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Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on "Race"

Article in American Anthropologist · January 1998

DOI: 10.1525/aa.1998.100.3.609

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FAYE V. HARRISON
Department of Anthropology and
Women's Studies Program
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208

Introduction: Expanding the Discourse on "Race"

In response to Mukhopadhyay and Moses's call for biological and cultural anthropologists to reestablish a dialogue on
race, anthropologists from the four major subfields join colleagues from two allied disciplines to address the possible
ways in which the anthropological discourse on race can become more holistic and amenable to the urgent needs and in-
terests of the public. This essay offers an overview of the current resurgence of race-focused scholarship in anthropology,
as well as a framework for an intertextual reading of the articles featured in this theme forum. Anthropologists' current
conversation on race and racism is built on arichlegacy, elements of which are still being uncovered in gender- and race-
cognizant explorations of the discipline's past Despite the considerable hiatus since the last major juncture of race-centered
debate and research, that legacy has recently inspired a promising upsurge of critical analysis which, if mobilized effec-
tively, may contribute to the subversion of the often subtle cultural and structural logics of contemporary racism, as well
as clear the ground for a new culture for multiracial democracy. Toward this end, anthropologists and others interested in
using anthropological tools must cultivate more richly nuanced analyses and intervention strategies informed by insights
emergingfromthe cross-fertilization of ideas from the various subfields along with such fields as human genetics and eth-
nic studies. Anthropology's unique role in interrogating, theorizing, and potentially disrupting the dynamics of racism
may be dependent on understanding the conceptual and methodological significance of strategic intradisciplinary and in-
terdisciplinary interfaces, [race, racism, holistic analysis of race, interdisciplinary dialogue, public anthropology]

A
number of social analysts, anthropologists among become a global problem that we must be better prepared
them, have observed that at this particular histori- to understand and resolve in both intellectual and political
cal moment—whether we designate it as a con- arenas of negotiation. What can anthropologists bring to
juncture of alternative or new modernities (Ong 1996; these arenas, both on the domestic front, where we have a
Robotham 1997) or as the postmodern era (di Leonardo social responsibility to do "homework for political ac-
1991; Marcus and Fischer 1986)—the world has become tion" (Williams 1995:39), and in the distant places about
much more tightly integrated into a nexus of transnational which, in our quest for cross-cultural commonalities and
and global fields (e.g., Appadurai 1990; Friedman 1994; variations, we develop expert knowledge and ethnograph-
Glick Schiller 1994; Nash 1994). Yet in this age of glo- ic authority—albeit increasingly under volatile condi-
balization—in which sophisticated telecommunications, tions of contestation?
an accelerated mobility of capital and labor, and rapid After quite a period of relative indifference and inatten-
flows of commodities and culture compress both time and tion to matters of race and racism (Cole 1992: Harrison
space across fractured technoeconomic, geopolitical, and [199111997a),1 anthropologists, in growing numbers,
sociocultural landscapes—differences in cultural and have regained their interest in and concern for the phe-
"racial" identities are being produced and/or reproduced nomenon that Du Bois ([1903] 1990:16) characterized as
with heightened intensity. In some contexts (e.g., the for- "the problem of the 20th century " (also see Harrison 1992;
mer Yugoslavia), populations with long-acknowledged Harrison and Nonini 1992). Contrary to the belief some
claims on distinct ethnic histories are being redefined as hold that the conditions have already been created for a
racialized Others and "cleansed" from within newly color-blind status quo, this problem, "the color line," will
drawn boundaries of national terrain. The deepening of be accompanying us into the next century and millennium,
identity politics, in many instances along dangerously es- manifesting itself in historically specific new ways. Ow-
sentialized lines of conflict and war, has—like the recon- ing to racism's persistence and ability to reinvent itself in
centration of wealth in the hands of only a small percent- new postcolonial and postmodern forms, including those
age ofall human beings (Ransby 1996; Robinson 1996)— that disguise and deny its continued existence, some

American Anthropologist 100(3):609-631. Copyright © 1999, American Anthropological Association

