This week’s readings exemplify scholarly and theoretical attempts to conceptualize race and racism in a way to effectively address and challenge systematic, structural racism that has evolved throughout the history of the United States socio- politically, historically, and culturally. Omi and Winant trace the lineage of race and racism in the US, focusing on the theoretical paradigms of race and their shortcomings as well as the contemporary evolution of racism coupled with neoliberal economic developments. Feagin similarly explores the legacy of racism in the US from a Marxist perspective. Taken together, these scholars problematize systematic racism that continues in the contemporary American society and argues for new ways to conceptualize
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From a Marxist perspective, he argues that the systematic racism in the US emerged out of the material exploitations of particular groups of people. He rejects the neoliberal euphemism of “playing field,” “organism,” and “free market” to describe racist and oppressive socioeconomic opportunity structures; he suggests the “ladder of exploitation and oppression” as a more appropriate metaphor. Further, Feagin problematizes not only the systematic racism characterized by labor exploitation of certain social groups, but also the alienation people experience. He perceives the racist and sexist system of oppression as “creating alienated human relations and severely impede the development of a common consciousness and …show more content…
While this problem affects all racial minorities, the most pressing issue raised by these scholars is the history of slavery, forced labor, and systematic disenfranchisement and exclusion experienced by African Americans that has never been addressed to the fullest possible extent. A new theoretical conceptualization of race and racism that challenges neoliberal racism with both ideological transformation and macro-(or state-)level socioeconomic structural changes is needed to effectively address this legacy of racial oppression. Focusing exclusive on either the ideology or material inequality will eventually allow room for newly mutated form of racism to thrive as it has happened with the development of neoliberalism and new political conservative rhetoric since the civil rights
From a Marxist perspective, he argues that the systematic racism in the US emerged out of the material exploitations of particular groups of people. He rejects the neoliberal euphemism of “playing field,” “organism,” and “free market” to describe racist and oppressive socioeconomic opportunity structures; he suggests the “ladder of exploitation and oppression” as a more appropriate metaphor. Further, Feagin problematizes not only the systematic racism characterized by labor exploitation of certain social groups, but also the alienation people experience. He perceives the racist and sexist system of oppression as “creating alienated human relations and severely impede the development of a common consciousness and …show more content…
While this problem affects all racial minorities, the most pressing issue raised by these scholars is the history of slavery, forced labor, and systematic disenfranchisement and exclusion experienced by African Americans that has never been addressed to the fullest possible extent. A new theoretical conceptualization of race and racism that challenges neoliberal racism with both ideological transformation and macro-(or state-)level socioeconomic structural changes is needed to effectively address this legacy of racial oppression. Focusing exclusive on either the ideology or material inequality will eventually allow room for newly mutated form of racism to thrive as it has happened with the development of neoliberalism and new political conservative rhetoric since the civil rights