Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life
“It’s not just a challenge to racists, it’s a challenge to people like me, it’s a challenge to African-Americans who have accepted the fact of race and define themselves by the concept of race.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates“Demanding and intelligent.” —Jennifer Vega,PopMatters“These essays are extraordinary. I love the forceful elegance with which they hammer home that race is a monstrous fiction, racism is a monstrous crime.”—Junot DíazKaren E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields have undertaken a great untangling of howthe chimerical concepts of race are pervasively and continuously reinvented andreemployed in this country.”—Maria Bustillos, Los Angeles Review of Books“The neologism ‘racecraft’ is modelled on ‘witchcraft’ … It isn’t that the Fieldsesregard the commitment to race as a category as an irrational superstition. On thecontrary, they are interested precisely in exploring its rationality—the role thatbeliefs about race play in structuring American society—while at the same timereminding us that those beliefs may be rational but they’re not true.”—Walter Benn Michaels,London Review of Books“A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in a novel, urgent, and compelling way. The authors dispel this myth by squarely addressing the paradox that racism is scientifically discredited but, like witchcraft before it, retains a social rationale in societies that remain highly unequal and averse to sufficiently critical engagement with their own history and traditions.”—Robin Blackburn“With examples ranging from the profound to the absurd—including, for instance, an imaginary interview with W E B Dubois and Emile Durkheim, as well as personal porch chats with the authors’ grandmother—the Fields delve into “racecraft’s” profound effect on American political, social and economic life.”—Global Journal“This is a very thoughtful book, a very urgent book.”—The Academic & The Artist Cloudcast