Editorial
Racism and Sociology In Racecraft a book with a title that deliberately alludes to witch-
(Racism Analysis | Yearbook 5 - 2014)
Ed. by Wulf D. Hund, Alana Lentin
240 pp., 24.90, ISBN 978-3-643-90598-7
softcover with flaps
Lit Verlag | Berlin - Mnster - London - Wien - Zrich
Contents | Wulf D. Hund: Racism in White Sociology. From Adam Smith to Max
Weber | Alana Lentin: Postracial Silences. The Othering of Race in Europe | Fe-
lix Lsing: From the Congo to Chicago. Robert E. Parks Romance with Racism
| Les Back, Maggie Tate: Telling About Racism. W.E.B. Du Bois, Stuart Hall and
Sociologys Reconstruction | Barnor Hesse: Racisms Alterity. The After-Life of
Black Sociology | Sirma Bilge: Whitening Intersectionality. Evanescence of
Race in Intersectionality Scholarship | Silvia Rodrguez Maeso, Marta Arajo:
The Politics of (Anti-)Racism. Academic Research and Policy Discourse in Eu-
rope
The papers of this yearbook discuss significant aspects of the relation between racism and
sociology. Wulf D. Hund (Universitt Hamburg) analyses the connections of classist and
racist considerations in the early course of the development of white sociological thought
and Alana Lentin (University of Western Sydney) investigates the elision, neglect or de-
nial of race in the work of scholars of migration, ethnicity and minorities. Felix Lsing
(Universitt Hamburg) inquires after the influence of Robert E. Parks involvement in the
Congo Reform Movement for his approach to the sociology of race relations. Les Back and
Maggie Tate (Goldsmiths, University of London) deal with the linkages between black
and white sociology through a discussion of the legacies of W.E.B. Du Bois and Stuart
Hall. Barnor Hesse (Northwestern University) elucidates how black sociology challenged
and modified the white concept of racism by analyses of colonialism and white domina-
tion. Sirma Bilge (Universit de Montral) shows that the mainstream adoption of inter-
sectionality serves to whiten, discipline and dilute, an initially insurgent knowledge firmly
rooted in black feminist thought and activism. Silvia Rodrguez Maeso and Marta Arajo
(Universidade de Coimbra) complexify the relationship between power and knowledge
in evidence-based policy making using this to critique assumptions about integration
and interculturality in light of the European silence about race.
craft Karen and Barbara Fields envision an imaginary conversation
between mile Durkheim and William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.1
Not least, their discussion should have been concerned with the rela-
tions of race, society and individuality. Eventually, both men were
[not only] witnesses to the terrifying racist and proto-fascist develop-
ments [...] in their respective democracies. They also described the
social function of racistly marked outsiders like Du Boiss tertium
quid and Durkheims pariah.
Instead of this phantasmagoria, a more realistic scenario may have
set up a discussion between Du Bois and Max Weber. They, after all,
met twice: in Berlin, where Du Bois studied for a time, and in St. Lou-
is, where Weber gave a lecture.2 Furthermore, they exchanged a series
of letters, in which Weber seemed to share in Du Boiss assessment
of the race question and wrote: I am absolutely convinced that the
color-line problem will be the paramount problem of the time to
come.3 With regard to the functioning of racism, a seminal discussion
also seemed possible. Du Bois wrote, that the present hegemony of
the white races [...] attempts to make the slums of white society in all
cases and under all circumstances the superior of any colored group, no
matter what its ability or culture.4 Weber defined ethnic honor as a
specific honor of the masses and illustrated this with the example of
1 Cf. Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields: Racecraft. The Soul of Inequality in Amer-
ican Life. London [et al.]: Verso 2012, pp. 225-260; for the following see ibid.,
p. 237 (witnesses), 244 f. (tertium quid, pariah).
2 Cf. Lawrence A. Scaff: Max Weber in America. Princeton [et al.]: Princeton Uni-
versity Press 2011, p. 102.
3 Max Weber to W. E. Burghardt Du Bois, 17.11.1904, quoted from Nahum D. Chan-
dler: The Possible Form of an Interlocution. W. E. B. Du Bois and Max Weber in
Correspondence, 1904-1905. In: The New Centennial Review, 6, 2006, 3, pp. 193-
239, pp. 197 f., here p. 197.
