Race Is about Politics: Lessons from History

by Jean-Frédéric Schaub, Lara Vergnaud (Translator)

Overview

How the history of racism without visible differences between people challenges our understanding of the history of racial thinking

Racial divisions have returned to the forefront of politics in the United States and European societies, making it more important than ever to understand race and racism. But do we? In this original and provocative book, acclaimed historian Jean-Frédéric Schaub shows that we don't—and that we need to rethink the widespread assumption that racism is essentially a modern form of discrimination based on skin color and other visible differences. On the contrary, Schaub argues that to understand racism we must look at historical episodes of collective discrimination where there was no visible difference between people. Built around notions of identity and otherness, race is above all a political tool that must be understood in the context of its historical origins.

Although scholars agree that races don't exist except as ideological constructions, they disagree about when these ideologies emerged. Drawing on historical research from the early modern period to today, Schaub makes the case that the key turning point in the political history of race in the West occurred not with the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery, as many historians have argued, but much earlier, in fifteenth-century Spain and Portugal, with the racialization of Christians of Jewish and Muslim origin. These Christians were discriminated against under the new idea that they had negative social and moral traits that were passed from generation to generation through blood, semen, or milk—an idea whose legacy has persisted through the age of empires to today.

Challenging widespread definitions of race and offering a new chronology of racial thinking, Schaub shows why race must always be understood in the context of its political history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691207254
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Jean-Frédéric Schaub teaches at the School for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris. He also holds a Global Distinguished Professorship in the History Department of New York University.

Table of Contents

Introduction The Current Moment 1

A Situated Perspective 3

Racism as Politics 7

Racism from the Humanities and Social Sciences 11

Definitions 16

Chapter 1 A Challenge for the Humanities and Social Sciences 19

Questions of Method 19

What to Do with the Word "Race"? 29

Racial Ideologies and Their Contradictions 33

Genetics as a Challenge for the Humanities and Social Sciences 43

The Constructivist Model and Its Mottos 58

Political Consistencies 65

Chapter 2 Historiographical Debate 69

Toward a Larger History of Race and Racism 69

Race: Object or Category? 75

A Turning Point: The Early Modern Western Colonial Expansion 81

Stigmatization and Racial Ideologies 94

Race and Naturalization of Conflicts 101

Scientific Racism or Nationalist Delirium? 109

Racism and Universalism 113

Chapter 3 Toward a Nonlinear History of Race 122

Themes Recurrent in the Historical Study of Racial Policies 125

Racism as Genealogy and the Making of Invisible Difference 134

Color and Mixing Bloods: "Métissage" Everywhere, Racial Democracy Nowhere 153

Race and Change 167

Conclusion Race and Sameness 173

Acknowledgments 179

Notes 181

Index 199

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Breathtaking in its range and ambition, this is a wonderful and provocative book about the concept of race. Schaub's command of the scholarship is impressive, the argument is forcefully made, and the prose is clear. I believe this book should be widely read and discussed."—Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University

"This is a smart, incisive, and provocative book that should find a large audience among scholars interested in questions of race and racism. In its clear and unswerving insistence on race as a political category in need of a political history, it represents a strong, original contribution to this most vexed and fraught of subjects."—David A. Bell, Princeton University

Editorial Reviews

"Breathtaking in its range and ambition, this is a wonderful and provocative book about the concept of race. Schaub's command of the scholarship is impressive, the argument is forcefully made, and the prose is clear. I believe this book should be widely read and discussed."—Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University


"This is a smart, incisive, and provocative book that should find a large audience among scholars interested in questions of race and racism. In its clear and unswerving insistence on race as a political category in need of a political history, it represents a strong, original contribution to this most vexed and fraught of subjects."—David A. Bell, Princeton University

From the Publisher