conflicts were at times framed inthe discourse of race.

Along with enslavement, conquest, andcolonialism, modern racism is frequently in-tertwined with both early and later stages ofnation building and the drive for national con-solidation. Although the variety of racism de-veloped in the West had the greatest impact onthe rest of the world, racial systems are simul-taneously national and international projects.Racial projects as they appear in different partsof the world are constructed, in part, fromtools and symbols already existing within lo-cal cultural repertoires as well as from newencounters and conflicts. As states make race,they do so from beliefs, symbols, practices,and conflicts, transmitted from the past yetinterpreted in new ways.

However, in many instances scientificracism as developed in the West provided thepredominant template for both internal con-flicts and imperial projects in other parts ofthe world. In China and Japan, indigenousdiscourses of difference, reconfigured in thecontext of rising nationalism, converged withand drew inspiration from scientific racism,

which provided a framework for categoriz-ing, ranking, and in some cases subordinatinginternal and external populations (Dikotter1997, Weiner 1997). As Fredrickson put it,“The story of racism in the twentieth cen-tury is one story with several subplots ratherthan merely a collection of tales that share acommon theme” (2002, p. 104).

In the context of modern nation build-ing, racism facilitated the social construc-tion of homogeneity through exclusion, butit also functioned to consolidate elites byneutralizing class and legitimating inequal-ity. Providing a more recent example of na-tional consolidation, Sagas (2000) argues thatracism inevitably underlies the organizationof nationalism as a political movement. Inthe Dominican Republic, as local elites con-fronted the challenge posed by the success-ful Haitian revolution that overthrew slav-ery, they incorporated racial constructs toforge a national credo of “antihatianism.”This discourse, segueing easily from culturalto racial tropes and conflating race, culture,and nation, also became useful in later pe-riods to thwart challenges to the hegemonyof elites. The ruling class depicted Domini-cans (through identity cards, as well as culturalconstructions) as the descendants of Indi-ans (although Indians had been exterminatedcenturies earlier) and Spaniards, eliminatingany acknowledged link to African heritage.Similarly emphasizing racism’s role in stateconsolidation, Marx (1998) compares racemaking in the United States, South Africa,and Brazil, arguing that in the United Statesand South Africa, ethnic elites formerly atwar (the English and Boer in South Africaand the southern and northern elite in theUnited States) agreed to deploy state author-ity to unify whites within nation states by ex-cluding blacks, whereas in Brazil, segments ofwhite elites were not at war, and a rigid colorline did not develop.

Some of the most interesting approachesfurther advance our understanding of thestate by historicizing the notion of whiteness.They demonstrate that whiteness was not

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necessarily a consciousness identity as com-pared with national and religious affiliations(Fredrickson 2002), but a category that hadto be invented and reinvented. In the UnitedStates, as contemporary racialized groupswere incorporated by conquest and/or laborexploitation, the state created and maintainedracial hierarchies and racialized citizenship(see Merry 2001) through processes that wereoften contradictory and inconsistent. Accessto whiteness could be conditioned by class.For instance, in the context of creating al-liances between Anglo and Mexican elites,Mexicans in some areas were defined as white,although frequently only elites were able totake advantage of this racially privileged des-ignation (Haney Lopez 1996). For the ma-jority of Mexicans, a racializing discourseequated the use of the Spanish languagewith “disorder,” setting a pattern for per-ceptions of Caribbean Latins such as PuertoRicans (Urciuoli 1996). Native Americans,moreover, who claimed sovereign status as au-tonomous nations, were granted citizenshiponly in 1924 (Biolsi 2001, Deloria & Wilkins1999, Marable 2002).

Pem Buck’s (2001) insightful historical andethnographic study of two Kentucky coun-ties demonstrates how ideas about race de-veloped over 300 years. Poor whites, Buckobserves, were persuaded to buy into thenew dual race system through specific so-cial, economic, and legal measures: tighten-ing access to the vote, punishing intermar-riage, segregated living quarters, prohibitionof literacy to enslaved people, dispossessionof native Americans, and distribution of landto a few landless whites, as well as throughforce.

These examples demonstrate how the con-struction of race and manifestestations ofracism are historically contingent and shapedby many interrelated processes, includingconquest and state-making. Citing HannahArendt, Harvey (2003) suggests that racismcomes to the forefront of political thinkingwith the attempt to reconcile national andimperialist projects, suspending class strug-

gle by constructing an apparent alliance be-tween capital and other classes. Racism is theglue that holds this together, allowing impe-rial projects to proceed with “accumulationby dispossession” (p. 45).4 Gender and classare also implicated in these processes, produc-ing interlocking forms of oppression (Davis1981).

Contesting Racialization

Finally, the emergence of racism was notunchallenged but continually contested andreshaped by defiance and opposition (seeHanchard 1994, Winant 2001). In Japan,social Darwinism, embraced by the intel-lectuals, did not proceed without opposi-tion (Weiner 1995). The racial state in theUnited States was constantly confronted byNative Americans, Mexicans, African Ameri-cans, and Asians through wars and revolts aswell as day to day sabotage, strikes, and le-gal challenges—all of which contributed toremaking the rules of both race and racism.In fact, both Buck (2001) and Allen (2002)date the crucial turning point in elite con-struction of whiteness as a category in theUnited States to the suppression of Bacon’srebellion in 1676, when African and Euro-pean indentured servants and poor free peo-ple together initiated an unsuccessful up-rising against British colonial authorities inVirginia. Furthermore, as Aptheker (1993)and Solomos & Back (1996) argue, anticolo-nial and antiracist ideas and social move-ments have been a much more significant andinfluential trend among whites—abolitionbeing perhaps the first modern transna-tional social movement—than most historiesacknowledge.

There is now wide agreement that globalexpressions of racism underwent substantial

4Throughout this review I borrow Harvey’s (2003) phrase,“accumulation by dispossession,” though I apply it some-what differently to signal the relational aspect of racism:how the dispossession and disadvantage of the racializedproduces accumulation and advantage for others.