4 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: Evolution of the Race Problem. In: Proceedings of the
National Negro Conference. [New York: s.n. 1909], pp. 142-158, p. 153.
8 Editorial
the poor white trash in the United States whose social honor was Du Bois and Durkheim without coming into contact) or St. Louis 1904
dependent on the degradation of the black population.5
But if it is possible to picture conversations between Du Bois and
Durkheim or Weber, the question is what a discussion between all three
would look like. To be sure, it would not be as funny as their meeting
in this mystery novel, in which Du Bois explains the impact of racism
for the development of modern societies while Durkheim has a rumpus
with Weber on the principles of sociological analysis.6 Actually, their
imagined discussion could have happened only under the auspices of a
white supremacy, characterised by Charles W. Mills in terms of ra- simple which he looked for in les tribus australiennes because leur
cial alienation, racial exploitation and racial cultural hegemony.7 organisation est la plus primitive et la plus simple.11 Weber developed
Racial alienation was conceptualised by Du Bois in his famous met-
aphor of the two-ness of the dark body, born with a veil and civilization displays a line of development having universal signif-
endued with a double-consciousness.8 And he himself feigned a con-
versation on the race question with a white friend basing his discus-
sion on a maxim that he took for granted: Look around and see the
pageantry of the world. It belongs to white men; it is the expression of
white power; it is the product of white brains.9
Hence, the fictional panel would have featured a double distance,
illustrated (as on the front cover) by Du Bois as an observer of Durk-
heim and Weber who, on the one hand, is excluded from an equal par-
ticipation by power relations and, on the other hand, takes a sceptical
position on the arguments presented. That his doubts were valid is
demonstrated by the exotic ambience of the meeting it might have
taken place during the world exposition in Paris 1900 (attended by both
5 Cf. Max Weber: Economy and Society, ed. by Guenther Roth, Claus Wittich. Los
Angeles [et al.]: University of California Press 1978, p. 391.
6 Cf. Arthur Asa Berger: Durkheim is Dead. Sherlock Holmes is Introduced to Soci-
ological Theory. Lenham [et al.]: AltaMira Press 2003, pp. 128, 188 ff.
7 Cf. Charles W. Mills, White Supremacy as Sociopolitical System. In: White Out.
The Continuing Significance of Racism, ed. by Ashley W. Doane, Eduardo Bonil-
la-Silva. New York [et al]: Routledge 2003, pp. 35-48. Concerning the complex
connections of culture, society and race in Du Bois cf. i.a. the contributions in
Bernhard W. Bell, Emily Groszholz, James B. Stewart: W. E. B. Du Bois on Race
and Culture. Philosophy, Politics, and Poetics. New York [et al.]: Routledge 1996.
8 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk. Essays and Sketches. Chicago:
McClurg & Co 1903, p. 3; see Thomas C. Holt: The Political Uses of Alienation.
W.E.B. Du Bois on Politics, Race, and Culture, 1903-1940. In: American Quarter-
ly, 42, 1990, 2, pp. 301-323.
9 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Superior Race. An Essay. In: The Smart Set. A Mag-
azine of Cleverness, 70, 1923, 4, pp. 55-60, largely included in and quoted after
id.: The White World, in id.: Dusk of Dawn. An Essay Toward an Autobiography
of a Race Concept, ed. by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., with an introduction by Kwame
Anthony Appiah. Oxford [et al.]: Oxford University Press 2007, pp. 68-87, p. 76.
Editorial 9
(whose scientific fringe events afforded Du Bois and Weber the oppor-
tunity for a short dialogue). Both exhibitions celebrated the supremacy
of Western culture and lifestyle, emphasized by displays of natives.10
A comparable exoticism can be found in the sociological deliberations
of the two European colloquists as Primitivism in Durkheim and as
Orientalism in Weber.
