Race Theory

Race is not an objective truth; it is a subjective concept. It is a fiction–a social construction–that has been turned into a material reality by behaviour, legislation, economics, and politics. As it is not biologically inherent, we should consider the work “race” does and why we continue to insist upon it. Below you will find a range of texts exploring the construction of race and its functions as well as the construction and elements of white privilege.

Theorizing (The Functions Of) Race

“1770s-1830s: Slavery and the invention of race.” American Anthropological Association and NBC News, 27 May 2008.

Balibar, Etienne and Wallerstein, Immanuel. Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities. London/New York: Verso, 1991.

Barker, Martin. The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe. London: Junction Books, 1981.

Buck-Morss, Susan. Hegel, Haiti and Universal History. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009.

Carter, Bob and Virdee, Satnam. “Racism and the Sociological Imagination.” British Journal of Sociology, 59.4 (December 2008): 607-836.

Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Message. Penguin Books: 2024.

Crenshaw, Kimberlé. (ed). Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement. The New Press: 1996.

Etherington, Norman. “Natal's Black Rape Scare of the 1870s”. Journal of South African Studies, 15.1 (1988): 36-53.

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008 (c. 1952).

Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press, 2004 (c. 1961).

Feagin, Joe. Systemic Racism: A Theory of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Fredrickson, George M. Racism: A Short History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London/New York: Verso, 1993.

Gilroy, Paul. After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? Milton Park: Routledge, 2004.

Goldberg, David T. The Racial State. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002.

Gupta, Suman and Virdee, Satnam. Race and Crisis. London: Routledge, 2020.

Hall, Catherine. Civilising Subjects: Metropole and Colony in the English Imagination 1830-1867. Chicago: University Press, 2002.

Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance”. In UNESCO (ed). Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. UNESCO: Paris, 1980.

Hall, Stuart. “Race, the Floating Signifier”; Lecture at Goldsmiths College. 1997. Transcript available via Media Education Foundation.

Hall, Stuart. “Racism and Reaction.” In Stuart Hall: Selected Political Writings: The Great Moving Right Show and Other Essays. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. Pp. 142-157.

Haraway, Donna. “Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin”. Environmental Humanities, 6.1 (2015): 159-165.

hooks, bell and Hall, Stuart. Uncut Funk: A Contemplative Dialogue. London: Routledge, 2017.

Hudson, Nicholas. “From ‘Nation’ to ‘Race’: The Origin of Racial Classification in Eighteenth-Century Thought”. Eighteenth-Century Studies, 29.3 (Spring 1996): 247-264.

Jackson, Zakiyyah Iman. Becoming Human: Matter and Meaning in an Antiblack World. New York: New York University Press, 2020.

Mbembe, Achilles. Critique of Black Reason. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

Mbembe, Achilles. Necropolitics. Durham: Duke University Press, 2019.

Mcclintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New York/London: Routledge, 1995.

Alternate link via Internet Archive.

Miles, Robert. Racism after ‘Race Relations’. London/ New York: Routledge, 1993.

Alternate link via Internet Archive.

Moore, Jason W. "The Rise of Cheap Nature" in Anthropocene or Capitalocene? Nature, History, and the Crisis of Capitalism. Ed. Jason W. Moore. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2016. Pp. 78-115.

Rowe, Michael. The Racialisation of Disorder in 20th Century Britain. Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998.

Sivanandan, A. Catching History on the Wing: Race, Culture and Globalisation. London/New York: Verso, 2008.

Alternate link via Libcom.org.

Smith, Mark M. How Race is Made: Slavery, Segregation, and the Senses. Chapel HIll: University of North Carolina Press, 2006.

UNESCO (ed). Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism. UNESCO: Paris, 1980.

Virdee, Satnam. Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Virdee, Satnam. “Racialized capitalism: An account of its contested origins and consolidation”. Sociological Review 67.1 (2019): 3-27.

Wilderson, Frank. Afropessimism. Liveright: 2020.

Wilkerson, Isabel. Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. London: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2020.

Wodak, Ruth. The Politics of Fear: What Right-Wing Populist Discourses Mean. London and New York: SAGE Publications, 2015.

“ ‘Why do you use a phrase like black is beautiful?’

‘Because black is commonly associated with negatives: the black markets, the black sheep of the family; anything which is supposed to be bad.’

‘Then why do you use the word? Why call yourselves “black”? I mean you people are more Brown than black?’

Why do you call yourselves white? You people are more pink than white.’ “

Cry Freedom (1987)

Whiteness and White Privilege

Andrews, Kehinde. The Psychosis of Whiteness: Surviving the Insanity of a Racist World. London: Penguin, 2023.

Andrews, Kehinde. “The Psychosis of Whiteness: the Celluloid Hallucinations of Amazing Grace and Belle”. Journal of Black Studies, 47.5. (2016): 435-453.

Blum, Edward J. and Harvey, Paul. The Color of Christ: The Son of God and the Saga of Race in America. University of North Carolina Press, 2012.

Bonnett, Alastair. “From White to Western: Racial Decline and the Rise of the Idea of the West in Britain, 1890-1930”. In The Idea of the West: Culture, Politics, and History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Pp. 14-39.

Butler, Anthea. White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. University of North Carolina Press, 2021.

DiAngelo, Robin. “White people are still raised to be racially illiterate. If we don't recognize the system, our inaction will uphold it.” NBC. 16 September 2018.

DiAngelo, Robin. White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. New York: Penguin, 2019.

Dyer, Richard. White: The Twentieth Anniversary Edition. London: Taylor and Francis, 2017.

Gorski, Philip S. and Perry, Samuel L. The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2022.

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Jones, Robert P. The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy and the Path to a Shared American Future. Simon & Schuster, 2023.

Joshi, Khyati Y. White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America. NYU Press, 2020.

Liburd, Liam J. “Beyond the Pale: Whiteness, Masculinity and Empire in the British Union of Fascists, 1932–1940”. Fascism, 7.2 (2018): 275-296.

Alternate link via White Rose Research Online.

Morrison, Toni. Playing In The Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination. Harvard University Press: 1993.

Onishi, Bradley. Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next. Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2024.

Also available via Google Books.

Posner, Sarah. Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency, and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind. Random House, 2021.

Roithmayr, Daria. Reproducing Racism: How Everyday Choices Lock in White Advantage. New York: NYU Press, 2014.

Saad., Layla F. Me and White Supremacy: How to Recognise Your Privilege, Combat Racism and Change the World. London: Quercus Editions, 2020.

Schwarz, Bill. Memories of Empire, Volume I: The White Man's World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Sullivan, Shannon. Good White People: The Problem with Middle-Class White Anti-racism. Albany: SUNY Press, 2014.

Tisby, Jemar. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism. Zondervan, 2020.

“If you can only be tall because somebody is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. And my feeling is that white people have a very, very serious problem, and they should start thinking about what they can do about it.”

Toni Morrison