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reconstruction in the aftermath of World WarII. Worldwide struggles against racism, aswell as significant alterations in the interna-tional social order, brought about transforma-tions in the racial worldview. The global re-alignment that emerged from the collapse ofthe European-based colonial empires was nolonger compatible with older, cruder forms ofracism. Simultaneously, the United States en-deavored to project itself as the internationalleader in freedom and individual rights andsought to integrate the former colonies intothe capitalist system (Harvey 2003, Winant2001). Surprisingly muted in some analyses,however, is the critical role of the anticolo-nial, black liberation, and antiapartheid socialmovements in transforming the global racialdomain. By contrast, Holt (2002) and Winant(2001) specifically attribute a major role in theglobal shift or “break” in the old worldwideracial system to the challenges posed by thesemovements.

Despite some areas of difference, the cleartheme that emerges from these historical ac-counts is the fluidity, mutability, and histor-ical contingency of racism—its differences,its transformations, and its contestations. Totake account of this, a new set of conceptshas evolved to give expression to the si-multaneously dynamic and structural natureof race and racism. Concepts such as racialformation, “the sociohistorical processes bywhich racial categories are created, inhab-ited, transformed, and destroyed”; or racialprojects as “simultaneously an interpretation,representation, or explanation of racial dy-namics, and an effort to reorganize and re-distribute resources along racial lines” (Omi& Winant 2002, p. 124); or “racialization,”the social, economic, and political process oftransforming populations into races and cre-ating racial meanings (Barot & Bird 2001,Miles 1993, Omi & Winant 2002); as well assuch expressions as “making race,” all speakto the purposeful, functional, mutable, andconstantly transforming nature of race andracism.

CONTEMPORARY RACISMS

Global Conditions

We have seen that racisms are both globaland local: Although modern racism is a globalsystem significantly influenced by Westernconquest and racialized labor, racisms takelocal forms. Furthermore, though racisms ref-erence permanent and unchangeable char-acteristics, they are in a state of constanttransformation in relationship to new formsof accumulation and dispossession and thestruggles against them. Whereas the UnitedStates and South Africa now appear to bemoving toward societies characterized by “un-marked racisms” similar to those in LatinAmerica, several Latin American countriestypically characterized by “racism withoutrace” are experiencing the emergence andgrowth of organized racial consciousness andindigenous movements making demands onthe state. In addition, recent migratory pro-cesses have produced new manifestations ofracism in various areas of the world, and newsites of racialization are being created by theever expanding prison-industrial complex.

In the past five decades, two major de-velopments have interacted to bring aboutsubstantive transformations in racism and thestructuring of difference. First, as discussedabove, the national liberation struggles in thethird world, the black liberation movementin the United States, and the antiapartheidoffensive in South Africa all effectively chal-lenged white supremacy, overturning the oldracial orders, and bringing about powerfulchanges in how race is lived.

However, the recent consolidation ofglobal capitalism has resulted in strikinglynew racialized consequences. This most re-cent phase of globalization, which is drivenby the deployment of capital for productionaround the globe, has been accompanied bycontinuing crises within industrialized coun-tries. With the relocation of industrial pro-duction to non-Western countries, there isrising unemployment, as well as a precipitous

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decline in the redistributive functions of thestate, dwindling social services and privati-zation of previously publicly funded institu-tions. These processes have their counter-parts in many postcolonial countries subject tothe legacies of colonialism, international debt,and structural adjustment policies. In ad-dition, contemporary global communicationtechnologies have simultaneously created newforms of dispossession and enhanced the po-tential for organization across borders basedon common interests. Both developments—the resistance against racism and globalizedcapitalism—interact to create new forms ofrace, making it an unstable fluid order, charac-terized by old and new forms of dispossession,accumulation, and resistance.

Traditional forms of accumulation bydispossession—of land, labor, resources, andrights—continue. Along with discourses ofmulticulturalism and inclusion, there arefierce racialized struggles for land and re-sources, often linked to genocidal practices(Hinton 2002b). Struggles for land rights aremajor features of both indigenous and Afro-descended populations in Latin America. Forexample, Afro-Colombians, who have histori-cally occupied land rich in timber, gold, farm-ing potential, and biodiversity on the PacificCoast, are being violently displaced by na-tional and international concerns (Escobar2003). Displacement of indigenous peoplescontinues and in some instances has intensi-fied (Maybury-Lewis 2002). In sub-SaharanAfrica, with its vast reserves of water, tim-ber, oil, minerals, and gems, Klare (2001)predicts that conflicts that take the form ofethnic clashes and internal warfare will beincreasingly linked to international resourcewars. Among established racialized minoritiesin the metropoles, gentrification—throughwhich their neighborhoods and communitiesare appropriated by means of various legalmechanisms—can be understood as a paral-lel process of dispossession and accumula-tion (Harvey 2003, Mullings 2003, Williams1996). All these are linked to worldwide pro-cesses of privatization and “enclosure” of land,

public space, and public services integral tothe agendas of neoliberalism and structuraladjustment.