Durkheim was confident in studying the elementary form of reli-
gious behaviour on the basis of la religion la plus primitive et la plus
a global contrast between Orient and Occident, assumed that Western
icance and value and wondered why in other parts of the world the
scientific, the artistic, the political, or the economic development [did
not] enter upon that path of rationalization which is peculiar to the
Occident.12
In this context, Du Bois could only have participated in the im-
agined conversation as an outsider just as he was treated in US-soci-
ology, where he found himself relegated to the periphery of the pro-
10 Cf. Dana S. Hale: Races on Display. French Representations of Colonized Peoples,
1886-1940. Bloomington [et al.]: Indiana University Press 2008, pp. 32 ff. (Paris)
and Robert W. Rydell: All the Worlds a Fair. Visions of Empire at American In-
ternational Expositions, 1876-1916. Chicago [et al.]: University of Chicago Press
1984, pp. 154 ff. (St. Louis). The cover of this volume incorporates the racist set-
ting of the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, compiling photographs of two groups of
Inuits (left) and Igorot people (right) from the Philippines (back then a newly an-
nexed colony cf. Paul A. Kramer: The Blood of Government. Race, Empire, the
United States, & the Philippines. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
2006, pp. 229 ff. and passim). Between them, the Pawnee Black Horse refers
to the representation of Native Americans at the St. Louis World Fair, displaying
(as Fabrice Delsahut: Races on Exibit at the 1904 St. Louis Anthropology Days.
In: The Invention of Race. Scientific and Popular Representations, ed. by Nico-
las Bancel, Thomas David, Dominic Thomas. New York [et al.]: Routledge 2014,
pp. 247-258, p. 251 has recently described it again), the perfidious combination
of racism and the idea of progress: The exhibit an exposition in which various
tribes were spread out around a hill was organized in such a way that visitors
first saw the most primitive tribes, and as they made their way up and around the
hill, the groups became increasingly civilized. The whole setting is located in the
Smithonian Hall of the exhibition, placing a mirrored collage of Durkheim and
Weber in the foreground and Du Bois as a challenging observer on the folded flap.
11 mile Durkheim: Les formes lmentaires de la vie religieuse. Le systme tot-
mique en Australie. Paris: Alcan 1912, p. 135 f.
12 Max Weber: The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Transl. by Talcott
Parsons. London: Allen & Unwin 1930, pp. 13, 25.
10 Editorial
fession.13 But at the same time, his position as an observed observer
would have allowed him to uncover the domination structure of the
discursive setting and to detect the legitimising undertones of the de-
bate. For him, Western civilization was built on a colonial and racist
foundation: That dark and vast sea of human labor in China and India,
the South Seas and all Africa; in the West Indies and Central America
and in the United States that great majority of mankind, on whose
bent and broken backs rest today the founding stones of modern in-
dustry shares a common destiny; it is despised and rejected by race
and color; paid a wage below the level of decent living; driven, beat-
en, prisoned and enslaved in all but name; spawning the worlds raw
material and luxury cotton, wool, coffee, tea, cocoa, palm oil, fibres,
spices, rubber, silks, lumber, copper, gold, diamonds, leather how
shall we end the list and where? All these are gathered up at prices low-
est of the low, manufactured, transformed and transposed at fabulous
gain; and the resultant wealth is distributed and displayed and made the
basis of world power and universal dominion and armed arrogance in
London and Paris, Berlin and Rome, New York and Rio de Janeiro.14
Instead of analysing this correlation, early sociology legitimised
it. Subsequently, many of its representatives addressed racism main-
ly as a system of prejudices and ignored or downplayed its structural
impact and, eventually, participated in constructing the color-blind
Trojan horse15 of postracialism. In an outline of the genealogy of the
sociology of race in the United States, Howard Winant distinguishes
a biologistic paradigm based on social-Darwinism, a pragmatist and all manner of barbarians who have come from their hiding places
paradigm integrating the anthropological cultural turn, a structur-
al-functionalist paradigm responding to the crisis of colonialism and
the civil rights movement, and, subsequently, the contrast of a social
movement paradigm criticising the deficiencies of anti-racist reforms
13 John Bracey, August Meier, Elliott Rudwick: The Black Sociologists. The First
Half Century. In: The Death of White Sociology. Essays on Race and Culture, ed.
by Joyce A. Ladner. Baltimore: Black Classic Press 1998 (1st ed. 1973), pp. 3-22,
p. 9.
14 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: Black Reconstruction. An Essay Toward a History of
the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in
America, 1860-1880. New York: Hartcourt, Brace & Co. 1935, p. 15 f.