610 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

prominent scholars, including critical race theorist and le- debates, there are also competing views among us on the
gal scholar Bell (1992) and sociologist Winant (1994), major targets of present-day racism in the United States. Is
feel compelled to assert the rather pessimistic view that ra- post-civil rights American society more "color blind" and
cism is permanent, whether "races" exist or are ideologi- characterized by a "declining significance of race" for his-
cally marked or not. Winant argues that even policies and torically disadvantaged minorities (Wilson 1980), as
struggles to lessen racial inequality would not "get us 'be- some current streams of political discourse claim? Or has
yond' race" (1994:viii). He thinks that, despite its contin- our peculiar tradition of anti-people-of-color racism
gency, race has become an enduring, deeply sedimented grown more insidious, or has it actually given way to a
"means of knowing and organizing the social world . . . prevalent form of "reverse racism" that discriminates
subject to continual contestation and reinterpretation, against whites (and Asians) as the new victims of a "'trans-
b u t . . . [no more] likely to disappear than other forms of muted Jim Crow" (Custred 1998)?3
human inequality and difference" (Winant 1994:xiii).2 Within the past several years a racially cognizant an-
Based largely on his observations of Western Europe, thropology has clearly been revitalized, as evidenced in a
Balibar (1991) suggests that at this postcolonial juncture proliferation of publications that directly and explicitly
racism often fits into a framework of discursive practices address issues of race and racism (Baker 1998b; Gregory
that denies the existence of race and hierarchies of races and Sanjek 1994; Harrison 1995; Mukhopadhyay and
and cultures (Harrison 1995:49). That is, as racism as- Moses 1997;Rigby 1996;Visweswaran 1998).4 By revis-
sumes more subtle and elusive forms in the contemporary iting the discipline's leading journals as well as newer se-
world, it is being reconfigured without "race" as a classifi- rials still establishing audiences (e.g., Identities and
catory device for demarcating difference. The once Transforming Anthropology), one easily notices the fre-
largely biologized notion of race is now commonly being quency with which race-related issues are now being ad-
recoded as "culture" (Park 1996). This challenges anthro- dressed. This represents a dramatic shift in anthropologi-
pologists to carefully "unravel culture" vis-a-vis the coun- cal discourse, a shift that Cole (1992,1995), among others
try's "underlying racial hierarchy"—as Park (1996:495) (e.g., Harrison [1991] 1997a:3-4), has long urged more
has done in the case of Korean immigrants' relations with anthropologists to make.
African Americans—so that we can discern and detect Exactly one year ago, in the pages of this journal, Muk-
"race" when it is positioned at the deep level of shifting hopadhyay and Moses (1997) challenged anthropologists,
subtextual meanings. particularly biological and cultural anthropologists, to
We have ample reason to believe that a sizable propor- combine conceptual and methodological forces to culti-
tion of anthropologists problematizes biological concepts vate a dialogue on race and to bring the results of that dia-
of race, and—especially in the case of cultural anthropolo- logue to the public. This Contemporary Issues Forum is a
gists—recognizes the force of history, power, and political step in the direction of a productive and hopefully sus-
economy in constructing and reconstructing the bounda- tained response to that timely call. For anthropologists to
ries, categories, institutional configurations, and experi- effectively revive our discipline's race-cognizance and
ences of race (Lieberman et al. 1989). Nonetheless, de- deploy it in strategic arenas of public debate, policy for-
spite this important baseline of shared understanding, mation, social action, and other loci of democratic prac-
there is no theoretical, methodological, or political con- tice, we need to expand and refine our discourse on race to
sensus shared across any of the subdisciplines on how to elicit perspectives from all of anthropology's subfields.5
interpret and explicate the social realities that constitute For this reason, we have not limited our conversation to
race. Consequently, anthropologists are apt to disagree biological and cultural anthropology; perspectives from
over whether or not race and racism are "in fact" operative archaeology and linguistic anthropology are also included
in any given case. Anthropologists are intensely debating here. In reestablishing race as a central issue for anthropo-
whether the ideologies and structures of domination that logical inquiry and analysis, we should harness strengths
characterize interethnic and immigrant-host relations in, from the holism that distinguishes our discipline and gives
for instance, contemporary France and Germany consti- it a special vantage point based on a potentially innovative
tute a new form of racism or an altogether new order of and useful synthesis. For this potential to be realized, we
power and knowledge that represents a fundamental shift must overcome and offset the self-defeating fragmenta-
in the structure of difference-making (Stolcke 1995). And tion that has resulted from trends toward more narrowly
here in the United States, we find ourselves debating specialized anthropologies, increasingly disengaged from
whether current political discourses on, in one instance, disciplinewide webs of communication that permit the
welfare reform and, in another, criminal justice encode production of a more integrated and comprehensive
race and reinforce racial domination by pathologizing knowledge. We also must recognize that we stand to bene-
what are being represented as irreconcilable sociocultural fit from exchanging and cross-fertilizing ideas with col-
differences (e.g., Buck 1992; Gilliam 1992; Harrison and leagues working in other disciplines and interdisciplinary
Nonini 1992; Maxwell 1992). Not independent of these areas, from the sciences to the humanities. Consistent with
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 611