Racialized and gendered labor forces con-tinue to be central to old and new forms ofaccumulation. As much of the world’s popula-tion has become a reserve labor pool, “trans-migratory racism” has been well-documentedin western Europe, where immigrants fromthe Middle East, Asia, Africa, and theCaribbean face various forms of discrim-ination and the rise of right wing anti-immigration movements. This phenomenonis not limited to Europe, and recent schol-arship has documented new forms of racismdirectly connected to the movement of laborin other regions. In Japan, for instance, therecent influx of Asian workers is widely per-ceived as a racial problem (Weiner 1997); inHong Kong, racial discourse linking immi-grant workers to crime and economic prob-lems is directed against Philippina and In-dian servants, as well as mainland Chinese(Lilley 2001); Bolivian, Chilean, Peruvian,and Paraguayian migrants to Argentina facexenophobic campaigns as Argentina con-fronts recession and high unemployment(Grimson 2001). In this context, there are fre-quently tensions between migrant and nativeworkers.5

Women workers constitute a significantproportion of migrants (e.g., Parrenas 2001).Given the fertility decline among Europeans,articulations of racism, class, nationality, andgender may be expressed in racialized demo-graphic anxieties. Krause (2001) notes that, inItaly, the public discourses of demographers,

5The subject of immigration and labor competition withnative minorities is complex. In the United States, recentstudies demonstrate that immigration is associated with asignificant drop in labor force participation rates of na-tive born African Americans, as well as a significant wagepenalty for African Americans and previous immigrants inoccupations with an overrepresentation of minority immi-grants (see Shulman 2004). Tensions are exacerbated whenimmigrants themselves participate in victim-blaming dis-courses directed against native minority workers. Further-more, as Bowser (1995b) points out, racial scapegoating in“competitive racism” facilitates the transfer of jobs.


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which inform media and political, academic,and state-sponsored elites, deploy alarmistlanguage and metaphors in the guise of neu-tral, scientific analysis. Media commentaryequates Italian women’s low birth rates and theinflux of immigrants to the decline of civiliza-tion, linking ideologies of gender, class, race,and nationality and enabling racist projects.Similarly, in the United States, the reproduc-tive capacities of black women have been a fo-cus of concern from slavery to the contempo-rary period (Mullings 1997). It is particularlyin the context of patrolling the boundaries ofgender and the national body that some of themore extreme forms of racism have emerged,from lynching black men in the AmericanSouth to raping women in Rwanda or Bosnia.

An intriguing topic in this literature in-terrogates the domains within which racismis initiated and perpetuated. Although racismis frequently associated with working classpopulations, Cole’s (1997) ethnographic studyof racial attitudes toward immigrants fromAfrica and Asia among different classes inSicily discovers flexibility and ambivalenceamong workers: Some reject the new im-migrants, and others sympathize with them.Cole suggests that although the bourgeoisietend to adhere to universalist ideologies, theyare the greatest beneficiaries of race, class,and gender segmentation. Wodak, van Dijk,and their colleagues employ discourse anal-ysis to examine the production of racism bysymbolic elites in political, corporate, aca-demic, educational, and media arenas in Eu-rope. They conclude that elite racism enablesthe reproduction of racism throughout soci-ety by means of elite preparation of popularresentment (Wodak & van Dijk 2000).

Historical minorities in industrial coun-tries may confront both continuity and some-times intensification of racialized inequalitiesbut may also face new forms of racialization. Inthe United States, former industrial and man-ufacturing workers, such as African Americansand Puerto Ricans, experience massive exclu-sion from the formal economy. In additionthere are new configurations of bound labor:

Women are forced into new forms of semifreelabor created by welfare reform (Davis 2004,Davis et al. 2003, Morgen & Maskovsky2003); simultaneously, low-income men arewarehoused in prisons (Marable 2002). Inconditions of limited opportunities, the mili-tary becomes a viable option for employmentof racialized men and women.

Incarceration has dramatically increased inmany nations of the global North (Sudbury2004), with the disappearance of jobs and“enclosures” of land in the third world. For ex-ample, in Italy, where the overwhelming ma-jority of victims of police violence are immi-grants and Roma, “discourses on crime andwho commits it are saturated with the lan-guage of national citizenship, social class, gen-der and race” (Angel-Ajani 2002, p. 38). As aresult of cutbacks, border crossings, exploita-tion in sex and drug industries, and generalconditions of life in many former colonialcountries, the number of women incarceratedby and large for nonviolent crimes related tosurvival has precipitously increased (Sudbury2004). Furthermore, several observers suggestthat in the context of the worldwide traffick-ing in illegal substances (e.g., Robotham 2003)and the globalization of armaments trade, theU.S. led “War on Drugs” is being waged pri-marily against people of color transnationally(Harrison 2002).

Contemporary forms of global commu-nications and information technologies havetremendously fluid, complex, and sometimescontradictory implications for both racismand its contestation. For example, contempo-rary media technologies foster the global pro-liferation of U.S. racial meanings—the exportof U.S. popular media is second only to thatof their aerospace products (McLean 1995)—and introduce new forms of property for ac-cumulation by dispossession. Transmission ofracial imagery through popular media, whichhelps to promote the convergence of nationalracisms (Bowser 1995b), is more subtle, withstriking images of hipness, coolness, and su-perstars counterpoised by dangerous, ghet-toized criminals transmitted transnationally,

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from Hong Kong (Lilley 2001) to Sicily (Cole1997). Although for Solomos & Back (1996),this expresses an “oscillation between racialadulation and racism,” Baker (1998) insiststhat the bifurcation of imagery by class per-mits the circumvention of allegations of dis-crimination, promoting visions of a “colorblind society.” The appropriation, commodi-fication, and marketing of such cultural forms,styles, and even identities of racialized peo-ples have become very lucrative, promotingwhat can be termed “corporate multicultural-ism” (Marable 1995). Particularly in the caseof African American styles and cultural prod-ucts, the use of images of black urban cultureto appeal to a global youth market (Solomos& Back 1996) is not only profitable in itself,but it facilitates accumulation through pro-moting emulation of U.S. consumerism. Noris expropriation merely a matter of market-ing: The appropriation of cuisines, musicalforms, religion, cultural material, and sexual-ity is key to the construction of race and nationin Latin America (Wade 2003) as well as in theUnited States. Conversely, as discussed below,these new technologies have tremendous po-tential to bring people with common inter-ests into communication that can be used forcounter-hegemonic struggles.

Concealing Racisms

Although overt racism has diminished inmany countries, racial inequality continuesand has in some instances worsened. Per-haps the most significant new feature is thetransformation of practices and ideologies ofracism to a configuration that flourishes with-out official support of legal and civic institu-tions. Struggling to interpret these complexnew forms of racism, scholars have bestowedsuch appelations as “laissez-faire racism”(Bobo 2004, p15); postracism (Winant 2001);racism in consequence rather than by for-mal institution (Bowser 1995b); “unmarkedracisms” (Harrison 2000, p. 52); neoracismor cultural racism (Balibar 1991); and culturalfundamentalism (Stolcke 1995).

