Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T10:16:58.786Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Race Talk, Race, and Contemporary Racism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Arif Dirlik
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do we talk about racism, which we must, given its pervasiveness, without erasing significant changes that distinguish the present from the past and, even more important, without contributing to further racialization of the language of social and cultural analysis—and, by implication, to racist discourses? Much has changed over the last half century in the consciousness of racism and in efforts to overcome it. It is obscurantist to overlook these changes and speak of racism today as if it were the racism of earlier times. On the other hand, recent decades have witnessed the globalization of racism, the racialization of social categories, and the proliferation of race talk, which contributes to the reification of race. This article seeks to evaluate the ways in which race talk finds expression in discourses of political economy, labor migration, biogenetics, and neoliberal attacks on the idea of the social, as well as in putatively antiracist arguments in cultural and postcolonial studies that nevertheless contribute to the pervasiveness of race talk. It suggests that contemporary issues of race are best grasped within a condition of global modernity and sees in the restoration of the social a precondition for overcoming political and cultural racialization.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 123 , Issue 5: Special Topic Comparative Racialization , October 2008 , pp. 1363 - 1379
Copyright
Copyright © 2008 by The Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Consulted

Akçam, Taner. A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility. Trans. Paul Bessemer. New York: Henry Holt, 2006.Google Scholar
Anthias, Floya, and Yuval-Davis, Nira. Racialized Boundaries: Race, Nation, Gender, Colour and Class and the Anti-racist Struggle. London: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Arrighi, Giovanni. Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso, 2007.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne. “Is There a Neo-racism?” Balibar and Wallerstein 17–28.Google Scholar
Balibar, Etienne. “Racism and Nationalism.” Balibar and Wallerstein 37–67.Google Scholar
Etienne, Balibar, and Wallerstein, Immanuel. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London: Verso, 1991.Google Scholar
Bauman, Zygmunt. “The Crisis of the Human Waste Disposal Industry.” Macedo and Gounari, Globalization 36–40.Google Scholar
Black, M. L., C. A. Wise, W. Wang, and Bittles, A. H. “Combining Genetics and Population History in the Study of Ethnic Diversity in the People's Republic of China.” Human Biology 78 (2006): 277–93.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre, and Wacquant, Loïc. “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” Theory, Culture, and Society 16.1 (1999): 41–58.10.1177/026327699016001003CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ching, May-bo. “Classifying Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Late Qing Native-Place Textbooks and Gazetteers.” The Politics of Historical Production in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Ed. Hon, Tze-ki and Culp, Robert J. Leiden: Brill, 2007. 55–78.Google Scholar
Cole, Mike. “The Eclipse of the Non-European: Historical and Current Manifestations of Racialization in the US.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 29 (2006): 173–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. “Race and Criminalization: Black Americans and the Punishment Industry.” The House That Race Built. Ed. Lubiano, Wahneema. New York: Vintage, 1998. 264–79.Google Scholar
Dikotter, Frank. The Discourse of Race in Modern China. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism. Boulder: Paradigm, 2007.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. “Intimate Others: Nations and Diasporas in an Age of Globalization.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5 (2004): 491–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. “The Postmodernization of Work and Its Organization: Flexible Production, Work, and Culture.” The Postcolonial Aura: Third World Criticism in the Age of Global Capitalism. Boulder: Westview, 1997. 186–219.Google Scholar
Dominguez, Virginia R. “Exporting U.S. Concepts of Race: Are There Limits to the U.S. Model?” Social Research 65 (1998): 369–99.Google Scholar
Dominguez, Virginia R. “A Taste for ‘the Other’: Intellectual Complicity in Racializing Practices.” Current Anthropology 35 (1994): 333–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Drinnon, Richard. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1980.Google Scholar
Eze, Emmanuel. Achieving Our Humanity. New York: Routledge, 2001.Google Scholar
“Forum: Genomics and Racialization.” American Ethnologist 34 (2007): 205–51.Google Scholar
Fredrickson, George M. Racism: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2002.Google Scholar
Gilroy, Paul. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture Beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Goldberg, David Theo. “Racial Americanization.” Murji and Solomos, Racialization 87–102.Google Scholar
