Are We All Postracial Yet? - a photo essay

photo essay edition

. s u t u o b a ll a is l ia c a tr The pos

RACISM IS NOT ONLY ABOUT WHAT ONE PERSON DOES TO ANOTHER.

RACISMS ARE ABOUT THE CONTROL OF

WHO GETS TO

EXERCISE

AND

SUFFER

POWER :

ITS ENACTMENT.

RACISMS ARE PERSISTENT, EVEN AS THEY MORPH IN KIND.

SEGREGATION WAS THE OBJECT AND OUTCOME OF NECESSARILY RENEWED ANTI-RACIST AND ANTI-RACIAL RESISTANCE.

Segregation was ensured through a mix of formal technologies like law and policy formation and informal economic means such as pricing racial undesirables out of the market.

ASSIMILATION FORCES COMPETITION AND ACCESS ON THE BASIS OF STRUCTURES AND RULES ALREADY FAVORING THE LONG-ESTABLISHED RACIALLY PRIVILEGED AND POWERFUL.

The dance with multiculturalism lasted all of a quarter-century, trailing off at the 20th century’s end and the start-up culture of the new millennium.

POSTRACIALITY IS THE ILLUSION THAT THE POSTRACIALITY IS THE ILLUSION THAT THE DREAM OF OF THE NON RACIAL HAS ALREADY BEEN RE THE NON RACIAL HAS ALREADY BEEN REALIZED.

THE POSTRACIAL IS THE RACIAL CONDITION IN DENIAL OF THE STRUCTURAL.

POSTRACIALITY IS THE ASPIRATIONAL, IF NOT YET FULLY REALIZED, MODE IN TERMS OF WHICH CONTEMPORARY RACISMS ARE PROJECTED.

THE POSTRACIAL, FAR FROM BEING THE END OF RACE, IS A NEO-RACIALITY, RACISMS’ EXTENSION IF NOT RESURRECTION.

POSTRACIALITY HEIGHTENS THE MODE OF RACIAL DISMISSAL.

Racial dismissal charges the historically dispossessed as the principal perpetrators of racism.

POSTRACIALITY ASSUMES SOCIAL HOMOGENEITY

BY ALIENATING THE DIFFERENT AND THREATENING.

In the United States, the reaction against

immigration

is indicative of the resistance

to expansive diversity.

THE POSTRACIAL IS ANOTHER MODALITY OF RACIALLY MARKED AND RACIALLY EXCLUSIONARY SOCIALITY.

Animalization tends to instrumentalize and rationalize the exterminating mandate in the name of killing off the threat.

THE POSTRACIAL INURES US TO HOW RACISMS FEEL.

Barely obscured by postraciality, police suspicion quickly turns deadly when one is not white.

POSTRACIALITY WOULD HAVE US BELIEVE THERE ARE NO MORE RACIAL SUBJECTS.

l m s i Rac

, d e z i n g o c e r . n r u e v n e e r v o e f , y d l l e a k i r t a n e m t n o u p n o s ive

RACISMS CONSTITUTE

THOUGHTLESSNESS.

L A M R O N E R U T U F W THE NE N O I T C E J O R P E H T S I

.

T N E S E R P R E V OF AN E

.

W O N E S P APOCALY

RACIAL NONRACIALISM SEEKS TO SIDESTEP HISTORICAL LEGACIES OF RACIAL ARRANGEMENT AND INJUSTICE.

Living outside racial determination: unbound by its holds, reparative of its historical injustices, without renewing them.

, T S A P E H T F O E M A N N I T N E S E R P E H T O T S U S T C I .

R T N S O I E T R A T M I S B I A H O RAC C E R U T U F F O Y T I L I B I S S O P E H T BELYING

Anti-racism undertakes to end the conditions materially and conceptually (re)producing racially predicated injustice.

ANTI-RACIALISM IS A COMMITMENT TO ENDING RACIAL REFERENCE.

Effective anti-racisms tend to be a politics from below, a coalitional politics of insurgency and unsettlement.

A SOCIETY UNLIMITED BY RACE IS ACHIEVABLE ONLY IN CONCERT, ACROSS GROUPS, GLOBALLY.

A SOCIETY UNBOUND BY RACE IS ACHIEVABLE IN THE END

ONLY BY BECOMING FULLY FREE.

DESIGN & LAYOUT Maritess Steffen

COMMUNICATIONS Anna Finn Mimi Ko Cruz Claudia Caro Sullivan

ABOUT THE AUTHOR This photo essay is an excerpt from Are We All Postracial Yet? (Polity, 2015).

David Theo Goldberg is the Director of the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the University of California system-wide research facility for the human sciences and theoretical research in the arts.

He also holds faculty appointments as Professor of Comparative Literature, Anthropology, and Criminology, Law and Society at UC Irvine.