Resolving the Dilemma of Race(ism)
I feel like I’ve been wrestling with the problem of race for almost all my life. But unlike Jacob, who in the Old Testament wrestled with an angel until he was blessed with a new name—Israel—my experience has been more like contending with a demon, a virus, a weed that chokes the growth of human relationships and communication. In a way, race is a more recent wine in an older bottle of xenophobia: a fear of difference, an aversion to what’s perceived as “other,” a hatred of strangers and foreigners. Understanding the dynamic of in-groups and out-groups is another key to unlocking the puzzle of race.
But discussing “race” without owning up to what’s really at issue—racism—falls into the practice of evasion that Barbara Fields and Karen Fields identified as racecraft. Racism, the Fields sisters argue in Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, is “the theory and practice of applying a social, civic, or legal double standard based on ancestry, and to the ideology surrounding such a double standard.” By this definition, racism is a social practice, both “an action and a rationale for action.”
When racism, an action and a justification system, transmutes into race, a supposedly objective basis for separating human beings into distinct “natural” groups defined by “inborn traits that its members share and that differentiate them from the members of other distinct groups of the same kind but of unequal rank,” such sleight-of-hand is racecraft.
The Fields sisters use this statement as an example: “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color.” To many if not most Americans, that statement seems like a self-evident truth. Skin color is a proxy for race, so segregation occurred because of race. The problem is that the racists who created and enforced segregation are magically absent from the statement That’s racecraft. Likewise, even though there were no actual witches in Salem, MA back in 1692, those who imagined that women were engaging in witchcraft due to demon possession justified hanging nineteen of them thereby.
Racecraft and witchcraft both rely on imagined ills in the bodies and minds of the despised “other.” Witchcraft relies on the belief in witches; racecraft and racism today rely on a belief in the reality of race.
How do we unweave this tangled knot of racecraft and racism? How can we resolve this ongoing dilemma?
I’ve joined forces with two leaders who are proposing solutions, Drs. Carlos Hoyt and Sheena Mason, for a conference on Sept. 24th titled “Resolving the Race(ism) Dilemma.” Dr. Hoyt is author of a work, The Arc of a Bad Idea: Understanding and Transcending Race, that I’ve found to be an invaluable source of insight and clarity not only about the predicament of race-racism-racecraft, but also about other practices and concepts (e.g., racialization and racial worldview) necessary to both define the predicament and to point to paths beyond it (such as a “nonracial identity”). Professor Mason’s “theory of racelessness” has been gaining adherents by leaps and bounds over the last year. In her recently published book by that title, she leverages the philosophy of race and the work of visionary writers in the Afro-American literary canon to devise a theory of human reality that frees our minds from the social practice and illusory matrix of racialization. My preferred term for untangling the gordian knot of socializing people into racial groups is “deracialization.”
None of us deny the prevalence of racism nor the fact of inequality; neither are we blind to the need for ways to track inequality. Neither Carlos, Sheena, nor I take lightly how many people consider “race” as part of their identities. Yet if racism and race are so closely tied—Sheena conjoins them as “race(ism)”—will it be possible to truly confront the action and rationale justifying racism without confronting the very notion and idea of race?
We think not. That’s why we invite you to read more about the conference here. You’ll find info on: the conference agenda, detailed bios, fee levels, and more. We’d also appreciate you sharing this information with other leaders interested in ways out of the quagmire of racialization—the process of socializing racial identity into populations over generations. All who attend can be assured a safe and brave space for candid and compassionate dialogue, resulting in practical frames and tools we all can use to get closer to the realization of the vision of the American founders and the dreams of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Thank you.