Conceptualizing Racism

Breaking the Chains of Racially Accommodative Language

By (author) Noel A. Cazenave

Publication date:

19 November 2015

Length of book:

270 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9781442252356

Conceptualizing Racism is a provocative book that confronts the language we use to discuss and understand racism. Author Noel A. Cazenave argues that American social science has, since its inception, practiced linguistic racial accommodation that blurs our understanding of systemic racism and makes it difficult to effect meaningful change. Conceptualizing Racism highlights how words matter in racism studies. The author traces the history of linguistic racial accommodation through the development of sociology as a discipline and illustrates how it is at play today, not only within the discipline but in public life.

Prologue: Sociology as Autobiography
Introduction: Racial Accommodation and the Misconceptualization of Racism

Understanding Linguistic Racial Accommodation and Confrontation
Linguistic Racial Accommodation from Slavery to the Civil Rights Movement
Linguistic Racial Accommodation and Confrontation from the Civil Rights Movement to The Declining Significance of Race
Theoretical Fragmentation: The White Backlash and Its Legacy of Failure
Defining Racism: Beyond Mini-Racism and the “Race” as Agency Concept
Confronting Racially Accommodative Language by Conceptualizing Racism as a System of Oppression

Conclusion: Lessons Learned and Challenges Remaining: Toward a More Honest Conceptualization of Racism
Epilogue: Unfinished Business in Confronting Racially Accommodative Language

Cazenave offers a critical reading of the language of racism in sociological thought and US society, providing a searing assessment of how scholars, politicians, journalists, and everyday people understand racism and use language to deny, distance, and evade it. Specifically, he argues that dominant formulations of the concept obscure, evade, and erase the systematic and structural aspects of racial oppression, and instead equivocate and accommodate through appeals to individual beliefs, psychological biases, and universal capacities. Moreover, he asserts, such formulations reinforce racial hierarchies and racist exclusions, making it more difficult to study, understand, and change them. In doing so, Cazenave offers a strongly worded indictment of sociology while advancing discussions of racism today. Key to this is his sensitive reading of the history of theory and method in sociological thought, sharp assessment of shifting racial structures, and a keen eye for deciphering the entanglements of race, power, and language. This is an important text for scholars who study these subjects. Of equal importance is its usefulness in the training of future academics, social analysts, and policy makers. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.