Observers agree that often coexisting withflagrant forms of racism and genocide, “un-marked racisms” have been the trend in thecolonial metropoles and former white settlersocieties. For example, Cowlishaw (2000) de-scribes the postracial view that emerged in the1970s as part of the modern repositioning ofthe Australian state, where the trend has beento expunge or conceal references to aboriginesas a race, mystifying historically constructeddifferences and thereby obscuring the reasonsfor contemporary inequality—and the needfor restitution.6 In South Africa, where the ra-tionale for apartheid was a racialized culturalessentialism, the society remains deeply strat-ified by race. The rhetoric of multiculturalismand color-blindness (Sharp 2001, Erasmus2005) is employed to suggest that the playingfield is now level, facilitating the widespreadopposition by whites to affirmative action, re-distribution, and other forms of compensatoryjustice (Fletcher 2000).

In Europe, observers have described a“new racism” that does not rely on notionsof biological inferiority but rather appropri-ates the concept of culture and the “right tobe different” to undergird a neoracism thatessentializes cultural differences as unbridge-able. There has been some difference of opin-ion about whether this is a new formulationof racism (e.g., Balibar 1991); a reversion topre–eighteenth century scientific racism inwhich cultural differences were seen as un-bridgeable (Fredrickson 2002); or as Stolcke(1995) contends, a cultural fundamentalismbased in notions of citizenship and distinctfrom traditional racism, which is grounded inbiology.

In the United States, along with egregiousforms of brutal racism, the theme of “color-blindness” has emerged as “not simply a legal

6Horne (2004, p. 180) quotes the following directive froma 1944 Australian government memorandum, written inthe context of World War II and fear of Japanese “seduc-tion” of the aborigines, “The name ‘White Australia Policy’should be dropped with advantage and without any changein policy.”


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standard. . .[but as] a particular kind of socialorder” (Brown et al. 2003, p. 7). Claiming thatthe legislative victories of the 1960s civil rightsmovement have ended racism and that we livein a color-blind society where each individ-ual is free to determine his or her destiny,proponents of color blindness have sought toundermine many of the measures won dur-ing the civil rights period designed to prohibitand correct the consequences of the 300-yearhistory of discrimination, such as affirmativeaction in education and employment, minor-ity voting districts, and federal enforcementof antidiscrimination laws. [Custred (1995) isone of the rare anthropologists to take thisposition publicly.] In this view, pervasive racialinequality is due to cultural and, in a pinch, bi-ological limitations of African Americans andLatinos, rather than to the history of con-quest, enslavement, and continuous discrim-ination. The essence of “color-blind racism”according to Bonilla-Silva (2003, p. 2) is thatit “explains racial inequality as the outcome ofnonracial dynamics.” Ironically, these frame-works incorporate the oppositional languageof the civil rights struggle, calling for individ-uals to be judged “not on the color of theirskin but on the content of their character,” aphrase made famous by Martin Luther King’sAugust 28, 1963, “I have a Dream” speech atthe historic March on Washington, DC.

Lee D. Baker’s (2001) account of the plightof Hawaiian natives, the descendants of theoriginal Polynesians who populated the is-lands before British contact and U.S. domi-nation and annexation in 1898, is illustrativeof this trend. In 1978, the U.S. state finallyfulfilled its responsibility (explicitly promisedwith statehood in 1959) to set aside 20% ofrevenues from the 1.4 million acres of Hawai-ian land to improve the conditions of Na-tive Hawaiians, who are at the bottom of theeconomic ladder. For 22 years, the Office ofHawaiian Affairs, elected by people of Hawai-ian ancestry, used the money to provide jobtraining, health care, education, and housingas well as to promote the culture of NativeHawaiians. In 2000, in the context of a cam-

paign largely funded by conservative groups,prominent among them the Campaign fora Color-Blind America, the U.S. SupremeCourt ruled that the election for the commis-sioners of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs wasnot valid because only Native Hawaiians werepermitted to vote, and “it demeans the dignityand worth of a person to be judged by ancestryinstead of by his or her merit” (cited in Baker2001, p. 70).

Although there are important variationsamong these regional and national racisms,they all emphasize cultural and individual ex-planations for inequality. This is not unlikethe Latin American model that has generally“privileged culture over race,” in which exten-sive racial discrimination coexists with the ab-sence of formal laws enforcing racism and anofficial ideology denying racism (de la Cadena2001). In Brazil, for example, the color contin-uum (rather than the one-drop model) and theideology of “racial democracy” have tradition-ally facilitated the explanation that lack of ad-vancement is due to individual failings (Twine1998), insufficient education, or cultural defi-ciences (de la Cadena 2001, Guimaraes 2001).In Colombia, both the black and indigenouspopulations were disadvantaged in differentways through the official ideology of mestizaje(racial mixture), which holds that Colombiais a mixed nation, and the popular notion ofblanqueamiento (whitening through race mix-ture), which devalues blackness (Wade 1997).

It is also true that the introduction of “cul-ture talk” (Mamdani 2002) is not new. Racismhas historically invoked both culture and bi-ology. For example, in the Netherland In-dies, race was never a matter of physiologyalone. Competence in a range of Dutch cul-tural distinctions could establish a Europeanequivalent status and secure the same protec-tions of privilege (Stoler 1997). In the UnitedStates, the interlocking paradigms of biologyand culture have been the main explanatoryframeworks for racial inequality. Despite re-cent emphases on cultural tropes, that ide-ologies of racism continue to move in andout of biology and culture is evident in the

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relatively recent publication of The Bell Curve,biologizing intelligence (see Marks 2005 for acritical review), as well as the reinvention of aculture of poverty in the underclass (Mullings1997).

