3.0

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This course examines the concept of race in historical and theoretical perspective. “Race” is, as are all concepts, historically constituted, and racism has taken a variety of distinct forms since the earliest emergence of “racial orders.” We are especially concerned in this course with the forms of racism that have characterized the United States in the period since the late 1960s, when the dismantling of formally institutionalized white supremacy and the concomitant adoption of explicitly anti-racist values at the level of the official state policy immediately preceded institutional transformations typically captured under the label of “neoliberalism,” transformations characterized by explosions in wealth and income disparity as well as the slow dismantling of the post–World War II Keynesian/service/welfare state. Why, to put the question straightforwardly, does “race” remain one of the most effective principles of political organization despite anti-racism being the official ideological position of the United States and given the return of levels of inequality not seen since the Gilded Age? If there can be no politics in a capitalist society that is not a “class politics,” then what class politics does the current emphasis on racial disparities abet? Do anti-racist politics present a challenge to the political regime that has emerged since the 1960s, or is it part and parcel of the logic of expanding inequality, the same expanding inequality that continues to maintain racial disparities? This course will begin to address these and related questions by examining the historical development of black politics in the post–civil rights era, concluding with a consideration of contemporary debates regarding race and education, incarceration, and wealth distribution/reparations.