this objective, we have invited two distinguished col- racism and prejudice because of their African, Jewish, or
leagues, a human geneticist and an African American Native American ancestry."s This should remind us that
Studies scholar and writer, to join our conversation. the lived experiences and multiple positionings of race,
Given anthropology's substantive breadth as the most ethnicity, gender, and class are pertinent not only to the an-
interdisciplinary of all the fields of knowledge produc- thropological subjects typically studied but also to the
tion, it would be logical and fitting for us to position our- study of the discipline itself, whose substantive, methodo-
selves as a visible mediating agent within a wider dis- logical, and theoretical development is embedded in a
course on race and racism occurring both within the larger order of knowledge and power grounded in a cul-
academy and beyond it. However, such a logical conclu- tural economy of difference."
sion is not automatically played out in the workings of the However revolutionary in conceptual terms, the dis-
real world, where "truths" of science do not necessarily mantling of the race construct "s biological validity was
determine the cultural logic of social orders of power, no not immediately followed up by a sustained examination
matter how "unscientific" the ideas deployed to justify and theorizing of the ideological and material processes
and naturalize them may be. Establishing anthropology's that engender the social construction of race under the his-
role as a more central intellectual forum and as a respected torically specific circumstances and cultural logic found
interlocutor in important debate s on the raced and racializ- here in the United States.10 As Shanklin's essay here
ing implications of such salient issues as welfare reform, points out, anthropology's earlier antiracist project gave
the legal status of affirmative action, immigration policy, such priority to exposing the "bad science" of racial think-
and the politics of language in education and democratic ing that the culturally resilient folk concept of race and its
participation is a goal toward which we must work. Our institutionalization in law and, it should be added and un-
credibility and authority as a discipline that can make a derscored, the economy were left unchallenged for a much
difference in the world must be based on what we can dis- too extended interim.
till, translate, and, in turn, applyfromour multiple voices.6 Perhaps that error of judgment and its consequent race-
evasiveness (Frankenberg 1993) stemmed from the politi-
Recapturing the Legacy cally naive but not so uncommon belief in the power of
truth itself to transform unjust social conditions. Many
By reestablishing a dialogue on race, we resuscitate, earlier-wave antiracist researchers, including the "race
promote, and build upon the rich—yet contradictory— men" (Du Bois in his early career; see Harrison 1992:243)
legacy of the discipline's historic participation in both and "race women" (e.g., Ida B. Wells) making up the ranks
academic and public debates on the socially contentious of the activist intellectual tradition of "Black Vindication-
and politically salient matters of race and racism as they ism" (Drake 1987), had faith that once people were edu-
differentially affect the identities, social locations, and cated with "objective" knowledge, their unfounded atti-
lifeways of the world's peoples. Representing diverse po- tudes and prejudices would eventually wither away.
sitions along the intellectual and political spectrum, an- Apparently, the operative assumption was that many ordi-
thropologists have a history of having played a leading nary racists, if made aware of their unfounded beliefs,
part in elaborating biological determinism, as well as the would become critical of their prejudices and no longer
biological and sociocultural analyses that propelled the have reason or motivation to have and act upon racist in-
powerful critique against scientific and, to a much lesser tentions. This approach underestimates how racism in all
extent, popular racism. Most notable among the re- its subtlety and intricate multidimensionality actually
searchers responsible for the latter direction were the works as a complex social force. Drake's (1987:34) analy-
Boasians—perhaps culminating in Benedict's (1940) and sis of institutional racism in the United States, especially
Montagu's (1942) watershed publications—and later in the aftermath of the "dominative" racism associated
Livingstone (1962) and Brace (1964), whose work pro- with de jure segregation, suggests that "rules, regulations,
voked some profound, and perhaps even revolutionary, and norms [can be]' set up in such a way that they automat-
rethinking.7 However, other trajectories of antiracist ically operate to the disadvantage of some racial group"
analysis also existed in American anthropology (Harrison despite the absence of deliberate intent" (Harrison T997b:
1995:52). It is also important to recognize that, as Lieber- 395, quoting Drake 1987:34). In a similar vein, Wetherell
man (1997) has pointed out, women—most of whom and Potter (1993), based on New Zealand research, argue
lacked the visibility of Benedict and Mead—have borne a that even without overt race-centered prejudice, racism
great deal of the responsibility for carrying out the disci- can be the unintended consequence of everyday dis-
pline's antiracist agenda, and their contributions during courses and practices that perpetuate and reinforce an op-
the first half of the century helped create the intellectual pressive structure of power.
conditions for "deconstructing the race concept in the Naive assumptions about how to educate for change,
1960s" (p. 553). Several of the women anthropologists however, are still widely held, as attested in the approach
whom Lieberman discusses had themselves "experienced many scholars have taken to the most recent controversy
612 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