Similar to earlier forms of racism, thesenew formulations seek to make the social ap-pear natural and ruthless inequality appear ascommon sense. At the same time, there areimportant distinctions. This new racial ide-ology is integrally related to the hegemonicproject of neoliberalism, which is about un-restricted open markets, flexible labor, thediminished role of government (at least forredistributive functions) (Clarke 2004), pro-ductivity as the measure of an individual’sworth and personal responsibility. It incorpo-rates older notions but speaks the languageof individual merit, freedom of choice, andcultural difference. Like neoliberalism, thesecontemporary explanatory frameworks facil-itate the denial of racism and conceal theinner workings of the social system by at-tributing contemporary inequality to indi-vidual culture or meritocracy. They simul-taneously erase the actual history of racismand the collective histories of struggle againstracism by subordinated populations. Perhapsmost invidiously—like neoliberalism, whichhas commandeered the concept of freedom—these doctines astutely appropriate thelanguage and concepts derived from contem-porary oppositional struggles, such as multi-culturalism, equal opportunity, and the rightto be different. They function not only to ra-tionalize inequality but also to delegitimizeantiracist activities.

Reproducing Racism: TheUnited States

In an era when racism is no longer sanctionedby law, how do scholars explain the continu-ing persistence of racial inequalities in wealth,employment, housing, health, and education?We turn to the United States, where racismno longer has the formal authorization of law,to examine these issues.

As a discipline, anthropology still re-mains largely on the periphery of studies ofracism. Anthropologists, with notable excep-tions, rarely use the term racism and, despitea range of scholarship relevant to this subject,tend to approach racism obliquely. However,I argue that anthropologically informed andethnographically sensitive studies can poten-tially illuminate the ways in which contem-porary institutions, policies, and structuresreproduce racial inequality without overtlytargeting its victims. There is a substantialbody of studies that have enhanced our under-standing of how race is maintained and repro-duced without formal structures, providingfresh insights into the ways wealth and poweremerge from racialized processes. These stud-ies have expanded our understanding by (a) il-luminating the global and transnational pro-cesses that impinge on the local communitiesand populations; (b) attending to how struc-tures and practices of racial inequality arecreated and reproduced, irrespective of theintentions of the actors; (c) probing the ar-ticulation among institutions, policies, andcommunities; (d) interrogating whiteness; and(e) exploring the intersections among variousdimensions of stratification.

For example, antidiscrimination laws nowprohibit the worst forms of overt discrimi-nation, but studies have demonstrated howlabor shifts in the new global economy—the departure of industry from unionized in-dustrial countries in search of low-wage la-bor as well as mass migration to the UnitedStates in search of jobs—have acceleratedrising poverty and unemployment. Contem-porary anthropological studies of the struc-tural dynamics of poverty (Susser 1996) andits racialization (Abramovitz 1996, Goode &Maskovsky 2001, Morgen & Maskovsky 2003)analyze the transnational and national pro-cesses that reproduce racial inequality. Otheranthropological studies have taken an ethno-graphic approach, documenting how thesestructural processes interact with employerattitudes (Newman 1999) or allegedly neu-tral seniority rules (Goode 1994) to further


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restrict job opportunities for low-incomeAfrican Americans or how the characteristicsof low-wage jobs themselves make it diffi-cult for Latino and African American youngpeople to move beyond the low-wage labormarket (Stack 2001). Still other studies havedemonstrated how the decline of the pub-lic sector and privatization (Mullings & Wali2001) or a hostile work environment (Baker1995) limits economic security for profes-sional African Americans.

Similarly, although residential segregationis no longer accomplished through formalmechanisms of legal exclusion, spatial segre-gation is almost as intense as it was in the past.Sanjek’s (1998) detailed description of theexclusionary practices of landlords, realtors,political policies, and white residents in main-taining segregated housing markets in a NewYork neighborhood, as well as the resistanceof African American residents provides anuanced analysis of how residential segrega-tion is reproduced and maintained (see alsoGregory 1998). In the contemporary context,struggles over neighborhoods are no longermerely struggles over segregated communi-ties but concern gentrification and enclosures;for example, affluent gated communities (Low2003) find it no longer necessary to post“white only” signs to preserve virtuallyall-white enclaves.

Still other studies underscore how variousinstitutions, practices, and representationsreinforce each other in producing racialinequality. Because the “United States is theworld’s most avid incarcerator. . .” (Sudbury2004, p. xiv) of racialized peoples, socialscientists have begun to interrogate the waysin which policies and practices in media,education, and criminal justice reinforce thecriminalization of people of color. Ferguson’s(2000) ethnographic study of a high schooldemonstrates that, although in everyday oper-ations the school is race blind, through insti-tutional practices and cultural representationthe school ultimately tracks young AfricanAmerican boys into prison. Media practicesfrequently rationalize the indiscriminate in-

carceration of black men (Page 1997b). Thewar on drugs, mass incarceration, urban com-munity destruction, and gentrification all maybe spatially linked in constructing contextsfor cumulative disadvantage (Mullings 2004).

Although coercion looms large in the his-tory of racialized people, racialization cannotbe accomplished without the manufactureof consent among the majority of Euro-Americans. Whiteness studies have emergedin the past decade and a half to mixed reviews.There is a range of whiteness studies projects:Some make claims based on the symmetryof white racialization (see Berbrier 1998 for adiscussion of this process in the formation ofwhite student unions); others focus exclusivelyon the construction of white identity. In thiscontext Page’s insight that “whiteness is nota culture, but it is a learned and behaviorallyenacted cultural assertion about the natural-ness and rightness of European. . .hegemony”bears consideration (Page 1997a, p. 561).To their credit, however, some whitenessstudies have effectively decentered the nat-uralness of whiteness by underscoring therelational and dialectical aspects of race andracism—reminding us that all dispossession isinextricably connected to accumulation andthat structured disadvantage is the inevitablefoundation for privilege. A range of studiesin several disciplines explores diverse aspectsof white advantage: whiteness as property(Harris 1993) or the cash value of whiteness—the advantages that accrue to whites as aresult of discriminatory housing markets andemployment opportunities, even withoutintergenerational transfers (Lipsitz 1998).

