Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

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Praised by a wide variety of people from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Zadie Smith, Racecraft "ought to be positioned," as Bookforum put it, "at the center of any discussion of race in American life." Most people assume racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call racecraft. And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions.

Reviews

Its not just a challenge to racists, its a challenge to people like me, its a challengeto African-Americans who have accepted the fact of race and define themselvesby the concept of race.
Ta-Nehisi Coates

Fundamentally challenged some of my oldest and laziest ideas about race.
Zadie Smith

These essays are extraordinary. I love the forceful elegance with which theyhammer home that race is a monstrous fiction, racism is a monstrous crime.
Junot Daz

Demanding and intelligent.
Jennifer Vega, PopMatters

Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields have undertaken a great untangling of how the chimerical concepts of race are pervasively and continuously reinvented and reemployed in this country.
Maria Bustillos, Los Angeles Review of Books

The neologism racecraft is modelled on witchcraft It isnt that the Fieldses
regard the commitment to race as a category as an irrational superstition. On the
contrary, they are interested precisely in exploring its rationalitythe role that
beliefs about race play in structuring American societywhile at the same time
reminding us that those beliefs may be rational but theyre not true.
Walter Benn Michaels, London Review of Books

A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topicthe myth that we now live in a postracial societyin 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

[Racecraft] should be more widely read than it isno matter its current reach. In it, the authors achieve an intelligence and agility that is rare in discussions of identity, racism, and inequality.
Matthew McKnight, Nation

Liberal mores against overt racism are crumbling in the face of Trump. We must build them better The Fields sisters dive through sociology, history, and science to reach the material truth: races is a product of racism, not the other way around.
Charlie Heller, Paste

With examples ranging from the profound to the absurdincluding, for instance, an imaginary interview with W.E.B. Dubois and Emile Durkheim, as well as personal porch chats with the authors grandmotherthe Fields delve into racecrafts 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

Ostensibly antiracist politics that treat racial categories as if they were real perpetuate what they purport to resist. As this form of counterproductive antiracism becomes hegemonic in our culture, the Fieldses insights are increasingly salient.
Blake Smith, Washington Examiner

Author Bio

BARBARA J. FIELDS is Professor of History at Columbia University, author of Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground and coauthor of Free at Last. KAREN E. FIELDS, an independent scholar, holds degrees from Harvard University, Brandeis University, and the Sorbonne. She is the author of many articles and three published books: Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa, Lemon Swamp and Other Places, and a retranslation of Emile Durkheim's masterpiece, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. She has two works in progress: Bordeaux's Africa, and Race Matters in the American Academy.