over African American English, or Ebonics. In her essay privilege can be either perpetuated or broken down in dis-
published here, Hill broaches the highly contested case of cursive practices, education (including, according to
the Oakland, California, school system authorizing the Shanklin's insights, teaching introductory anthropology),
use of African American English in its "bilingual" (or labor market dynamics, mortgage lending, public health
bidialectal) language arts curriculum. She claims that the policy, criminal justice enforcement, patterns of eco-
moral panic that arose in response to Ebonics's local le- nomic development, and many other spheres in which
gitimation and elevation is, ultimately, rooted not in igno- "race" is continuously being made and remade.
rance concerning the linguistic integrity of African Another factor that may have served as a disincentive
American English but in an "underlying cultural logic," for making the study of "social race" and its organiza-
intensely resistant to change, that implicates a deeply sedi- tional and structural power (Wolf 1990) more of a priority
mented stigma assigned to blackness." In this country as before the current resurgence was the urgency, as Shan-
well as in many others, unfortunately, blackness has come klin so aptly points out, assigned to doing "salvage eth-
to symbolize the social bottom (Basch et al. 1994) and a nography" on rapidly changing and/or disappearing cul-
host of related characteristics (e.g., cultural deprivation, tures. The emphasis was typically not placed on "complex
criminal threat, intellectual deficiency, economic parasit- societies," but when ethnographic inquiry was undertaken
ism, welfare dependency, hypersexuality, reproductive ir- in the United States, the populations targeted for study
responsibility. etc.).'2 Many of these meanings implicate were "traditional," at least in their precolonial origins. Of
racialized notions of gender, as in the allusions to "unem- course, key among those ethnographically appropriate
braceable" black masculinity (Page 1997) in public dis- subjects were American Indians. When Native Americans
courses on and representations of the most menacing were investigated under the salvage ethnography regime,
criminal—or even political—behaviors, and in the asso- a rather narrow and exoticized conceptualization of "In-
ciation of black womanhood with the "welfare queen" dian culture" often militated against an examination of the
syndrome. Even the way legal scholar Lani Guinier, mis- impact of the wider intercultural and structural contexts
nomered the "quota queen," was represented in the mass- within which the studied communities were embedded.
mediated political discourse on her qualifications for a Hence, the specific forms of racism assaulting Native
presidential appointment as Assistant Attorney General American reservation communities and the consequent
for Civil Rights in 1993 was distorted by these color- processes of cultural change occurring in those settings
coded meanings (Guinier 1998). Racist beliefs about were not adequately, if at all, explored. The "conventional
blackness are embedded in a system of material relations wisdom" of producing a race-evasive ethnographic dis-
that produces and reproduces taken-for-granted power course on Indianness continued into the 1960s and be-
and privileges, such as those associated with whiteness yond. In a poignant essay recalling his early 1960s field-
(Frankenberg 1993; Hartigan 1997). Racism, as Hill per- work among the Papago (now called the Tohono
ceptively reminds us, is much more than ignorance or lack O'Odham Indians), D. Jones (1997) notes that in graduate
of knowledge. Exposure to correct information or valid school he was socialized to impose interpretations on his
anthropological analyses of the social phenomenon called data that underscored cultural continuities with the pre-
race does not automatically lead to the democratization of contact past while obscuring observations on contempo-
the privilege, power, and wealth that sustain racial- rary social inequalities that led him to see his research
ized—as well as classed—inequalities. subjects as people with much in common with the poor,
As we devise anthropologically informed strategies for rural African Americans in the South with whom he was
intervening more effectively in the "culture of racism," we familiar.
should be reminded of the need to penetrate beneath the Reflecting on the early ethnographies of southern Afri-
surface of ignorance and knowledge to educate and encul- can American folklife, another topic deemed appropriate
turate against the very cultural logic of the manner in for some limited ethnographic research, Willis (1975) ar-
which ordinary people feel, think, speak, and live then- gued that the folkloric research that Boas supervised was
everyday lives in this increasingly multiracial and multi- not designed to yield a critical analysis of the manifesta-
cultural society and world. We will need to work together tions of Jim Crow repression in the adaptations and resis-
to develop methodologies for teaching people how to un- tance that black folk effected in their strategies for every-
learn old lifeways in order to learn—and collaboratively day survival and dignity. A myopic view of the kinds of
create—a new culture for multiracial democracy. As stu- questions cultural anthropology could attempt to answer
dents of the complexities and contradictions of both social inhibited Boasian anthropology from producing the kind
and cultural stability and change in societies across both of ethnographic research on African Americans that could
space and time, anthropologists can be expected to have explicate the workings of racism. However, other anthro-
the diverse forms of expenise needed to help develop tools pologists operating under other influences, doing research
for promoting a nonracist society by identifying the often around the same time in different towns in Mississippi,
subtle mechanisms through which racial hegemony and opened promising windows of opportunity for pursuing
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 613