15 Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Victor Ray: Its Real! Racism, Color Blindness, Obama,
and the Urgent Need for Social Movement Politics. In: Crisis, Politics, and Critical
Sociology, ed. by Graham Cassano, Richard A. Dello Buono. Leiden: Brill 2010,
p. 47-58, p. 47; see also Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Gianpaolo Baiocchi: Anything but
Racism. How Sociologists Limit the Significance of Racism. In: Race and Society,
4, 2001, pp. 117-131.
Editorial 11
and a neoconservative paradigm professing that society was enter-
ing a postracial era of color blindness and meritocracy.16
That this cannot be the last word is demonstrated by the arrange-
ment of the unsociable sociability of Du Bois and Weber (attended by
Durkheim as a stone guest). To begin with, it elucidates the flexibility
of racism. Du Bois might have directly witnessed Webers anti-Slavism
when visiting a session of the Verein fr Sozialpolitik during his first
stay in Germany. In a discussion of the problems of agricultural labour
in the German East, Weber was alarmed by the invasion of eastern no-
madic swarms and stated that the importation of Poles as seasonal
workers would be far more dangerous than of Chinese because
our German labourers will not assimilate with coolies.17 Although this
concerned a rough intra-white racism, Du Bois could make links to
the US-American race question in St. Louis where Weber extensively
tutored his audience on Germanys old Kultur and its foreign threat by
Polish migrants. In the course of this, he did not rule out that the United
States could experience a similar phenomenon. Here an increasing mi-
gration of racially valuable parts of the population from the country to
the cities occurred, and the expansive power of the Anglo-Saxon-Ger-
manic settlement would be on the wane, whereas the number of
negro farms increases and, furthermore, the enormous immigration
of elements without Kultur from eastern Europe grows.18
Later on, during the war, Weber repeatedly declared that Germany
is fighting its very life against an army in which are negroes, ghurkas
all over the world.19 This demonstrates that for him racism was not
inextricably bound to races. A study of Webers Occidentalism would
16 Howard Winant: The Dark Side of the Force. One Hundred Years of the Sociology
of Race. In: Sociology in America. A History, ed. by Craig Calhoun. Chicago [et
al.]: University of Chicago Press 2007, pp. 535-571, p. 566 and passim.
17 Max Weber: Die lndliche Arbeitsverfassung. [Referat]. In: id., Landarbeiterfrage,
Nationalstaat und Volkswirtschaftspolitik. Schriften und Reden 1892-1899, ed.
by Wolfgang J. Mommsen, Rita Aldenhoff (MWG 1/4). Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck
1993, pp. 165-198, p. 183 (our translation); cf. Joachim Radkau: Max Weber. A Bi-
ography. Cambridge [et al.]: Polity Press 2009, p. 87 and Andrew Zimmerman: Al-
abama in Africa. Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization
of the New South. Princeton [et al.]: Princeton University Press 2010, pp. 104 f.
18 Peter Gosh: Max Weber on The Rural Community. A Critical Edition of the Eng-
lish Text. In: History of European Ideas, 31, 2005, pp. 327-366, p. 345.
19 Max Weber: Parliament and Government in Germany Under a New Political Order.
In: id.: Political Writings , ed. by Peter Lassman, Ronald Speirs. Cambridge [et al.]:
Cambridge University Press 1994, pp. 130-271, p. 131.
12 Editorial
have allowed Du Bois to reconsider his notion of racism which was
strongly linked to the concept of race. Admittedly, his analysis of Ger-
man fascism and antisemitism parallelised the fate of the Jews in Eu-
rope and the Blacks in America. Even before he visited Germany a
second time in 1936 he registered that here comes an exhibition of
race hatred in one of the leading countries of European civilization. It
gives the same manifestations of sex jealousy, murder and theft, public
insult, discrimination in education and social ostracism with which we
Negroes are so familiar in America that they almost seem normal. If
this thing could happen to Negroes, America could easily excuse and
explain it; but if it can happen to German Jews, there is no reason in
the world why under certain circumstances it should not happen to the
Irish, to the Latins, to the Slavs, and indeed, to any group of human
beings over whom a temporary or imagined majority holds sway and
power.20 But his theoretical reflections did not go beyond this point
and he did not consider the question of commonalities between the
oppression of the so-called coloured races and the persecution of the
Jews (although the first inquiry under the heading Racism dealt with
both dimensions).21 Du Bois paid even less attention to deliberations
which have been the subject of subsequent reflections, noticing that
[a] racism which does not have the pseudo-biological concept of race
as its main driving force has always existed [...]. Its prototype is an-
ti-Semitism, which is already a culturalist racism.22 of the human genome project onto a system of classifying people that
