Race Knowledge

Abstract

This analysis addresses race knowledge or the connection between race identity and the ability to designate what is socially legitimate. It problematizes race inequality in light of neoliberal, post-Civil Rights racial reforms. Using qualitative data from interviews with second-generation Muslim Americans, the analysis maps their understanding of the racialized social legitimacy of Brown, Black, and White identities. Findings address how racial hierarchy is organized by racial neoliberalism and the persistence of White supremacy. They show that White racial dominance continues in spite of claims of post-racialism. Moreover, second-generation Muslim Americans position their Brown and Black racial identity as subordinate to White racial identity, but Brown and Black races are different rather than hierarchically positioned in reference to one another. The respondents bring neoliberal globalism as well as U.S. racial dynamics to bear on their understandings of racial hierarchy and racialized social legitimacy.

Anti-Muslim Surveillance: Canadian Muslims’ Experiences with CSIS

“…Yet, although these racial projects converge and accumulate, they are not monolithic but are informed by distinct structural and ideological dimensions (Omi and Winant 2015:124). As Michelle D. Byng (2017) argues, distinct racial projects are uniquely grounded in particular histories of slavery, colonialism, and tropes surrounding the foreigner and cultural outsider, thereby producing different race knowledges (Byng 2017). While both black and brown Americans are subordinate to White race identity, the race knowledge of each identity is contextually different.…”

“…While both black and brown Americans are subordinate to White race identity, the race knowledge of each identity is contextually different. The social meaning of Black race identity is grounded in the history of slavery, legal segregation, and defamation, while the social meaning of Brown identity is grounded in the history of colonialism (Byng 2017). Similarly, Nguyen (2019) posits that while distinct racial technologies connect racial hierarchies and struggles for freedom, they produce differential forms of state-sanctioned violence.…”