The Threat of Race
Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism
Chapter One
Buried, Alive
I find theory exasperating. And I find a confident theory even more
exasperating.
Derek Walcott
There is an esteemed tradition of working to end racial configuration
in societies long marked by it. This tradition emerged out of resistance
movements to racial slavery, subordination, suppression, and segregation
both in colonial societies and in postcolonizing social arrangements. Commitments
to do away with race, consequently, have long been associated
with social movements to end racism. Indeed, a primary prompt to end
racial classification and configuration is tied to antiracism.
The connection between antiracial conception and antiracist commitment
suggests a complexity I am concerned here to explore. For I shall
be suggesting that there are crucial moments when the necessity and complexity
of this connection are lost sight of, and antiracism reduces primarily,
principally, or completely to antira ... read full excerpt from The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism ebook