Eventually, Webers offer to rank Du Bois as a member of the often
nine-tenth white Negro upper class among the Herrenrasse (master
race) and not to class him as one of the semi-apes one encounters on
the plantations and in the Negro huts of the Cotton Belt23 shows, that
the deconstruction of race does not dissolve the social discrimination
it legitimises or the social structures that originate in a history of racial
suppression and racist marginalization. This is already obvious in the
epistemic apartheid administered by considerable parts of sociology
20 Quoted from Harold Brackman: A Calamity Almost Beyond Comprehension.
Nazi Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust in the Thought of W. E. B. Du Bois. In:
American Jewish History, 88, 2000, 1, pp. 53-93, p. 68.
21 Cf. Magnus Hirschfeld: Racism. London: Victor Gollancz 1938.
22 tienne Balibar, Immanuel Wallerstein: Race, Nation, Class. Ambiguous Identities.
London [et al.]: Verso 1991, p. 23 f.
23 Marianne Weber: Max Weber: A Biography. With a new Introduction by Guenther
Roth, ed. by Harry Zohn. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers 1988, p. 296 and
295 (Herrenrasse).
Editorial 13
to Du Boiss analyses of race relations in the USA.24 But it also be-
comes apparent in current debates on post racialism and whiteness.
The idea of the post racial haunts Europes attempt to re-imagine
itself as an ethnically integrated and racially harmonious, and culturally
tolerant space, and academic and public policy increasingly positions
itself within this post-racial context, writes Salman Sayyid.25 The
observation that the idea of the postracial is an attractive one is keenly
made, yet it may also seem curious in that mainstream social sciences
have ignored race and racism rather more than they have explored it.
It appears that, in the main, sociology and its allied disciplines have
contented themselves with the condemnation of racism in lieu of an
analysis thereof. And this in itself should be seen as of a piece with
the contemporary embrace of the idea of the postracial. Although a
celebratory variant of the postracial argument that the overt, legalised,
unapologetic racism of specific regimes such as Jim Crow or Apartheid
has been overcome may be seen as laudable (if nave), the idea of
postracialism has come to stand for something rather less innocuous.
In essence, the postracial idea is a mechanism for the refusal of the
discussion of the function of race: what race does rather than what race
is.
As Karen and Barbara Fields argue in the aforementioned Race-
craft, there is no basis in sophisticated research for mapping the results
is steeped in folk thought. Yet modern genetics often makes recourse
to the unfounded precepts of nineteenth century bio-racism. This
is despite the fact that, for geneticists, populations are not held to
be visible to the naked eye, or knowable in advance of disciplined
investigation26 as they are in race science. Given this, it appears
undeniable that what race does is to work with and for racism, and
given that racism is far from a thing of the past, in science, the labour
market, education, health, and a host of other domains, the idea of the
postracial is at best a premature one. Yet, the fact that it has gained
such acceptance can only suggest that what we are deemed to be post
24 Cf. Reiland Rabaka: Against Epistemic Apartheid. W. E. B. Du Bois and the Disci-
plinary Decadence of Sociology. Plymouth: Lexington 2010.
25 Salman Sayyid: Do Postracials Dream of White Sheep? Working paper, TOLERACE
project, 2010 [http://www.ces.uc.pt/projectos/tolerace/media/Working%20Paper%
201/6%20CERS%20-%20Do%20Post-Racials%20Dream%20of%20White%20
Sheep.pdf].
26 Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields: Racecraft, op. cit., p. 5.
14 Editorial
is not race per se, but racism. In other words, in just a few decades
following the generalised, if at times begrudging, acceptance of the
idea that racism is unjust, we have hit racism fatigue. The result of
this is that while an often unproblematised acceptance of the precepts
of bio-race persist, we are less willing to talk about the societal,
psychic, economic and political effects of enduring racism.
