Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy

Zusatztext "Moon-Kie Jung's new book is a major empirical and theoretical contribution. It reconceptualizes how we understand and study racism, particularly in the United States. Jung is at once historian and social theorist, reader of evidence and interpreter of its significance. Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy is critical sociology at its very best." Informationen zum Autor Moon-Kie Jung teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaii's Interracial Labor Movement (2006) and co-editor of State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States (Stanford, 2011). Klappentext Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy upends and deepens our understanding of racism, providing a radical alternative to conservatives' and liberals' contorted renderings of the past and false promises for the future. Zusammenfassung Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy upends and deepens our understanding of racism, providing a radical alternative to conservatives' and liberals' contorted renderings of the past and false promises for the future. Inhaltsverzeichnis Contents and Abstracts 1 Introduction: Reconsidering Racism and Theory chapter abstract This introductory chapter begins with a close description and analysis of the homicide of an unarmed Black teen in Champaign, Illinois. On October 9, 2009, the police shot and killed Kiwane Carrington outside a friend's home where he was staying. The officers involved were never charged, much less convicted. The chapter attempts to defamiliarize what has become all too familiar and discern the racial common sense that prevailed in the case. Through this particular example, it raises a multitude of general questions about the workings of racism that the rest of the book takes up. 2 Restructuring a Theory of Racism chapter abstract Chapter two outlines a new theory of racism, an indispensable, if deeply fraught, concept in the social sciences. It builds on Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's structural theory of racism and William Sewell Jr.'s theory of structure. The former goes a long way toward denaturalizing commonsensical views on racism by stressing its structural character. Insightful in myriad ways, it is hindered by an unsatisfactory concept of structure. Integrating, critiquing, and extending Sewell's more cultural and historical understanding of structure, the new theory addresses a number of thorny issues, including scale, meaning, consciousness, and change. To do so, it distinguishes between dominant and subaltern positions, discursive and nondiscursive practices, and performative and reflective discourses. Foregrounding the practical over the representational, the restructured theory squares a host of seemingly contradictory theories and findings in the social-scientific study of racism. 3 The Racial Constitution of the U.S. Empire-State chapter abstract Against the universal assumption that the United States is and has been a nation-state, chapter three contends that the United States has always been an empire-state, a conceptual shift with potentially sweeping implications. Notably, the reconceptualization provides a firmer basis for understanding the United States as a racial state, requiring none of liberalism's contortions of the past and false promises for the...

Auteur
Moon-Kie Jung teaches sociology at the University of Massachusetts. He is the author of Reworking Race: The Making of Hawaii's Interracial Labor Movement (2006) and co-editor of State of White Supremacy: Racism, Governance, and the United States (Stanford, 2011).

Texte du rabat

Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy upends and deepens our understanding of racism, providing a radical alternative to conservatives' and liberals' contorted renderings of the past and false promises for the future.

Résumé
Beneath the Surface of White Supremacy upends and deepens our understanding of racism, providing a radical alternative to conservatives' and liberals' contorted renderings of the past and false promises for the future.

Contenu
Contents and Abstracts1Introduction: Reconsidering Racism and Theory chapter abstract This introductory chapter begins with a close description and analysis of the homicide of an unarmed Black teen in Champaign, Illinois. On October 9, 2009, the police shot and killed Kiwane Carrington outside a friend's home where he was staying. The officers involved were never charged, much less convicted. The chapter attempts to defamiliarize what has become all too familiar and discern the racial common sense that prevailed in the case. Through this particular example, it raises a multitude of general questions about the workings of racism that the rest of the book takes up. 2Restructuring a Theory of Racism chapter abstract Chapter two outlines a new theory of racism, an indispensable, if deeply fraught, concept in the social sciences. It builds on Eduardo Bonilla-Silva's structural theory of racism and William Sewell Jr.'s theory of structure. The former goes a long way toward denaturalizing commonsensical views on racism by stressing its structural character. Insightful in myriad ways, it is hindered by an unsatisfactory concept of structure. Integrating, critiquing, and extending Sewell's more cultural and historical understanding of structure, the new theory addresses a number of thorny issues, including scale, meaning, consciousness, and change. To do so, it distinguishes between dominant and subaltern positions, discursive and nondiscursive practices, and performative and reflective discourses. Foregrounding the practical over the representational, the restructured theory squares a host of seemingly contradictory theories and findings in the social-scientific study of racism. 3The Racial Constitution of the U.S. Empire-State chapter abstract Against the universal assumption that the United States is and has been a nation-state, chapter three contends that the United States has always been an empire-state, a conceptual shift with potentially sweeping implications. Notably, the reconceptualization provides a firmer basis for understanding the United States as a racial state, requiring none of liberalism's contortions of the past and false promises for the future. For its empirical analysis, the chapter turns to constitutional law of the long nineteenth century. It demonstrates how U.S. state formation has always entailed the racial construction of colonial spaces. Tracing the strange career of Dred Scott v. Sandford, the notorious Supreme Court case associated almost always with slavery and almost never with empire, it argues for a unified framework to analyze the different but linked histories of racial subjection, including those of Asians/Asian Americans, Blacks, Latinas/os, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders. 4The Racial Unconscious of Assimilation Theories chapter abstract Chapter four scrutinizes the current social-scientific literature on immigration and immigrants. Over the past two decades, immigration scholars have revitalized assimilation theory to study the large and growing numbers of migrants from Latin America, Asia, and the Caribbean in the United States. Neoclassical and segmented assimilation theories seek to make sense of this current wave of migrants and their offspring that differs in important ways from the last great wave at the turn of the twentieth century. They also recognize and try to overcome the conceptual shortcomings of earlier generations of assimilation theory. Yet the new theories continue to misconstrue race by assuming precisely what should be dissected: the "nation-state" and structures of inequality and domination. Shifting the focus from difference to inequality and domination, the chapter proposes a fundamental reorientation in our theoretical approach, from assimilation to the politics of national belonging. 5Symbolic Coercion and a Massacre of Filipinos chap…