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Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life Paperback – March 4, 2014
by
Karen E. Fields
(Author),
Barbara J. Fields
(Author)
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Karen E. Fields
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Print length310 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherVerso
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Publication dateMarch 4, 2014
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Dimensions5.53 x 0.85 x 8.26 inches
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ISBN-101781683131
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ISBN-13978-1781683132
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“It’s not just a challenge to racists, it’s a challenge to people like me, it’s a challenge to African-Americans who have accepted the fact of race and define themselves by 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 they hammer home that race is a monstrous fiction, racism is a monstrous crime.”
—Junot Díaz
“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 isn’t 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 rationality—the role that
beliefs about race play in structuring American society—while at the same time
reminding us that those beliefs may be rational but they’re not true.”
—Walter Benn Michaels, London Review of Books
“A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in 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 is—no 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 absurd—including, for instance, an imaginary interview with W.E.B. Dubois and Emile Durkheim, as well as personal porch chats with the authors’ grandmother—the Fields delve into ‘racecraft’s’ 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
—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 they hammer home that race is a monstrous fiction, racism is a monstrous crime.”
—Junot Díaz
“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 isn’t 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 rationality—the role that
beliefs about race play in structuring American society—while at the same time
reminding us that those beliefs may be rational but they’re not true.”
—Walter Benn Michaels, London Review of Books
“A most impressive work, tackling a demanding and important topic—the myth that we now live in a postracial society—in 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 is—no 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 absurd—including, for instance, an imaginary interview with W.E.B. Dubois and Emile Durkheim, as well as personal porch chats with the authors’ grandmother—the Fields delve into ‘racecraft’s’ 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
About the Author
Barbara J. Fields is Professor of History at Columbia University, author of Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century and coauthor of Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War.
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, about millennarianism; Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (with Mamie Garvin Fields), about life in the twentieth-century South; and a retranslation of Emile Durkheim's masterpiece, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. She has two works in progress: Bordeaux's Africa, about the view of slavery from a European port city, and Race Matters in the American Academy.
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, about millennarianism; Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (with Mamie Garvin Fields), about life in the twentieth-century South; and a retranslation of Emile Durkheim's masterpiece, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. She has two works in progress: Bordeaux's Africa, about the view of slavery from a European port city, and Race Matters in the American Academy.
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Product details
- Publisher : Verso; Reprint edition (March 4, 2014)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 310 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1781683131
- ISBN-13 : 978-1781683132
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.53 x 0.85 x 8.26 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#20,980 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15 in U.S. Immigrant History
- #42 in Democracy (Books)
- #100 in Cultural Anthropology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
4.7 out of 5 stars
4.7 out of 5
223 global ratings
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2019
Verified Purchase
This is the book anti racists need to read, not books such as 'white fragility' which make the same mistake that this book highlights as the underlying issue. But- anti racists just love to conjur race! While other books that help to purpetuate racism (in the name of anti racism no less!) Are far more well known, this book is one that holds the key to the solution. Ironic it is nowhere near as popular as books written by whites who believe self denegration is the key to social change. Nope.
53 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2018
Verified Purchase
Every person in America should read this. Karen and Barbara Fields do a great job of trying to disabuse us (those on the left as much as on the right) to abandon our fascination with race in a manner that doesn't just "pretend" we live in a colorblind, post-racial society. Race is a totall debunked pseudo-scientific concept. Using an analogy with witchcraft (e.g., there are no such thing as witches, but as a social phenomenon, witchcraft was nevertheless "real" in the sense that there are concrete practices and behaviors around it). In this sense, then, race is a fiction, but racism is very much real. The concept of racecraft shifts focus from race as a kind of ontology, to racism as a kind of practice. Or as they put it, racecraft focuses attention from who African Americas are, to what racists do. Race is a product of racism, not vice versa. It's amazing, important work.
24 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2017
Verified Purchase
Race and racism are two things which have had immeasurable influence in American history, yet we often take them for granted as acceptable social reality. The major insight here, which goes beyond the elementary "race as social construction," is that far from being irrational, the concept of race stems from the ways in which society sees itself as compared to others. It isn't limited to inborn differences, but also extends to invisible qualities, what we usually call stereotypes. The book is composed of several essays, written in different contexts, but united in theme. This includes a complete dismantling of traditional scientific bases for race, the complexities of Jim Crow, and an imagined conversation between Emile Durkheim and W. E. B. DuBois. Where it all comes together, as with many books, is the conclusion, which goes into how racecraft masks and diverts our attention from an inequality that is burned into American society. In this respect, it shares much with Ian Lopez's DOG WHISTLE POLITICS. With such a wide range of thought and approach, this book deserves to be widely read in order to change hearts and minds.
15 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2020
Verified Purchase
I've read a lot of Barbara Fields's writing, and always find it enlightening. Racecraft is no exception. The Fields sisters write with great energy about a crucial American narrative: race and racism. Racecraft is a neologism that captures a concept and offers utility. And if the concept is not entirely original, and not always compelling, it's nevertheless a useful framework for understanding important social issues on America.
The Fields sisters are at their best when they describe specific incidents and moments of history. Detailed anecdotes are conveyed on an undercurrent of anger marbled with the absurd. But unlike the politics of rage, the Fields sisters present their stories and arguments with nuance and breathtaking clarity.
