Exorcising “Racecraft”: Toward the RaceSyllabus

Abstract

This paper, based on my experiences teaching Africana Studies at a Northeastern public university, argues that anti-racist pedagogy must include a RaceSyllabus which reveals to diverse students the artificiality of race as a man-made ideology, neither biologically rooted nor divinely-inspired. Barbara Jean Fields and Karen Fields use the term racecraft to describe how race ideology persists as a subterranean, almost occult force in American institutions and minds. In my teaching I have developed a syllabus which propels students into a novel mental terrain where the racial categories we inherit and inhabit are neither inevitable or natural, but instead are created and re-created by our national economic, political, social, and cultural choices. The RaceSyllabus includes two interrelated learning objectives which, together, propel students to see outside our society’s race-tinted lenses. 1. Students should consider that racial identities in the United States are historically specific. 2. Students should consider that racial identities are geographically specific. These two insights, when taught together, are remarkably effective in exposing the artificiality of our national racial myths.

Don’t Talk to White People: On the Epistemological and Rhetorical Limitations of Conversations With White People for Anti-Racist Purposes: An Essay

“…I have argued here that we should refrain from engaging in conversations with those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white on issues of race and racism. If you must converse with them on such topics, then you should understand the difficulties and the personal stakes; furthermore, prior to a rigorous self-reflective exercise on the part of those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white—an “exorcism of race craft” (see Asare, 2018; Fields & Fields, 2012)—you should recognize that the effort is more for You, as a coping mechanism, than for your interlocutors-who-think-of-themselves-as-white. Many scholars already evade a discursive orientation toward whiteness, often in attempt to humanize their subject, or at least not to pathologize them (see Carter, 2017; Curry, 2017; Curry & Utley, 2018; Harris, 2018; Johnson, 2018).…”

“…In other words, the uncertainty of the future of whiteness is a question for those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white to contemplate primarily on their own, especially since it is by no means evident that they will find anti-racism desirable, much less translatable into actionable concerns. And second, prior to a rigorous self-reflective exercise—part of what historian Abena Ampofoa Asare calls, “an exorcism of racecraft” (Asare, 2018) 1 —the results of which, while promising, remain uncertain, conversations with those-who-think-of-themselves-as-white for anti-racist purposes will be significantly limited in their effect (see also Yancy, 2004, 2005).…”

More than a Game: Racecraft and the Adaptation of “Race” in Live Action Role Play

“…Critical race theory has had a considerable tenure in the academic exploration of racism. While initially tackling expansive, structural questions, modern conversations have come to fixate on demographic concerns-cataloging disparity across census categories (Bell 1995;Gillborn et al 2017;Asare 2018). This has led to a stagnation where the inequitable outcomes of racism are continually unearthed, but solutions remain elusive (Mevorach 2008;Palmie 2008;Weiss 2008).…”

“…Meanwhile, the social actors enacting racism and the practice itself go unchallenged while "race" becomes increasingly accepted as absolute. Disparity comes to be seen as the result of "race" as inequality is reduced to statistical characteristics (Asare 2018). Demographic studies expose the correlation between impoverished areas, crime, and race without considering how the social practice of racism explains this inequality (Knight et al 2004;Marotta 2017).…”