Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life - Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields

Published in 2012 by Verso, London UK; New York, NY

305 pages

ISBN: 1-78168-313-2 (pbk)

In the tumultuous year of 2020, the national discussion surrounding race and racism in America came to the forefront of popular discourse. The murder of George Floyd sparked a resurgence in Black activism movements such as Black Lives Matter that seek to address police brutality, systemic racism, and criminal justice reform in the face of the prison industrial complex, all of which disproportionally affect Black Americans. Race and racism have a long history in America, shaping the narrative of our history from slavery and Jim Crow to the present prison industrial complex. Yet, many of us struggle to fully grasp this reality, often failing to articulate the deep-seated role and construction of race and racism. To help us understand these concepts, though, what if we turned to an unexpected analogy, comparing race with witchcraft?

Race and witchcraft are not topics that we typically consider side by side. Many of us see race as a real and present source of identity, with racism resulting from the intolerance of racial differences. On the other hand, we in the West see witchcraft as an antiquated superstitious belief of the past, used predominantly (except in Iceland) to oppress women and justify violence against them. What could these two concepts have in common? In their seminal 2012 book, Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life, professors and sisters Barbara and Karen Fields offer an insightful history of the construction of race, likening our modern conceptions of race to early modern European beliefs in witchcraft. 

Overview: 

Composed of a series of previously published essays, the Fields sisters seek to question our common understanding of race in America, deconstructing it as a leftover from 18th and 19th-century pseudo-scientific concepts. The Fields sisters push back against modern manifestations of race realism (the belief that there are real, immutable differences between races of people), which has persisted in scientific fields such as biology and medicine. Pushing beyond the simple claim of “race as a social construct,” they argue that the category of race is a historically-constructed fiction that is created and sustained by racist acts, all under an ideological apparatus called “racecraft.” Against our common assumptions, racism does not arise out of intolerance for racial difference; rather, racist acts create, impose, and perpetuate the category of race as an inherent (although illusory) category of human existence, with racecraft serving as a sleight of hand movement in which these groups of people are reified into distinct “races.” Instead, for the Fields sisters, the principal unit of identification should always be the individual, rather than these historically-contingent categories. 

The analogy to witchcraft is thus: just as witchcraft in itself is an imagined relationship that explains complex phenomena, so race is an invention that attempts to group complex individuals into a single category. We can look back on witchcraft beliefs of the 1600s with an incredulous eye, seeing in hindsight the apparent contradictions, circular reasoning, and violent consequences of such beliefs. While witchcraft wasn’t “real,” it still had a tangible social presence (complete with ritualized behaviors), and the effects of witchcraft belief and accusations led to very real violence. In the same way, while race isn’t “real,” the effects of racism and the behaviors derived from it are very much felt in our world today. Even if we accept that race is a fiction that has no genetic or scientific basis, we still hold onto the logic of racecraft, insisting on real, immutable differences between groups of people based on skin color and genetics. In this way, the Fields sisters are trying to get us to stop thinking about race as an ontological (inherent to reality, or pre-existing) category, but rather look to racism as a practice that creates and sustains these notions of race. Racial difference doesn’t lead to racism; rather, racism gives birth to race. Racecraft, then, in turn, establishes these racial categories and embeds them into our cultural consciousness, thus serving as an illusory justification for racist acts. 

As an example, the Fields sisters make a distinction between race and racism, noting that racism is not simply ignorance, hatred, or bigotry. Rather: 

Racism is first and foremost a social practice, which means that it is an action and a rationale for action, or both at once. Racism always takes for granted the objective reality of race, as just defined, so it is important to register their distinctness. The shorthand transforms racism, something an aggressor does, into race, something the target is, in a sleight of hand that is easy to miss. Consider the statement “black Southerners were segregated because of their skin color”—a perfectly natural sentence to the ears of most Americans, who tend to overlook its weird causality. But in that sentence, segregation disappears as the doing of segregationists, and then, in a puff of smoke—puff—reappears as a trait of only one part of the segregated whole. (17)

This magic trick of racecraft ultimately places the focus on Afro-Americans and what they inherently are (the color of their skin), instead of the real actions of racists (who segregated them in the first place). Thus, the modified sentence, dispelled from the trick of racecraft, would read: “Black Southerners were segregated because racist segregationists segregated them,” (the original iteration serving as a lesson in the dangers of using the passive voice). Focusing on the category of race, the sisters argue, ultimately obfuscates and obscures the processes that led to its creation, and through several essays, attempt to trace the development of race in America, from the chattel slavery of the 1600s to the segregation of blood donations by race in the 20th century, providing a litany of examples, both from the historical record and their personal experiences. 

