This book presents a metacritique of racial formation theory. The essays within this volume explore the fault lines of the racial formation concept, identify the power relations to which it inheres, and resolve the ethical coordinates for alternative ways of conceiving of racism and its correlations with sexism, homophobia, heteronormativity, gender politics, empire, economic exploitation, and other valences of bodily construction, performance, and control in the twenty-first century. Collectively, the contributors advance the argument that contemporary racial theorizing remains mired in antiblackness. Across a diversity of approaches and objects of analysis, the contributors assess what we describe as the conceptual aphasia gripping racial theorizing in our multicultural moment: analyses of racism struck dumb when confronted with the insatiable specter of black historical struggle.

This book presents a metacritique of racial formation theory. Across a diversity of approaches and objects of analysis, the contributors assess the 'conceptual aphasia' gripping racial theorizing in our multicultural moment: analyses of racism struck dumb when confronted with the insatiable specter of black historical struggle.

Both significant and timely, Blackhood Against the Police Power addresses the punishment of “race” and the disavowal of sexual violence central to the contemporary “post-racial” culture of politics. Here the author asserts that the post-racial presents an antiblack animus that should be read as desiring the end of blackness and the black liberation movement’s singular ethical claims. The book redefines policing as a sociohistorical process of implementing antiblackness and, in so doing, redefines racism as an act of sexual violence that produces the punishment of race. It smartly critiques the way leading antiracist discourse is frequently complicit with antiblackness and recalls the original 1960s conception of black studies as a corrective to the deficiencies in today’s critical discourse on race and sex. The book explores these lines of inquiry to pinpoint how the history of racial slavery wraps itself in a new discourse of disavowal. In this way, Blackhood Against the Police Power responds to a range of texts, policies, practices, and representations complicit with the police power—from the Fourth Amendment and the movements to curtail stop-and-frisk policing and mass incarceration to popular culture treatments of blackness to the leading academic discourses on race and sex politics.

Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader provides an overview of historical and contemporary debates in this vital and ever-evolving field of scholarship and research. Combining contributions from seminal thinkers, leading scholars and emergent voices, this reader provides a critical reflection on key trends and developments in the field. The contributions to this reader provide an overview of key areas of scholarship and research on questions of race and racism. It provides a novel perspective by bringing together readings on the key theoretical and historical processes in this area, the development of diverse theoretical viewpoints, the analysis of antisemitism, the role of colonialism and postcolonialism, feminist perspectives on race and the articulation of new accounts of the contemporary conjuncture. The contributions to this reader include classic works by the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Stuart Hall and Frantz Fanon as well as timely pieces by contemporary scholars including Orlando Patterson, Patricia Hill Collins and Paul Gilroy. By bringing together a broad range of diverse accounts, Theories of Race and Racism: A Reader engages with various key areas of interest and is an invaluable guide for students and instructors seeking to explore issues of race and racism.

Rethinking the history of African enslavement in the western Indian Ocean through the lens of Iranian cinema From the East African and Red Sea coasts to the Persian Gulf ports of Bushihr, Kish, and Hurmuz, sailing and caravan networks supplied Iran and the surrounding regions with African slave labor from antiquity to the nineteenth century. This book reveals how Iranian cinema preserves the legacy of this vast and yet long-overlooked history that has come to be known as Indian Ocean slavery. How does a focus on blackness complicate traditional understandings of history and culture? Parisa Vaziri addresses this question by looking at residues of the Indian Ocean slave trade in Iranian films from the second half of the twentieth century. Revealing the politicized clash between commercial cinema (fīlmfārsī) and alternative filmmaking (the Iranian New Wave), she pays particular attention to the healing ritual zār, which is both an African slave descendent practice and a constitutive element of Iranian culture, as well as to cinematic sīyāh bāzī (Persian black play). Moving beyond other studies on Indian Ocean and trans-Saharan slavery, Vaziri highlights the crystallization of a singular mode of historicity within these cinematic examples—one of “absence” that reflects the relative dearth of archival information on the facts surrounding Indian Ocean slavery. Bringing together cinema studies, Middle East studies, Black studies, and postcolonial theory, Racial Blackness and Indian Ocean Slavery explores African enslavement in the Indian Ocean through the revelatory and little-known history of Iranian cinema. It shows that Iranian film reveals a resistance to facticity representative of the history of African enslavement in the Indian Ocean and preserves the legacy of African slavery’s longue durée in ways that resist its overpowering erasure in the popular and historical imagination. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Postsecondary language classrooms perpetuate racial discrimination and linguistic inequalities, posing a significant problem for racialized students who face institutional barriers and erasure of their linguistic identities. Interrogating Race and Racism in Postsecondary Language Classrooms, edited by Xiangying Huo and Clayton Smith, offers a transformative solution by confronting deeply ingrained racism, linguicism, and neo-racism in language education. Through an intersectional lens, the book exposes these issues and provides practical strategies to combat injustice, fostering inclusive learning environments. With topics ranging from power dynamics to anti-oppressive pedagogies, the book equips readers with tools to effect meaningful change. By amplifying marginalized voices and emphasizing anti-racist and anti-colonial practices, it empowers educators and policymakers to dismantle oppressive systems. This comprehensive resource has the potential to reshape language classrooms and create equitable educational landscapes that value diverse linguistic and cultural backgrounds, contributing to a more just and inclusive society.

In Black Interdictions, Philip Kretsedemas exposes the antiblack racism latent in the U.S. government’s Haitian refugee policies of the 1980s and 1990s which set the tone for the criminalization of migrants and refugees in the new millennium and lead to the migration and refugee policies of the Trump era and beyond. This type of radical exclusion is singular to the black experience and the black/nonblack binary must be factored into an analysis of the US migration regime. It is not possible to work together for equity and justice if we are not prepared to grapple with this divisive history and the instinct to avoid dealing with the singularity of the black experience. This book will be of interest to scholars of migration and refugee studies, black studies, legal studies, public policy and international relations, and many others.