fieldwork focusing on the social organization and politi- cial stratification. In that analysis she explicated the diver-
cal economy of racial segregation (Davis et al. 1941: Pow- gent experiences and forms of ethnicity for white ethnics
dermakerl939). (or, according to Sacks [1994], "Euro-ethnics") and eth-
Perhaps athird and, for this essay, final factor inhibiting nics of color, particularly historically subjugated groups
die concerted interrogation of the social and cultural dy- such as African Americans, Native Americans, and cer-
namics of racism before the current decade was the unin- tain categories of Latinos (particularly Puerto Ricans and
tended consequence of Montagu's (1942) well-intended Chicanos). In some respects, Mullings's important inter-
influence. Due to his important intervention, ethnicity vention represented a conceptual distillation and refine-
came to be seen as the social phenomenon and the more ment of the position taken more than three decades earlier
politically appropriate intellectual category with which in Drake and Cayton's (1945) analysis of blacks in Chi-
sociocultural groups and intergroup boundaries were to be cago (Harrison 1988, 1992. 1995). In that study, they
understood. While ethnicity is certainly an important and questioned the applicability of an ethnic model that, in the
useful concept for accounting for "processes of cultural context of U.S. race relations research, had been formu-
identification among subordinate populations within na- lated to elucidate—and accept as normative—the experi-
tion-states" (Harrison 1995:48), as it has been conceptual- ences of European immigrants. Even more recently than
ized and approached in much of anthropological analysis, Mullings, in an extensive review essay Williams (1989)
it has not adequately accounted for the processes of racial examined ethnicity and race as different yet interrelated
formation (Omi and Winant 1986; Winant 1994) that gen- dimensions of identity formation in projects of nation
erally result in distinct structural and experiential out- building. Indeed, she argued that "race making' is, and has
comes, such as forced exclusion, stigmatized labor, and been, integral to nationalisms. From therichvantage point
other types of dehumanization (Wolf 1982; 1994). In of a historical anthropology critically self-conscious of
other words, conventional analyses of ethnicity have not the discipline's conceptual development in the context of
explained how or why racism exists and persists, and why, shifting worldly demands, Wolf (1994) has also brought a
under certain conditions, categories of human beings are more race-cognizant perspective into anthropology's re-
subjugated or privileged because of differences purported thinking about the varying forms of ethnicity, including
to be fundamentally natural and/or biophysical. those informed by "perilous ideas."
In our ethnically plural society, the social significance Analysis that addresses ethnicity in contexts where race
of the invidious distinction (Berreman 1972) called "race" making has occurred may also illuminate how the process
is hardly declining, contrary to Wilson's (1980) contro- of ethnicization (or, as Hill's essay coins it, "ethnifica-
versial argument of nearly two decades ago. A rejection of tion"). which entails the assertion, revitalization. and ele-
the biologized assumptions of "race," and even a rejection vation of ethnic cultural identity, may operate as a form of
of the very term itself due to this dirty baggage, should not cultural resistance against racism and the denigration of
preclude our giving sufficient analytical attention to the the racial subordinates' cultural past and present. An in-
ideological and material forces that categorically mark stance of this kind of resistance against and cultural cri-
and stigmatize certain peoples as essentially and irrecon- tique of the hegemonic construct of race is addressed in
cilably different while treating the privileges of others as Hill"s article, where she summarizesUrciuoli's (1996) in-
normative. This quality of difference, whether con- sightful analysis of how Spanish can be appropriately and
structed through a biodeterminist or a culturalist idiom, is safely spoken in special "outer sphere" contexts, such as
what constitutes the social category and material phe- folklife festivals, while in more mundane outer-sphere
nomenon of "race." If the anthropological study of ethnic- settings it represents a racial difference signaling disorder
ity, or ethnicities, is to do justice to the experiences of all and danger. Ethnicizing practices emphasizing cultural
peoples, including those who are identified and who self- heritage are also present among African Americans,
identify in racial terms, then concepts such as racism, ra- whose agonizing contestations overthe cultural politics of
cialization, racial stratification, and racial identity forma- racial categories and classifications have led to successive
tion need to be included in our analytical lexicon. Even struggles and shifts in self-identification as "colored,"
when we accept the premise that biological races do not "Negro." "Black," "Afro-American," and, most recently.
exist, we cannot afford to be blinded to, intellectually con- "African American."'3 An identity constructed as "Afri-
fused about, or afraid to address the malleable and persist- can American" lays emphasis on the unabbreviated integ-
ent realities of racism, both here at home and around the rity of African cultural origins and, on the surface, renders
world. Americans of African descent semantically—if not struc-
An approach to ethnicity that moved anthropological turally—equivalent to other "hyphenated" Americans,
inquiry toward making reasonable sense of the differen- who are marked by national or geographical origins. How-
tial structural locations that various "ethnic groups" have ever, in light of the insidious covert mechanisms to which
occupied—and still occupy—in American social stratifi- Hill's insightful linguistic analysis alerts us, we should
cation was Mullings's (1979) treatment of U.S. urban so- question the effectiveness of an investment of ethnicized
614 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