If we are arguing in this volume that sociologys relationship to
race and racism has been one of unproblematised acceptance followed
by swift and unreflexive denial, the move to the embrace of a postra-
cial stance should be seen as consistent with these steps. Far beyond
the narrow confines of ethnic and racial studies, the postracialism of
sociology in general is defined by its silence on matters of racism
rather than by a grappling with what a purported postracial turn might
mean. Contemporary scholarship attempting to deal with issues such
as migration, integration, diversity and the like, makes references to
examples such as the election of a Black President or the growth in
Eastern to Western European (i.e. white) immigration as proof of the
diminishing salience of race and racism. However, the question of why
it appears necessary to discuss issues that the authors collected in this
volume would see as racial and/or racist as non- or postracial is not
deemed of importance.
It appears that, in the current moment, sociologys embrace of a
need to get beyond race in the absence of an analysis of why this is so
or how it may be possible, is itself consistent with racial logics. This is
because race is construed in the division of populations and their man-
agement on this basis but it is perpetuated, racistly, through the denial
of its significance in the lives of those it affects. This was the case in
the past when race was unproblematically pronounced but the effects
of racist discrimination deemed insignificant to those of purported
lower intellectual capacity whose natural place was down the racial
pecking order. Today, it is dismissed through the denial of its continued
significance despite official condemnation and outlaw.
A look at what race does, which surely should be the focus of soci-
ologists interested in the effects of a range of particular phenomena on
society rather than in their observation in isolation, sheds light on the
current rush to deny or diminish its significance. Nineteenth century
racist ideas that cemented a biologistic account of the purported dif-
ferences between so-called races, a time at which the idea of eugenics
Editorial 15
and its genocidal possibilities were widely accepted as reasonable in
the West, have come to dominate interpretations of race and racism.
But what this denies is that racisms, for they are myriad, have always
been as much cultural as biological, and for a longer time. As one of us
argues elsewhere, race theory involves the transformation of social,
religious and cultural patterns of discrimination [...] into a scientific
taxonomy so it follows that non-culturalist race theories do not ex-
ist.27
Confining understandings of race to its biological formulation
means ultimately being unable to contend with the persistence of rac-
ism because the full picture of the various contexts in which it devel-
ops is obscured. As some of the papers gathered here discuss, one of
the crucial contexts ignored or at least not fully heeded is the colonial
one in which many of the performative functions of race concentra-
tion camps, extermination, and other tools of population management
were elaborated before being imported back into Europe in the mid
twentieth century. Because we have not yet emerged from the era of
modern racism to which race as a technology for the division and con-
trol of diverse populations along pseudo-biological lines is key, the ne-
glect of these colonial histories is particularly alarming. The continui-
ties between what Anibal Quijano calls the colonial matrix of power28
and the populations still yoked by the deprivations wrought by racism
are not coincidental. The apparent rise above race of a Barack Obama
should not bely the coexistence of an entrenched system of racial dif-
ferentiation and hierarchisation that is at least in part facilitated by the
acceptance that race is surmountable if only one tries hard enough.
Indeed, as several commentators have pointed out, notably David
Theo Goldberg,29 the overlap between racism and dominant neoliberal
ideologies is palpable. As one of us has argued,30 central to the postra-
cial argument is a post- or anti-political one that elevates the individual
over her circumstances, negating the ways in which the centring of
27 Wulf D. Hund: It Must Come From Europe. The Racisms of Immanuel Kant. In:
Racisms Made in Germany, ed. by id., Christian Koller, Moshe Zimmerman. Berlin
[et al.]: Lit 2011, pp. 69-98, pp. 78, 77.
28 Cf. Anibal Quijano: Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America. In:
Nepantla. Views from South, 1, 2000, 3, pp. 533-580.
29 Cf. David Theo Goldberg: The Threat of Race. Reflections on Racial Neoliberal-
ism. Malden [et al.]: Wiley-Blackwell 2009.
30 Alana Lentin: Post-Race, Post-Politics. The Paradoxical Rise of Culture after
Multiculturalism. In: Ethnic and Racial Studies, 37, 2014, 8, pp. 1268-1285.