Anthropologists have contributed animportant ethnographic perspective, givingattention to the everyday experiences and themediating effects of history, class, gender, andlocation. Bush’s (2004) ethnographic analysisof the experiences of white students takeson the hard question of the everyday andunreflective ways in which whites participatein maintaining privilege and access. Racial-ization is embedded in all levels of the society,and Hill explores the ways in which language

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use can function for the “elevation of white-ness” (1999, p. 693) by rendering white publicspace “invisible and normative” (p. 684). Themessage of Hartigan’s (1999) study of threeDetroit communities is that whiteness is nothomogenous and that class, gender, and local-ity truly matter. Although clearly establishingthe instability, ambiguity, and specificity ofhow whiteness works, particularly with re-spect to class, Hartigan’s emphasis on localityprevents him from fully recognizing that thelocal situation he describes is highly atypical.Detroit’s local government is dominated byAfrican Americans, unlike that of most U.S.municipalities. He consequently underplaysthe significance of the larger historical andnational contexts of racism.

Most whiteness studies demonstrate howracism frequently obfuscates class interestsand undermines class solidarity among U.S.workers. Furthermore, racism can dilutecertain advantages of social class. Numerousethnographic studies of the African Americanmiddle class point to the persistence of racialinequality in various arenas (e.g., Mullings& Wali 2001, Prince 2004). However,increasingly, class interests can undermineracial solidarity among racialized minoritygroups. Ironically, it is often gentrificationand the contest for living space in congestedneighborhoods in which these disparateinterests emerge (Gregory 1998).

A significant body of ethnographic lit-erature, of which we can only give a fewexamples here, demonstrates the many waysthat gender shapes how race and class areexperienced, such as poverty and homeless-ness (Susser 1996), health (Mwaria 2001), orparticipation in interracial social movements(Morgen 2002). A number of studies now alsoestablish that although women are subject todiscrimination themselves, they may also takepart in supporting and reproducing racism.Extreme examples of this are found in whitewomen’s participation in racist movements(Ferber 2004). Race and class also conditionthe experience of sexuality (Maskovsky2002).

Nationality, race, and class also intertwinein complex ways. In the United States, whereimmigrants and refugees find themselvesinserted into a racially polarized context,class may mediate the ways in which immi-grants are racialized. Although the “modelminority” discourse seeks to use Asians asa “racial wedge” (Ong 1996, p. 66) or “aweapon deployed against” African Americans(Prashad 2000, p. 7), entire nationalitiesmay be racialized according to the dominantclass position of members of the group.Ong (1996) notes that for Asian immigrants,class attributes are racialized: Rich Chineseare “lightened,” whereas poorer and darkerCambodians may be compared to AfricanAmericans. Immigrants and visitors are alsoassessed differently according to the status oftheir national homeland in the world system,which may to some extent mediate phenotype.

Although these studies provide a founda-tion for understanding how complex variablesof inequality interact in particular instances,times, and places, the challenge remainsto build on ethnographic work in order tomove beyond understanding these forms ofinequality merely as interlocking variablesor identities, and to develop new theoreticalunderstandings of how they actually intersectand articulate. For example, in the traditionof Hall’s observation that “Race is. . .themodality through which class is ‘lived’. . .”(2002, p. 62), Brodkin argues that in theUnited States race is lived through genderand that “race is a relationship to the meansof production” (2000, p. 239).

AGAINST RACISM

The Future of Race

Over one hundred years ago, African Ameri-can sociologist W.E.B. DuBois (1903), madeprescient observation that “The problem ofthe twentieth century is the problem of thecolor line,—the relations of the darker to thelighter races of men in Asia and Africa, inAmerica and the islands of the sea” (p. 8).


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To what extent will race continue to be acentral organizing principle in defining dif-ference and rationalizing inequality in humansocieties?

Given the complexity and mutability ofrace and racism, it is not surprising that schol-ars disagree about its future. For example, al-though Winant (2001) predicts that race hasbecome a permanent feature of human exis-tence for the foreseeable future and that themost we can hope for is to reduce the degreeof stratification and injustice that accompa-nies it, others emphasize racism’s mutating,chameleonlike character (Fredrickson 2002,Gould 1996). Still others suggest that class willsupercede race in social significance (Wilson1978).

The contemporary global capitalist socialorder is characterized by competing and con-tradictory tendencies. As the redistributivefunctions of the nation state decline, and asmillions of people cross borders to competefor limited jobs and resources in contexts ofrising inequality and stratification, we havewitnessed race making of various sorts inten-sify. Conversely, we are also confronted bycorporate multiculturalism, “a global capital-ism that draws no color line, because it seekscustomers and collaborators from every race”(Fredrickson 2002, p. 148), although the realelite continue to be predominantly white andthe disfranchised and socially stigmatized arepredominantly racialized people.

The different logics of state capitalism, im-perial interests, and transnational capital maywork together or be at odds in race making.These conditions make it difficult to predictwhether racialization will continue to be use-ful or even who will be racialized. If Harvey(2003) is correct that the coupling of national-ism and imperialism cannot be accomplishedwithout resorting to racism, race making maymutate along lines of “civilizational conflicts”(Mamdani 2002). However, anthropologistshave generally been fairly clear that the fu-ture of race is not predetermined: Ultimatelythe answer does not rest primarily on worldstructures but with the agency of people.

