Glen, It would be interesting to hear you and John McWhorter engage in a deep discussion of this early book on the topic:
The Racialization of America
(St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993)
by Yehudi O. Webster
An African-American Professor at CSU Los Angeles
EXCERPTS
" [It] is neither race nor racism that bedevils American society, but rather that racial classification enjoys a privileged status in social studies. American society is being tied in painful knots by virtue of legislative, social scientific, and media practices of racially classiflying persons...
"This official racial classification was never benign. The collection of occupational data by race in 1890 coincided with the imposition of jim crowism. Contemporarily, racial classification serves various Republican and Democratic electoral interests. The creation and manipulation of "blacks" and "whites" are long standing practices....
"Social scientists, legislators, entrepreneurs and publicists use racial classification to generate a racial ethos that is then claimed to be the basis of their practices ... official racial classification and studies of racial experiences do nothing but render social problems insoluble. Racial solutions, such as busing, affirmative action, black power, and multiculturalism, are bound to fail, because they heighten the very racial awareness that is said to have led to "racial problems" in the first place."
Is he still around, still teaching, available for interview? Has it been updated? Multiple bureaucracies have been established and funded related to racialization. Can they be broken & /or dismantled?
Glen, It would be interesting to hear you and John McWhorter engage in a deep discussion of this early book on the topic:
The Racialization of America
(St. Martin's Press, New York, 1993)
by Yehudi O. Webster
An African-American Professor at CSU Los Angeles
EXCERPTS
" [It] is neither race nor racism that bedevils American society, but rather that racial classification enjoys a privileged status in social studies. American society is being tied in painful knots by virtue of legislative, social scientific, and media practices of racially classiflying persons...
"This official racial classification was never benign. The collection of occupational data by race in 1890 coincided with the imposition of jim crowism. Contemporarily, racial classification serves various Republican and Democratic electoral interests. The creation and manipulation of "blacks" and "whites" are long standing practices....
"Social scientists, legislators, entrepreneurs and publicists use racial classification to generate a racial ethos that is then claimed to be the basis of their practices ... official racial classification and studies of racial experiences do nothing but render social problems insoluble. Racial solutions, such as busing, affirmative action, black power, and multiculturalism, are bound to fail, because they heighten the very racial awareness that is said to have led to "racial problems" in the first place."
Is he still around, still teaching, available for interview? Has it been updated? Multiple bureaucracies have been established and funded related to racialization. Can they be broken & /or dismantled?