There’s also an essay that details the author’s reflections on working with her grandmother on her memoir, and the tensions and conflicts that arose when she attempted to verify her grandmother’s stories for the sake of historical accuracy. In the last chapter, she places the work of W.E.B. DuBois and Emile Durkheim in conversation with one another, leading up to an imagined dialogue between the two thinkers. Finally, the book ends with a conclusion centering on wealth inequality, the 2008 financial crisis, and a fairly scathing critique of Obama’s first term as President. This class analysis shows how racecraft casts its shadow even among the poor white working class, obscuring working-class demands and diverting attention away from conversations of economic inequality. 

Commendations: 

First of all, Racecraft is a compelling account of the development of race, focusing on how race operates within American society. Racecraft serves as a convincing model for understanding the continual presence and persistence of racism in American society. Through their unmasking of the magic trick, the Fields sisters place racism as the center focus of the perpetuation of racial categories, refusing to let racecraft turn us into passive subjects. While reading, I began thinking about the concept of “white privilege” and how it could also be a form of subtle racecraft, turning white racism into something that is wholly passive and unable to be extricated from the subject (it is just something that you passively and accidentally have, not something that you actively do). Thus, we turn this immaterial, immutable characteristic into a tribal identification of a particular people group that obscures their actions and is impossible to fully extricate and renounce. As such, racecraft provides a useful framework for analyzing how racism often manifests itself in subtle shifts of language, serving as a kind of confirmation bias that shapes the way we think about the world and others who live alongside us. Especially when we consider the various narratives we’ve constructed in regards to Afro-Americans, which are beautifully and painfully told by the Fields sisters, racecraft serves as a powerful explanatory tool. 

As an example of one of these stories that stood out to me, Karen Fields recounts the story of her great-grandmother, Rebecca Gavin. Rebecca would push her grandson Rob in a fancily-decorated baby carriage in downtown Charleston. While walking around (but not being allowed to sit on benches, which was reserved for white residents only), Rebecca crossed paths with an Irish police officer, who, noticing her lavishly decorated carriage, smiled and waved at her. When he looked into the carriage and saw that it was a black baby, however, he immediately changed his disposition and essentially accused her of stealing it. He tried to forbid her from walking with her baby downtown, but Rebecca stared him in the face and waited until he got mad enough and walked away. This story, for most people, Barbara notes, “is the conventional story of white racism, as epitomized in the stereotypical relationship between Negro and Irish immigrant. But what I want you to notice is the figure who dominates its action, without appearing in person at all: the white Charleston aristocrat, the one to whom the Irish policeman was supposed to show deference.” The policeman was upset because he thought that Rebecca was a servant taking care of the baby of her white “betters,” and he had mistakenly shown respect and courtesy to a black woman. Here, the invisible specter of the rich white aristocrat is present, and the potential for violence arises from the reminder that the white Irish policeman was subservient (lower-class) to another white person. 

In examples like these, along with their historical analysis of the development of racecraft, the Fields sisters shine most brilliantly. This particular example also highlights another theme that consistently runs through this work: the utilization of racial categories to obscure class distinctions and social inequality. For the Fields sisters, racism is used to divide the working class and justify inequality as inherent and unchangeable. This led me to a new line of inquiry: does capitalism require racism? I’m sure there’s plenty of literature that’s been written about this subject, and I’m excited to learn more about this thread of thinking. I’d be particularly interested in pursuing how racecraft provides the fantasy of the American dream, but then posits the scapegoat of a racial Other as obstructing the attainment of economic prosperity, thus masking the inherent economic injustices of capitalism. Such avenues could prove to be fruitful, and Racecraft does a phenomenal job in connecting class analysis with the injustices that racecraft has wrecked within the lives of Afro-Americans in America. 

Finally, as someone who primarily utilizes psychoanalytic theory as an interpretive model, I think that Racecraft has much to offer psychoanalysis in diagnosing the roots of racism. As I read, I couldn’t help but try to map out the Fields’s trifecta of race, racism, and racecraft onto the Lacanian framework of Imaginary, Symbolic, and the Real. In this reading, racecraft would belong to the realm of the Imaginary (which insists that a belief in multiple races is rational and can be proven scientifically), race would belong to the Symbolic (which operates on signifiers and constituting identity as apart from the Other), and racism would belong to the Real (what holds it all together, but often can’t be addressed directly due to its traumatic nature). In this way, psychoanalysis could account for the issue of “colorblind” ideology, as they ultimately miss the Real (aka racism and its effects). 