Contemporary Antiracisms

Neoliberal racism, like neoliberalism, appearsto be a hegemonic global project but isunstable and uneven. Within these spaces,contestatory projects emerge.7

The enduring duality of race lies in thecomplicated fact that race is always simulta-neously imposed from above and experiencedfrom below; the imposition of race inevitablycreates the structural context for producingoppositional sites of resistance as well as cre-ative spaces for the articulation of subalternconsciousness, culture, and opposition. Racethus potentially becomes a space for resistanceand counter-narrative. Although some ob-servers of antiracism question the perceivedcontradictions of racially based mobiliza-tions, most contemporary interpretationsprovide concepts that illuminate racism’scomplex reality. The concept of structuralracism, “which refers to the dynamics of eco-nomic and social institutions through whichracialised groups become systematicallymarginalized or excluded. . .” (Stavenhagen1999, p. 9) belies the easy distinction between“identity politics” or interest groups andmovements directed toward transformativesocial change. Frequently, although notalways, antiracist social movements combineclass and race concerns. The notion of “racialproject” (Omi & Winant 2002) captures theefforts of social groups to reorganize andredistribute resources along racial lines. Thisunderscores the important point that racialprojects may either reproduce or disruptexisting inequalities, opening up the space todefine racial projects as resistance. Similarly,the distinction between “racial assignment”and “ethnoracial identification” allows for amore textured understanding of race (Brodkin2001, p. 368).

Globalization also creates new possibil-ities for transnational antiracist organizingthrough building coalitions and alliances,

7See Clarke (2004) for a discussion of the advantages ofviewing neoliberalism as a hegemonic project.

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networking, and implementing reform legis-lation. With the growth of an internationallabor force and the unwillingness and/or in-ability of states to address grievances throughredistributive justice, there is an increasingawareness among antiracist movements thatthey must interface globally. The diversity ofantiracist strategies and interventions derive,in part, from the local specificity of condi-tions but also from differing ideological per-spectives among antiracist activists about thecause, nature, and future of racism, the level atwhich racism is shaped, and the most effectivemeans of confronting it.

There is a wide array of coalitional ac-tivities, which address such issues as policeharassment, racist violence, social services,voting rights, racist social movements, andimmigration rights (e.g., Anthias & Lloyd2002, Bowser 1995a). These projects have uti-lized a variety of antiracist strategies, poli-cies, and practices, including individual an-tiracist interventions, public policy demands,and legislative reforms that may include spe-cific compensatory measures, e.g., affirma-tive action, restitution (for example, of landrights), or reparations. Some have been con-troversial. Scholars have questioned the valueof individual antiracist training and work-shops in the absence of more structural in-terventions (Srivastava 1996). Similarly, de-mands for compensatory measures, such asreparations, are highly debated. Despite thesuccessful campaigns for reparations on be-half of Jews and Japanese Americans, someexperts raise doubts about African and Africandiasporic populations because, by contrast,they are thought to be unusually complex(Barkan 2000). Conversely, Corlett (2003) andMarable (2002) make a compelling case forU.S. reparations to Native Americans andAfrican Americans. Recently, antiracist move-ments in Europe, drawing heavily on UnitedNations declarations and resolutions, havebeen involved in continental campaigns call-ing for the implementation of antidiscrimina-tion policies. Although limited as remedies inthemselves, such efforts have served as impor-

tant organizing tools (Lusane 2004; see alsoBanton 1996).

In the 1980s and 1990s, counter-hegemonic social movements framed in thelanguage of race and racism emerged, makingclaims on resources, forming unprecedentedtransnational alliances, and challengingracialization from above—a process we mightcall “racialization from below” (Mullings2004, p. 4). The struggles against racismin the United States and South Africa havebeen important templates for other move-ments around the world and Afro-diasporicnetworks have significantly increased theirscope, levels of activity, and transnationalprojects (e.g., Minority Rights Group 1995).The development of these organizations andmovements has been particularly striking inareas such as Latin America, where ideologiesglorifying race mixture and the lack of legalsegregation have previously inhibited suchmovements, in contrast to the racial segrega-tion of United States and South Africa, wherethere have been longstanding movements forracial equality.

On the other side of the world, Australianaborigines are also incorporating a languageof race to affirm their oppositional iden-tity (Cowlishaw 2000). Within the UnitedStates, there is a growing movement amongsome Puerto Rican and Dominican youthto reaffirm belonging to an African dias-pora, a Latin “double consciousness” (Flores2002, p. 48; see also Aparicio 2004).Popular culture plays a strategic though con-troversial role, creating and sustaining Afro-descendant identities and establishing belong-ing to a larger African diaspora. The adoptionand indigenization of popular cultural forms,such as hip-hop (Codrington 2001, Olavar-ria 2002, Wade 2002), and the incorpo-ration and exchange of various musicalforms of the diaspora provide mediumsfor diasporic communication and sometimesfor counter-hegemonic organization

Likewise, indigenous populations have be-come more successful in their attempts athemispheric organizing since the pivotal 1991


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meeting in Quito, Ecuador, attended by rep-resentatives of 120 indigenous organizationsand nations (Delgado 2002). Clearly the roleof new communications technology has beenparticularly important in the circulation of in-ternational production and mutual assistance.As a result of these activities and mobiliza-tions, in the past two decades, many Cen-tral and Latin American nations, includingBrazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Nicauragua,have passed legislation recognizing their mul-ticultural populations and, in some instances,granting constitutional rights and land titles(Wade 1997, 2002).

The 2001 United Nations World Confer-ence Against Racism was an important point atwhich these nascent movements began to con-verge (see Turner 2002). One of the guidingthemes of the conference, “global apartheid”(see Booker & Minter 2001) was notablein providing an analysis that eschewed anessentialist concept of race, utilizing a lan-guage that called for the global redistributionof resources. The Durban conference movedtoward a perspective linking subaltern popu-lations not by race but by the transnationalprocesses of racialization (Mullings 2004,p. 8).