meanings in view of the deeply implanted raced assump- the complex nature of human population variation, biohis-
tions commonly made about African Americans—even tory, phenetic and genealogical affinities, and gradients of
by African Americans themselves. As we shall see, differentiation." Lieberman and Jackson (1995:238-239)
Smedley's and Early's essays shed complementary light argue that while few researchers offer forthright defini-
on some of the contradictory dynamics involved in the tions, the concept of race, nonetheless, persists in "mo-
"self-conscious construction of race" and ethnicity among lecular, biochemical and anatomical research in bioan-
Americans of African descent. thropology." According to their critique, leading human
origins researchers "continue to make ambiguous refer-
Taking Biological Variation Seriously without ences to race and aggregates of racial characteristics in the
testing of hypotheses, interpretations of their data, and de-
Biologizing "Race" velopment of their models."
Over the course of its history as a "scientific" construct, The possibilities for the post-race population biology
race has been conceptualized in a variety of ways: as dis- that Montagu, Livingstone, and Brace adumbrated de-
tinct polygenetically derived species, as discrete and mu- cades ago are being translated into the innovative research
tually exclusive types, as geographically isolated subspe- directions that a minority of scientists, both within and
cies, and as crosscutting gradients of populations or outside of anthropology, are following today. At an epis-
clines. The conceptual move from species- and subspe- temological moment when so many anthropologists are
cies-centered thinking to a clinal approach to analyzing becoming more self-consciously aware of the artificiality
and explaining human biological variation represented and ambiguity of disciplinary boundaries, it makes sense
the beginnings of a major paradigm shift, a potentially for more of us to take advantage of this state of blurred
revolutionary change in the criteria for "normal science" boundaries to facilitate flows of ideas and analytical tools,
in the anthropology of biological differences (Kuhn especially when important new anthropologically rele-
1970).14 However, that paradigmatic transformation has vant developments are being made in sibling fields. Hu-
yet to be completed. We are still in transition without any man genetics is one such related discipline, and Temple-
certainty of what and where thefinaldestination will be. If ton is an internationally respected population geneticist
the assessment in Cartmill's article is correct, it is not at all whose work sheds important light on the kind of concep-
inevitable that the sizable minority of physical anthro- tual and methodological innovations from which biologi-
pologists still holding onto the race concept will be rele- cal anthropologists can benefit.
gated to intellectual marginality or extinction. As Lieber- A geneticist trained also in zoology and statistics, Tem-
man and Jackson (1995) have recently pointed out, the pleton brings newly formulated and designed techniques
interpretation of the data of biological variation is not neu- of quantitative molecular analysis to the discourse on the
tral or immune from societal influences, and included tenability of race. He offers further corroboTation of the
within "societal influences" today is what appears to some no-biological-race position by demonstrating the unten-
social critics to be an organized agenda on the part of cer- ability of race operationalized as human genetic differen-
tain neoconservative foundations (e.g., the Pioneer Fund) tiation existing at the level of subspecies. Using an evolu-
to promote research that seeks genetic determinants for tionary genetic approach, he cogently demonstrates that
upward mobility, IQ, and violence, among other things data do not support the thesis of human subspecies, which
(Kingsolver 1998). Thus far, it seems as though the results are understood to be "geographically circumscribed, ge-
of that research mark a revival or an intensification of ra- netically differentiated populations" (p. 632) with the his-
cializing discourses and practices in science (e.g., Current torical continuity of distinct evolutionary lineages. Statis-
Anthropology 1996; also see Hermstein and Murray 1994; tical advances designed especially for molecular data
Hutchinson 1997; Rushton 1994). indicate that compared with several other large-bodied
While considerable criticism has been leveled against mammals, humans, although geographically distributed
cultural anthropologists' negligence in exploring the so- across greater territory, have the lowest amount of genetic
ciocultural dimensions of race making in the wake of the diversity within and among populations and owe their ori-
"revolution" that Montagu, Livingstone, and Brace un- gins to a single evolutionary lineage.
leashed, recent criticism makes it also apparent that anti- Seeing no reason why historical splits and recurrent
race physical anthropologists themselves have not done gene flow cannot operate on different or the same popula-
enough to propel the paradigm shift forward. Generally, tions within a single evolutionary model, Templeton rec-
since the debates ofmore than thirty years ago, very little onciles elements from competing evolutionary models
research has been generated on clines as "a data-based al- previously assumed to offer mutually exclusive explana-
ternative to the race concept" (Lieberman 1997:552). tions. In other words, he formulates a new model of human
Along a similar line of criticism, Keita and Kittles evolution based on his innovative hypothesis testing. Us-
(1997:541) claim that the "no-race school" did not "de- ing nested clade analysis techniques to make reasonable
velop new terminology and concepts that acknowledge inferences from Y-DNA, mtDNA, and hemoglobin beta
 HARRISON / INTRODUCTION 615