16 Editorial
individual agency is itself integral to the perpetuation of racial disad-
vantage: not only is racism no longer an acceptable explanation for
persistent inequality, the racialised individual is now held personally
responsible for the incapacity to shake it off, reducing racism to the
hurt feelings evoked by circumstantial bad luck rather than the sys-
temic injustice born of systems designed to ensure the maintenance of
white supremacy despite formal commitments to diversity, replacing
the erstwhile multiculturalism.
Such arguments are central to the construction of the postracial po-
sition. Far from overcoming racial legacies, the denial of the salience
of racism that the postracial essentially promotes is consistent with the
impetus, from the outset, to externalise racism. The failure to find a
language to analyse the effects of race before the word racism appeared
in the first half of the twentieth century is testimony to the fact that race
and racism took a long time to be considered interesting or problemat-
ic. For this, sociology, concerned in its early years with the colonially
enabled comparison of developed and primitive societies, is culpa-
ble.31 It continues to be so in its failure, for the most part, not only to
grapple with its own colonialist and racist legacies, but also to give the
place of racism its due as central rather than marginal to key issues of
sociological concern.
In March 2014, an event on the topic Why Isnt My Professor
Black? was organised at University College London. The discussion
departed from the statistic that only 0.4% of the 85,000 professors in
UK higher education are African-Caribbean despite representing 3.3%
of the population and 5.9% of the student population.32 Recalling the
epistemic apartheid that divided Du Boiss long career from the soci-
ological tradition at large that we mentioned above, it is interesting to
consider what Du Boiss reflections on race can bring to bear on such
contemporary discussions. Race is essentially in the sense of intrin-
sically and deliberately ambiguous. Doing the work of racism, race
is purposefully constructed to appear both definitive and ambivalent.
The result of this is ultimately to obscure racism. In other words, in its
most adamant form, for example within explicitly racist systems such
as Apartheid or Jim Crow, the definitiveness and purported solidity of
31 Cf. R.W. Connell: Why is Classical Theory Classical? In: American Journal of
Sociology 102, 1997, 6, pp. 1511-1557.
32 Nathan E. Richards: Absent From the Academy [http://vimeo.com/76725812].
Editorial 17
racial categories could be argued to have nothing to do with racism as
discrimination, for to argue this would be to dispute the naturalness of
races themselves.
Races, from this view, are mere descriptors. The consequences
of this belief vary from the right to discriminate, enslave and annihi-
late, to the right to live apart, separate but equal, as the euphemism
goes. In contrast, under the denialism of post-race, the ambivalence of
racism is contorted to imply its material insignificance, or in another
variant, its inconsequential ubiquity. The unthinking way in which the
trace of race endures discursively, yet stripped of historicized meaning,
allows racism to be referenced in the absence of what Miri Song terms
its historically specific origins, severity and power.33 Thus, there is
a growing tendency towards the universalization of racism, seen most
prominently in the rise in mainstream acceptability of the notion, an-
ti-white racism.
From this perspective, the UCL conference could be apprehend-
ed, postracially, as much ado about nothing. Racial deniability as a
prominent feature of racism under the present-day white supremacism
of postracial societies observes the stark statistics from British aca-
demia with a raised eyebrow. Surely, if the argument is that race is but
a floating signifier,34 the lack of black professors can be due only to
their failings, rather than to anything readable systemically as racism?
In collectivising around the identity black academics, postracialists
would accuse the organisers of Why Isnt My Professor Black? of
reinvigorating old racial categories and of failing to move into the
light of a new era of individualism.
Du Bois was at pains, as indeed was Stuart Hall, as Les Back and
Maggie Tate discuss in their analysis of the connections between the
two in this volume, to separate the work of race from the intrinsic iden-
tity of those (pre)determined by it. He would, it is fair to conjecture,
be alarmed by the ways in which postracialism partially rests upon a
subversion of some of the race critical ideas his work in many ways
precipitated. Du Bois to be sure, insisted on social explanations of ap-
parent racial difference rather than on those which prominently argued
33 Miri Song: Challenging a Culture of Racial Equivalence. In: British Journal of
Sociology, 65, 2014, 1, pp. 107-129, p. 107.
34 Stuart Hall: Race, the Floating Signifier. Documentary, directed by Sut Jhally. Me-
dia Education Foundation 1997 [cf. http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/407/
transcript_407.pdf].