As states increasingly incorporate the lan-guage of the opposition through formu-lations of multiculturalism (see Benavides2004), to what extent will emphasis onculture and representation overshadow de-mands for resources? Hale (2002) suggeststhat state-endorsed discourses of multicul-turalism support the politics of recognition,while sidetracking movements that simultane-ously contest representation and distribution:“[M]ulticulturalism, I contend is the mestizajediscourse for the new millennium. . .” (p. 491).Anthropologists have been ambivalent abouttheir complicated roles, and some have raisedquestions about the extent to which anthropo-logical constructions have contributed to es-sentializing populations (Briggs 2001, Ramos1998). Others suggest that subaltern popula-tions have been able to use anthropological in-formation to support their assertions of group

distinctiveness in their bids for land and re-sources and that anthropological critiques ofessentialist notions of race can also undermineethnic mobilizations (Wade 1995).

Underlying these concerns is the com-plex challenge of forging antiracist work tothe broader project of creating a more eq-uitable society across borders of race, class,gender, and national identity. It is noteworthythat, although the Brazilian antiracist move-ment accelerated during the late 1990s underthe centrist government of former PresidentFernando Henrique Cardosa, more recently,with the ruling leftist Workers Party, Afro-Brazilians have achieved major gains in recog-nition of discrimination, antidiscriminatorylegislation, and affirmative action (Gilliam2003).

Anthropology and Antiracism:An Agenda

What can we definitively say about racism?Racism is a relational concept. It is a setof practices, structures, beliefs, and repre-sentations that transforms certain forms ofperceived differences, generally regarded asindelible and unchangeable, into inequality.It works through modes of dispossession,which have included subordination, stigmati-zation, exploitation, exclusion, various formsof physical violence, and sometimes geno-cide. Racism is maintained and perpetuated byboth coercion and consent and is rationalizedthrough paradigms of both biology and cul-ture. It is, to varying degrees at specific tempo-ral and spatial points, interwoven with otherforms of inequality, particularly class, gender,sexuality, and nationality.

What must anthropologists address re-garding racism and its consequences? First,we must begin to critically scrutinize our owndiscipline. Blakey (1994, p. 280) observes that“there is a tendency within the professionof anthropology for its practitioners to denythe pervasiveness of racism in its own his-tory and to attribute racist thinking to aber-rant individuals.” Similarly Mukhopadhyay

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& Moses (1997) suggest that anthropologyneeds to confront its history of helping to“erect the ideological edifice of racism and bi-ological determinism.” Anthropology is oneof the least integrated disciplines (Gonzalez2002, Shanklin 2000), with archeology (andno doubt physical anthropology) being 99.9%Euro American (Blakey 1997). In this regard,it is important for anthropologists to under-stand and act on the difference between di-versity and affirmative action. Although bothgoals are laudable, diversity measures do notnecessarily address the historical injusticesof racism, although affirmative action doesprovide diversity.

It is also important to confront the man-ner in which race, class, and gender shape theproduction of knowledge. For example, Bolles(2001) asserts that even among some feministanthropologists, the work of black feminists isundervalued because of its antiracist agenda.We must give attention to restructuring ourtextbooks and to interrogating our approachesto pedagogy. Shanklin’s (1998) analysis of cul-tural anthropology textbooks found that only4 out of 11 textbooks dealt with racism andthat students in introductory courses may betaught about race but are generally not taughtabout racism.

All this will necessitate a radical reappro-priation of the concept of culture. The lim-itations of the Boasian approach to culture,with its many confluences, its ahistoricity, andits lack of groundedness in processes of econ-omy and power have allowed it to become es-sentialized, doing the work of race (Brodkin2001, Visweswaran 1998). We see this in theculture of poverty or underclass concepts inthe United States, in culture as irreconcilabledifference embodied in the new racisms of Eu-rope, in color blindness in the United States,as well as in the essentialism of liberal varietiesof multiculturalism. An appropriate conceptof culture must confront political economyand incorporate relations of power.

At its best, anthropology is uniquely posi-tioned to make a decisive contribution to thecritical interrogation of contemporary racism.

With its emphasis on underlying social rela-tions and the informal workings of structures,networks, and interactions that produce andreproduce inequality, anthropology has a setof theoretical perspectives and a methodolog-ical tool kit that lends itself to interrogationof new forms of structural racism and to un-masking the hidden transcripts of the processthrough which difference is transformed intoinequality. This enterprise demands long-term ethnographic and historical researchinto the complicated representations, insti-tutions, and practices through which racismis continuously reproduced, including em-ployment practices, education, housing, en-vironmental racism, and everyday practices,as well as the study of coercion in the formof police brutality and the prison-industrialcomplex and of consent and privilege in theform of whiteness. It must be grounded in acritical interpretation of race not as a qual-ity of people of color, but as an unequal re-lationship involving both accumulation anddispossession.

Anthropologists must resist using the pas-sive exonerative voice and name racism andthe forces that reproduce it. This requiresmoving beyond noting that race is sociallyconstructed to confront forthrightly the ex-tent to which structural racism is perva-sively embedded in our social system. An-thropological research has the potential touncover the systemic and dynamic nature ofracism and to identify the subterranean mech-anisms through which racial hegemony is bothperpetuated and deconstructed.

Finally, anthropologists must address theissue of public engagement and praxis. Nomatter how well we research racism, it willremain largely irrelevant unless we are ableto get our analyses out of the academy andinto public discourse. Anthropological anal-yses of antiracism have already effectivelyshaped contexts for activist initiatives such asdesegregation and other social movements. AsBaker (1998) observes, as these movementscontested racial constructions, they also re-shaped the boundaries of anthropology within


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the academy and presented a different realityto academics, permitting them to reimagine

their concepts of race. We need to boldly buildon this intellectual tradition and expand it.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to Lee D. Baker, Michael Blakey, Karen Brodkin, Dana Davis, Amy Schulz,and especially Manning Marable for taking time to provide very valuable comments on thetext. I also benefited greatly from the discussions with Sister Scholars, New York City, andthe Sunday Study Group. Andrea Queeley and Claudine Pied were very helpful in findingreferences and helping to prepare the manuscript. Finally, Santa Cruz Hughes worked diligentlyand extensively on the manuscript and deserves much of the credit for its timely completion.

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