Seeing Race Again

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines’ research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position.

This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studiesSeeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.
 

Every academic discipline has an origin story complicit with white supremacy. Racial hierarchy and colonialism structured the very foundations of most disciplines’ research and teaching paradigms. In the early twentieth century, the academy faced rising opposition and correction, evident in the intervention of scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Carter G. Woodson, and others. By the mid-twentieth century, education itself became a center in the struggle for social justice. Scholars mounted insurgent efforts to discredit some of the most odious intellectual defenses of white supremacy in academia, but the disciplines and their keepers remained unwilling to interrogate many of the racist foundations of their fields, instead embracing a framework of racial colorblindness as their default position.

This book challenges scholars and students to see race again. Examining the racial histories and colorblindness in fields as diverse as social psychology, the law, musicology, literary studies, sociology, and gender studiesSeeing Race Again documents the profoundly contradictory role of the academy in constructing, naturalizing, and reproducing racial hierarchy. It shows how colorblindness compromises the capacity of disciplines to effectively respond to the wide set of contemporary political, economic, and social crises marking public life today.
 

Preface and Acknowledgments: Praying to the Disciplinary Gods with One Eye Open
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz

1 • Introduction
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Luke Charles Harris, Daniel Martinez HoSang, and George Lipsitz

PART ONE :
MASKS

2 • The Sounds of Silence: How Race Neutrality Preserves White Supremacy
George Lipsitz

3 • Unmasking Colorblindness in the Law: Lessons from the Formation of Critical Race Theory
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw

4 • Masking Legitimized Racism: Indigeneity, Colorblindness, and the Sociology of Race
Dwanna L. McKay

5 • On the Transportability, Malleability, and Longevity of Colorblindness: Reproducing White Supremacy in Brazil and South Africa
Marzia Milazzo

6 • How Colorblindness Flourished in the Age of Obama
Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw

PART TWO :
MOVES

7 • The Possessive Investment in Classical Music: Confronting Legacies of White Supremacy in U.S. Schools and Departments of Music
Loren Kajikawa

8 • Powerblind Intersectionality: Feminist Revanchism and Inclusion as a One-Way Street
Barbara Tomlinson

9 • Colorblind Intersectionality
Devon W. Carbado

10 • Causality, Context, and Colorblindness: Equal Educational Opportunity and the Politics of Racist Disavowal
Leah N. Gordon

11 • Affirmative Action as Equalizing Opportunity: Challenging the Myth of “Preferential Treatment”
Luke Charles Harris and Uma Narayan

PART THREE :
RESISTANCE AND TRANSFORMATION

12 • They (Color) Blinded Me with Science: Counteracting Coloniality of Knowledge in Hegemonic Psychology
Glenn Adams and Phia S. Salter

13 • Toward a New Research Agenda? Foucault, Whiteness, and Indigenous Sovereignty
Aileen Moreton-Robinson

14 • Why Black Lives Matter in the Humanities
Felice Blake

15 • Negotiating Privileged Students’ Affective Resistances: Why a Pedagogy of Emotional Engagement Is Necessary
Paula Ioanide

16 • Shifting Frames: Pedagogical Interventions in Colorblind Teaching Practice
Milton Reynolds

List of Contributors
Index