18
for an inner essence of black people.35 But his societally rooted ob-
servations, in which the generally accepted thesis on the constructivist
nature of race is based, did not mean that he thought race was fictitious.
Paradoxically, the acceptance of some of the most basic elements of
sociological reasoning social constructivism has led in some quar-
ters to the dismissal of the effects of phenomena such as race or gender
as such, particularly under neoliberalism.
From a race critical viewpoint, the social origins of racial discrim-
ination, make race more rather than less real, for operations of so-
cial power are required for the maintenance of the demarcations and
exclusions which racism entails. Du Bois was clear on this when, in
Dusk of Dawn, he invoked the badge of race. This badge is the one
that all those who have suffered a long disaster and have one long
memory are forced to wear.36 It is a result of the common memory
of those who have shared experiences or who carry forth memories
of discrimination and insult. Those experiences and memories, for
Du Bois, were of slavery, but racism in all contexts engenders similar
kinships which Du Bois insists are not biological but social: the
physical bond is least and the badge of color relatively unimportant
save as a badge. So, black academics cannot but recognise in each
other the shared experience of exclusion and denial of position; it does
not follow from this that there is something intrinsic to their badge of
colour that compels them to unite and act. What compels them is the
discrimination and insult: the racism.
The recognition of this (we believe) uncontroversial reading of
matters is nonetheless unachieved, and due to the growing acceptance
of postracialism which, for the academy enables the continued deni-
al of position and voice to racialised scholars, seems still a far away
goal. There can be no overturning of the present marginalised status of
the discussion of race and racism in sociology (and other disciplines)
without, at once, attention being drawn to black scholarship and black
scholars. This entails more than writing Du Bois (back) into the can-
non, although the work done in part in this volume to reinvigorate dis-
cussions of his significance for sociology is vital. It also means being
alive to the ways in which the discipline continues to marginalise race
35 Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields: Racecraft, op. cit., p. 237.
36 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: The Concept of Race. In: id., Dusk of Dawn, op. cit.,
pp. 49-67, p. 59; for the following two quotes see ibid. (italics added).
Editorial Editorial 19
and racism and scholars of race and racism from the cannon through
a variety of means. We hope to contribute in some small way to an
analysis of how sociology itself has participated in elevating racism
throughout its existence, from the colonially-steeped founding fa-
thers to the postracialism of present day migration and ethnicity stud-
ies. The aim, as sociologists, is to contribute to reorienting the disci-
pline, not to sabotaging it. As is remarked by the Fieldses, Du Boiss
outsider status carried with it an ability to stand on the edge of that
very world to which he could not fully belong and, from that vantage
point, to see beyond its seemingly self-evident givens.37 Our interest
in racism, marginalised for so long from the central concerns of studies
of social processes, it is hoped, will in some way have a similar effect.
Against this backdrop, the following papers discuss particular as-
pects of the relations between racism and sociology. In the introductory
section Wulf D. Hund (Universitt Hamburg) analyses the connections
of classist and racist considerations in the course of the development of
sociological thought until the establishment of academic sociology and
Alana Lentin (University of Western Sydney) investigates the elision,
neglect or denial of race in the work of scholars of migration, ethnicity
and minorities. Subsequently, Felix Lsing (Universitt Hamburg) in-
quires after the influence of Robert E. Parks involvement in the Congo
Reform Movement for his approach to the sociology of race relations
and Les Back and Maggie Tate (Goldsmiths, University of London)
deal with the linkages between black and white sociology through a
discussion of the legacies of W.E.B. Du Bois and Stuart Hall. Follow-
ing this, Barnor Hesse (Northwestern University) argues that the so-
ciological turn against racism is accompanied by a marginalisation of
black sociology and Sirma Bilge (Universit de Montral) shows that
the mainstream adoption of intersectionality serves to whiten, disci-
pline and dilute, an initially insurgent knowledge firmly rooted in black
feminist thought and activism. Finally, Silvia Rodrguez Maeso and
Marta Arajo (Universidade de Coimbra) complexify the relationship
between power and knowledge in evidence-based policy making us-
ing this to critique assumptions about integration and interculturali-
ty in light of the European silence about race.
(Wulf D. Hund, Alana Lentin)
37 Karen E. Fields, Barbara J. Fields: Racecraft, op. cit., p. 243.