sites about historical events, such as population range ex- certain knowledges over others. There are social analysts
pansions and recurrent gene flow, hefindsno evidence for who suspect that, ultimately, the current resurgence of ra-
a genetic split between Africans and Eurasians. African cisms—intellectual variants included—is not unrelated to
populations, therefore, were not evolutionarily inde- these wider trends.
pendent and were always in genetic contact with other Old Cartmill makes it abundantly clear that discarding race
World populations. A nested clade analysis of geographi- as an analytic frame does not mean not taking heritable
cal associations suggests that widespread genetic inter- biological differences in human adaptation seriously.
change has characterized the evolution and history of the However, like Templeton, he underscores that traits con-
human species. Interestingly, this view might prompt us to ventionally defined as "racially defined" are incommen-
consider the "prehistoric" implications of Wolfs (1982) surate with data on biological variations. Perhaps this
watershed anthropological history, which rewrites the point can be made even more strongly by taking a more
precolonial Old World's cultural past, exposing the fal- multiethnic and multicultural approach to the discussion
lacy of bounded, isolated cultures, especially for the more on the sickle cell trait, which is typically discussed in ref-
"simple" non-Western societies (e.g., in sub-Saharan Af- erence solely to African Americans. Livingstone's (1962)
rica) conventionally categorized as bands, tribes, chief- intervention three decades ago demonstrated that the fre-
doms, and primitive or pristine states. quency of this genetic trait is found among populations in
In his reflections on the status of "race" in biological an- tropical ecological niches in Africa as well as in certain
thropology today, Cartmill, a respected voice in his sub- environments in southern Europe and western Asia. He
field, describes how the heated debate on the utility of underscored the point that if sickle cell were "racial," then
"race" continues among his colleagues, periodically the so-called "race" that exhibits it "[consists] of some
erupting in polarizations over the reception given to schol- Greeks, Italians, Turks, Arabs, Africans and Indians" (p.
ars and scholarship that accept the notion of biological 280). This kind of "unthinking" still needs to be done more
races (e.g., Current Anthropology 1996; Harpending consistently today.
1995). Assuming the continued relevance of survey re- Using sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs disease, and
sults from 20 years ago, Lieberman and Reynolds phenylketonuria as "biocultural" examples, Cartmill ex-
(1978:348) found that physical anthropologists who were plains that the extent to which biology shapes human traits
proponents of the idea of biological races, "the prevailing is environmentally determined, with "culture [affecting]
view in [American society]," were more likely than their the interaction between genes and environment" (p. 658).
opponents to be "overdogs"—that is, to have "experi- Human biology must be understood as an integral compo-
enced greater privilege and less social marginality." hi nent of a wider system in which nature and nurture interact
light of assumptions from a critical sociology of knowl- in ambiguous and contingent mutually constitutive ways.
edge, the ascendance and dominance of a scientific orien- A sustained dialogue across the subfields can promote
tation that promotes the denaturalization of race is just as greater understanding of this complex interaction.
dependent on the impact of sociocultural, political, and Interestingly, Cartmill ends his article by shifting focus
economic factors (e.g., whiteness, class privilege, and from human biology to the sociocultural world, asserting
growing neoconservative power) on physical anthropol- that the country would be better off, ultimately, if more
ogy as an institution as it is on the internal consistency and Americans would resist racial classifications altogether.
cogency of logically defended and empirically validated This view, which appears to follow quite logically from a
pronouncements (Lieberman and Reynolds 1978:333).IS "no-biological-race" premise, is consistent with the posi-
Following Rigby's provocative line of thought, it would tion the American Anthropological Association took
appear that the persistence of biological essentialism when advising the U.S. Office of Management and
within anthropological science is a "constituent [element] Budget (OMB) on revising the census. However, cultural
of . . . capitalism, bourgeois culture, and alienated sci- anthropologist and historian of anthropology Baker
ence, and is . .. necessary for their reproduction in their (1998a: 16-17) encourages anthropologists to consider, at
present form" (1996:3, emphasis in original). Paradigm least in the short run before the dawn of racial democracy
shifts and the full-fledged epistemological transforma- or social racelessness, the necessary "evil" of taking stra-
tions that may result from their success are somehow re- tegic advantage of racial categories on a data-collection
lated to changes that occur in the larger social world. At instrument that is "more about identification than iden-
this particular post-cold war conjuncture of global re- tity." Baker's view is that racial categories, rather than the
structuring and realignment, the most powerful "over- more contingent and elastic ethnic categories, better allow
dogs" and their allies, a small minority of humanity, are us to identify and track the systemic racism that now as-
embedded in a transnational nexus that has secured a de- sumes primarily subtle and covert forms. He argues that
cided competitive edge by successfully concentrating his- government can make use of racial classifications to col-
torically unprecedented quantities of wealth and struc- lect useful data on disparate impacts, which cannot be ade-
tural power—including the power to produce and promote quately explained in terms of class, "culture, behavior.
616 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