The concept of racecraft, in most respects, just a special case of narrative-induced confirmation bias: we hear stories and we see the evidence that supports them. We remain blind to contradictory evidence. Given the power of our national narratives regarding Afro-Americans, highlighted by the examples in this book, it seemed to me a useful framework.
The Fields sisters struggle when they venture into medical and scientific areas, especially when they use statistics to make a point. Clinical medicine is not simple hypothesis-driven science, it's more a game a poker: you have a hand of cards (a patient's symptoms and history, and perhaps laboratory values) and you place your bets (a differential diagnosis, rank-ordered). Here's where race gets a little tricky. It's statistically true that people's ancestry affects their probability of acquiring certain disease or responding to specific treatments. A physician placing a bet takes this into account; it enriches the probability of a successful bet, but does not insure a correct diagnosis.
At the end of the book, I found myself moved by the stories, and the truths and absurdities contained therein. I thought the overarching point of the book would have been better served without appealing to our current understanding of biology, and specifically genetics. Both are very poorly understood at present. Claiming that race doesn't exist because extant genomic technologies do not detect it, is granting the scientific state-of-the-art more credit than it deserves.
At the end of the day, race as we colloquially understand it, and to the extent it possesses a strict definition, is largely based on phenotype. As humans, we're far more likely to believe what's before our eyes than an abstract argument based on incomplete scientific understanding. The Fields sisters beautifully argue that American narratives and confirmation biases continue to extract a profound price on our culture. As a scientist, I found that argument to be undermined by shaky appeals to science and statistics. At a minimum, it was distracting.
The Fields sisters are at their best when they describe specific incidents and moments of history. Detailed anecdotes are conveyed on an undercurrent of anger marbled with the absurd. But unlike the politics of rage, the Fields sisters present their stories and arguments with nuance and breathtaking clarity.
The concept of racecraft, in most respects, just a special case of narrative-induced confirmation bias: we hear stories and we see the evidence that supports them. We remain blind to contradictory evidence. Given the power of our national narratives regarding Afro-Americans, highlighted by the examples in this book, it seemed to me a useful framework.
The Fields sisters struggle when they venture into medical and scientific areas, especially when they use statistics to make a point. Clinical medicine is not simple hypothesis-driven science, it's more a game a poker: you have a hand of cards (a patient's symptoms and history, and perhaps laboratory values) and you place your bets (a differential diagnosis, rank-ordered). Here's where race gets a little tricky. It's statistically true that people's ancestry affects their probability of acquiring certain disease or responding to specific treatments. A physician placing a bet takes this into account; it enriches the probability of a successful bet, but does not insure a correct diagnosis.
At the end of the book, I found myself moved by the stories, and the truths and absurdities contained therein. I thought the overarching point of the book would have been better served without appealing to our current understanding of biology, and specifically genetics. Both are very poorly understood at present. Claiming that race doesn't exist because extant genomic technologies do not detect it, is granting the scientific state-of-the-art more credit than it deserves.
At the end of the day, race as we colloquially understand it, and to the extent it possesses a strict definition, is largely based on phenotype. As humans, we're far more likely to believe what's before our eyes than an abstract argument based on incomplete scientific understanding. The Fields sisters beautifully argue that American narratives and confirmation biases continue to extract a profound price on our culture. As a scientist, I found that argument to be undermined by shaky appeals to science and statistics. At a minimum, it was distracting.
6 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2013
Verified Purchase
I'm a pretty big fan of this book. Racecraft has two central arguments. The first argument is that race and understandings of race operate in very similar ways to witchcraft. Meaning that race is used to explain different societal problems and historical events because it seems like a commonsense explanation. Second, the authors argue that race is often used as a stand-in for racism, which is at best a distraction, and at worst, a continuation of systemic racism. Both of these arguments and the "rhetoric" of racism are engaging topics and the authors do a great job of running their arguments through a variety of situations to support their argument. I can easily recommend this book, but suggest that readers take a look at the different chapter titles and read the ones that seem most interesting. The book is a series of new and revised articles, which can be both repetitive and, at times, disjointed. After reading the most interesting parts, it might be a good idea to go back and read skipped sections for additional nuggets of wisdom.
60 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2017
Verified Purchase
Does skin color or our own moral deficiencies cause racism? The fabulous Fields sisters make a compelling argument that unless we begin to look at racism as a product of immoral behavior and not a direct product of skin color, we may never move past this plague.
14 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries
TW
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well written and thought provoking. Karen's insights are enlightening ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 2, 2018Verified Purchase
Well written and thought provoking. Karen and Barbara's insights are enlightening. It's a book that needed to be written and I am grateful to her for doing so. It's a book that everyone should read.
Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wonderful
Reviewed in Canada on June 13, 2021Verified Purchase
Very pertinent information presented by the authors to engender critical reflection on how we understand and utilise pseudo scientific labels to rationalise our social interactions and politically constructed identities.
Thomas A Hebert
5.0 out of 5 stars
Five Stars
Reviewed in Canada on February 25, 2017Verified Purchase
Great academic work on American Racism
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