Grossberg, Lawrence. Bringing It All Back Home: Essays on Cultural Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. “The Hispanic Challenge.” Foreign Policy 141 (2004): 30–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jameson, Fredric. The Cultural Turn: Selected Writings on the Postmodern, 1983–1998. London: Verso, 1998.Google Scholar
Lowenthal, David. The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History. Cambridge, Eng: Cambridge UP, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macedo, Donaldo, and Gounari, Panayota. “Globalization and the Unleashing of New Racism: An Introduction.” Macedo and Gounari, Globalization 3–35.Google Scholar
Macedo, Donaldo, eds. The Globalization of Racism. Boulder: Paradigm, 2006.Google Scholar
Martinot, Steve. “The Racialized Construction of Class in the United States.” Social Justice 27.1 (2000): 43–75.Google Scholar
Peter, McLaren, and Jaramillo, Nathalia E. “Katrina and the Banshee's Wail: The Racialization of Class Exploitation.” Cultural Studies/Critical Methodologies 7 (2007): 202–21.Google Scholar
Miles, Robert, and Brown, Malcolm. Racism. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2003.Google Scholar
Milmo, Cahal. “Fury at DNA Pioneer's Theory: Africans Are Less Intelligent Than Westerners.” Independent 17 Oct. 2007. 16 Apr. 2008 <http://www.independent.co.uk>. Path: News; Science.Google Scholar
Mullings, Leith. “Race and Globalization: Racialization from Below.” Soul: TransAfrica Forum: Justice for the African World 6.2 (2004): 1–9.Google Scholar
Murji, Karim, and Solomos, John. Introduction. Murji and Solomos, Racialization 1–27.Google Scholar
Murji, Karim, eds. Racialization: Studies in Theory and Practice. Oxford, Eng.: Oxford UP, 2005.Google Scholar
Ojito, Mirta. “Best of Friends, Worlds Apart.” New York Times 5 June 2000. 16 Apr. 2008 <http://www.nyt.imes.com/library/national/race/060500ojito-cuba.html>.Google Scholar
Paget, Henry. “Between Hume and Cugoano: Race, Ethnicity and Philosophical Entrapment.” Journal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (2004): 129–48.Google Scholar
Pan, Lynn. Sons of the Yellow Emperor: The Story of Overseas Chinese. Boston: Little, 1990.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Times. 1944. Boston: Beacon, 2001.Google Scholar
Pusey, James R. China and Charles Darwin. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983.Google Scholar
Quijano, Anibal, and Wallerstein, Immanuel. “Americanity as Concept; or, The Americas in the Modern World-System.” International Social Science Journal 134 (1992): 549–57.Google Scholar
Rénique, Gerardo. “Race, Region, and Nation: Sonora's Anti-Chinese Racism and Mexico's Postrevolutionary Nationalism, 1920s–1930s.” Race and Nation in Modern Latin America. Ed. Applebaum, Nancy P., Macpherson, Anne S., and Rosemblatt, Karin Alejandra. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2003. 211–36.Google Scholar
Rodriguez-Dominguez, Victory M. “The Racialization of Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans, 1890s–1930s.” CENTRO Journal 17.1 (2005): 71–105.Google Scholar
San Juan, E. Jr. “The Multicultural Problematic in the Age of Globalized Capitalism.” Social Justice 27.1 (2000): 61–75.Google Scholar
San Juan, E. Jr. Racial Formations: Critical Transformations: The Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United States. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities, 1992.Google Scholar
Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Berkeley: U of California P, 1971.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scher, Philip W. “Copyright Heritage: Preservation, Carnival and the State in Trinidad.” Anthropological Quarterly 75 (2002): 453–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sleeboom-Faulkner, Margaret. “How to Define a Population: Cultural Politics and Population Genetics in the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China.” Biosocieties 1 (2006): 399–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stevens, Jacqueline. “Racial Meanings and Scientific Methods: Changing Policies for NIH-Sponsored Publications Reporting Human Variation.” Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 28 (2003): 1033–87.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Swain, Jon. “Africa, China's New Frontier.” TimesOnline. 10 Feb. 2008. 16 Apr. 2008 <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3319909.ece>.Google Scholar
Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii, 1835–1920. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1983.Google Scholar
Beng, Tan Chee. Chinese Overseas: Comparative Cultural Issues. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Taylor, Peter J. Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1999.Google Scholar
Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Construction of People-hood.” Balibar and Wallerstein 71–81.Google Scholar
Watson, Hilbourne. “Theorizing the Racialization of Global Politics and the Caribbean Experience.” Alternatives 26 (2001): 449–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wieviorka, Michel. The Arena of Racism. Trans. Chris Turner. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995.Google Scholar
Williams, Brackette F. “A CLASS ACT: Anthropology and the Race to Nation across Ethnic Terrain.” Annual Review of Anthropology 18 (1989): 401–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Robert J. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Zhang, Yaping. “The Origin and Evolution History of Chinese: Insight from DNA.” United Coll. Distinguished Visiting Lecture. Chinese U of Hong Kong. 20 Nov. 2007.Google Scholar