Although the Fields sisters ultimately take a Durkheimian lens for their idea of racecraft, which views it as a rational (though not justifiable) ideology, I think psychoanalysis could provide a necessary counterbalance by highlighting the irrational side of racism: namely the role of the enjoyment that arises within the one performing the racist act. From a psychoanalytic reading, racism produces a kind of perverse, excessive enjoyment (or jouissance) which is integral to its success and persistence in our behavior. Of course, we would have to differentiate different modes of enjoyment and potentially interject a form of object a in this analysis, but I think it could be an interesting line of inquiry that could work in conjunction with the conclusions of Racecraft. Regardless, this book, especially the first 75 pages, should be essential reading for anyone wanting to understand racism and the construction of race through American history.

Critique: 

On the other hand, while the first several chapters of the book are incisive and eye-opening, the latter portion of the book (excluding the conclusion) gets a bit mired in meandering tangents and repetition. The book consists of a collection of academic essays, some of which are accessible while others are rather tedious and dry. The authors assume at least a passing familiarity with seminal works in sociology and anthropology in these later chapters (Durkheim, E.E. Evans-Pritchard, etc.), leaving many potential readers without much context or foundation. The Fields sisters, while using a wide range of newspapers and traditional sources, never relate racecraft to popular culture, interrogating how it shows up in movies, books, or television shows. This feels like a missed opportunity, and it further alienates potential readers who might otherwise relate and draw connections between popular media and racecraft. The essays are not organized chronologically, so it's difficult to piece together the progression of their thoughts over the years, and the fragmentary nature of the academic essays leaves the collection feeling a bit disorganized and uneven. This also makes the book rather repetitive, and once you’ve read a chapter or two, you would have a sufficient grasp of what the whole work is about.

In regards to tangents, the final chapter, which consists of twenty-five pages of context before giving us five pages of an imagined dialogue between W.E.B. DuBois and Emile Durkheim ultimately fell flat for me. This may be a matter of personal taste, but I’ve never been a fan of authors framing ideas through imagined dialogues between their favorite thinkers. The dialogue, more often than not, feels stilted and robotic, and it never actually reads in the same way that a regular conversation would naturally flow. It ultimately feels like a form of academic fanfiction, rather than a helpful exercise, and this form tends to reveal more about the author constructing it than what the imagined interlocutors might have said. 

Finally, while the Fields sisters point toward a way forward with their class analysis at the end, it doesn’t quite go far enough in addressing how recognizing racecraft helps us fight against the very real inequality and racism that permeates our social and political institutions. The critique of race as a real, ontological category suggests a move away from the particular in favor of constructing a universal emancipatory movement, but it is never fully fleshed out. Relatedly, I also wondered just how much racecraft would apply to other Western countries with different histories of slavery/colonialism. This is hinted at in the final chapter in regards to the Dreyfus Affair and rising anti-Semitism, which again points to a universal struggle. This movement toward a universal movement against the forces of capital (and the racecraft that supports the smooth flow of capital) is just under the surface in this volume, and I think can be teased out easily by those who want to build such a movement. 

Conclusion:

Overall, Racecraft, while a bit dry and tedious in places, is an essential read for anyone who wants to understand the creation of race and the effects of racism in American history and society. To echo the words of Ta-Nehisi Coates, it is not just a wake-up call to those who hold racist ideas, but also to those of us who define ourselves primarily by race. This book, while not as well known as other anti-racism books, is perhaps one of the best starting points for those who want to begin working together beyond the categories of race, recognizing the pernicious effects of racism and the class antagonisms that lie beneath such racialization. This book dismantles our fantasy of living in a post-racial society while also calling out our fascination with race and supposed racial differences. Even if you’re averse to more academic works, I promise that this work is well worth the effort, especially in the socio-political context we find ourselves in. 

The book ends with a brief paragraph on the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011, which occurred just as this book was sent to its publisher. In it, the Fields sisters see a glimpse of the resurging conversation around wealth inequality and speculate whether it will have a lasting effect on our society. The brief addendum ends on a somewhat pessimistic, if prescient, note, as they write: “the effort to discredit a generation of laws against racist discrimination suggests that defenders of inequality may yet find the old-time religion -- racecraft -- to be a very present help amid awkward questions” (290). Living in a post-Trump America, it's easy to see just how this return to racecraft has manifested itself, from the denigration of Mexican immigrants and the self-effacing “Blacks for Trump,” to the retreat to racial identity as a source of solidarity in Leftist movements such as BLM, and even the anti-Semitic, white-supremacist backlash that calls disaffected white men to proudly reclaim a “white identity.” Racecraft is alive and well in 2021 and has real-world, tangible consequences. Instead of reifying these categories of human difference, one of the goals of the Left should be to dismantle these racial constructs, recognizing and exploring reparations for the historical effects of racism, and working toward building a universal, multiracial emancipatory worker’s movement. Racecraft, thus, helps us begin the process of deconstructing race for the sake of such a movement.