A Global Critical Race and Racism Framework: Racial Entanglements and Deep and Malleable Whiteness

Abstract

Twenty years after Bonilla-Silva developed the analytic components of a structural race perspective and called for “comparative work on racialization in various societies,” U.S.-centric race theory continues to be mostly rooted in a U.S. focus. What is missing is a framework that explores race and racism as a modern global project that takes shape differently in diverse structural and ideological forms across all geographies but is based in global white supremacy. Drawing from Bonilla-Silva’s national racialized social systems approach, global South scholars, and critical race scholars in the world-systems tradition, the author advances a global critical race and racism framework that highlights two main areas: (1) core components that include the “state,” “economy,” “institutions,” and “discourses” and “representations,” as divided by “racist structure” and “racist ideology” and shaped by the “history” of and current forms of transnational racialization and contemporary “global” linkages, and (2) the production of deep and malleable global whiteness. With this framework, both the permanence and flexibility of racism across the globe can be seen, in all its overt, invisible, and insidious forms, that ultimately sustains global white supremacy in the twenty-first century.

Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition

“…and, again, Moore's (2014) and Henrick's (2018) comparative historical analyses of Supreme Court jurisprudence and congressional decision-making. Relatedly, while TRI is a U.S.-centered theory, racism is a modern global project; one which gives rise to particular racial orders situated in a broader relational field defined by white supremacy (Christian 2018;Mills 2015). As such, transnational scholars could study localized patterns of racial ignorance and how these relate across contexts.…”

Racial Ideology or Racial Ignorance? An Alternative Theory of Racial Cognition

“…Consider Kendi’s (2016) study of racially contradictory ideas among “great American thinkers” over U.S. history; and, again, Moore’s (2014) and Henricks’s (2018) comparative historical analyses of Supreme Court jurisprudence and congressional decision making. Relatedly, although TRI is a U.S.-centered theory, racism is a modern global project, one that gives rise to particular racial orders situated in a broader relational field defined by white supremacy (Christian 2018; Mills 2015). As such, transnational scholars could study localized patterns of racial ignorance and how these relate across contexts.…”

Response to Weddington: More Lessons from Afro-pessimism

“…We understand Afro-pessimism and CRT as related (but sometimes conflicting) groups of theory that are underused in sociology. Although CRT is making important mainstream inroads in the study of the state (Bracey 2015), the production of racial ignorance (Mueller 2018), and more recently globalization (Christian forthcoming), Afro-pessimism remains largely unacknowledged, even though these bodies of thought can trace a shared intellectual lineage through the likes of sociologists such as Du Bois (1935) and Patterson (1982).…”