and lack of merit" (p. 17). He claims that the often subtle ologists have focused on African Americans and other ra-
means by which race is institutionalized may be manifest cially oppressed populations at all, they have been primar-
in "disparities that range from low-birth-weight babies to ily preoccupied with uncovering the material or artifac-
per capita school expenditures" (p. 16). Baker goes further tual markers for ethnicity, which has long been
to argue that in the political climate that currently prevails, misunderstood as a bounded entity with identifiable Afri-
the AAA's position risks "[providing] grist for people canisms or African cultural survivals. In this respect, his-
who call for a color-blind society that eliminates" (p. 16) torical archaeologists have shared a great deal in common
social policies that have attempted to level the playing with their counterparts in cultural anthropology. Both
field for the historical and contemporary targets of racial groups have subscribed to problematic, reified concepts
inequalities.16 As Visweswaran (1998:79) warns us, in of "culture" (Abu-Lughod 1991; Basch et al. 1994), and
light of this political context," 'deracialization' might ac- both have been blinded to race's presence—but blinded
tually be the sign of a more pernicious racial ization." with respect to different temporal contexts.
The political usefulness of reified racial categories is an Despite the widespread retreat from race in the wake of
issue requiring more nuanced discussion that takes into the 1960s debates, cultural and biological anthropologists
consideration as many as possible of the social, political, have not indicated any failure to recognize that in past cen-
and economic implications of the competing positions. turies racism and what was popularly believed to be race
Also, the cultural logic underlying racial classifications were salient in American society. In light of what one
must be exposed and penetrated. Recent research suggests might consider to be obvious historical circumstances
that this insidious logic can endure under the guise of dis- (namely, slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and post-
courses and practices that transcend the explicit language Reconstruction racial repression), race was clearly an ob-
of race and the overt discrimination traditionally accom- session among intellectuals and ordinary folk, especially
panying it. The more subterranean and embedded forms during the nineteenth century. While perhaps acknow-
thatracialization assumes must challenge anthropological ledging race and racism as problems of the past, cultural
analysis today. Whatever conclusions anthropologists anthropologists (at least too many of them) have avoided
reach concerning "counting by race" (Goldberg 1997) and these phenomena during the latter decades of the twenti-
other heatedly debated issues should be informed by in- eth century, when racism has grown more covert and diffi-
sights, evidence, and analysis from biological anthropol- cult to document in terms of recent criteria of political ex-
ogy as well as the subfields (and fields) that specialize in pediency. Historical archaeologists, on the other hand,
the complex ideological and material conditions shaping have had great difficulty "seeing" and "imagining" the so-
the social reality of race. As Orser's thoughtful essay illu- ciocultural impressions and inscriptions of race and ra-
minates, race always embodies contradictory tenden- cism on the sevententh-, eighteenth- and nineteenth-cen-
cies—including the meanings and practices aligned with tury material landscapes that they unbury. Perhaps this
an enabling cultural politics of resistance and rebellion. problem of "sight" is, to some degree, symptomatic of ar-
Consequently, anthropologists, whether biological or cul- chaeology itself; archaeologists frequently have to inter-
tural in their principal orientation, must learn to analyze pret between the lines and gaps of fragmentary and am-
race with a "dual vision" (Epperson 1990, cited in Orser) biguous data. However, historical archaeological
that denaturalizes race without failing to recognize the interpretations can be richly informed by the archival re-
hard social fact that race consciousness, in some form (and cord, which in the case of African American history is re-
it often assumes a multiplicity of forms) has been and con- plete with all kinds of references to the most heinous form
tinues to be a salient basis for survival, resistance, and op- of racial domination. Even a cursory examination of the
position. Resisting and dismantling race entail more than a historiographical record would seem to suggest that race
change in census categories. would be a potentially useful category around which to
generate questions for research and theoretical construc-
tion. The role of a highly developed archaeological imagi-
Toward an Archaeology of "Race" nation, cross-fertilized with insights from other subdisci-
The sociocultural realities constitutive of present-day plines and disciplines, is particularly key for moving
race and racism developed out of histories—ultimately, of beyond accepting the mere category of race toward a full-
colonial expansion and capitalist development—that fledged historical archaeology of race that denaturalizes
need to be better understood. Orser, a noted historical ar- racial hierarchy and boldly theorizes its place within a so-
ciocultural system in which cultural signification, materi-
chaeologist who has done important work on African
ality, and power interact in complex and contradictory
Americans and plantations in the cultural past of the
ways. Orser assures us that more archaeologists—al-
Americas, addresses the important question of whether in- though still too few—are beginning to inquire about race
terpretations of the archaeological record can occupy a in their work. They are also bringing this growing race
central place in anthropology's renewed study of race and cognizance to their interrogations of archaeology's own
racism. His essay points out that, to the extent that archae-
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 617

racial politics and racial economy of knowledge and the manded the right to have serious input into the design and
role they have played in creating the conditions for a his- implementation of the research. Out of this struggle, the
torical archaeology that has denied and erased race from decision was made that Blakey, an anthropologist based at
the sociocultural landscapes of the past (Franklin 1997; historically African American Howard University, direct
Patterson 1995; Singleton 1995). the project. The biocultural framework within which data
Noting the virtually exclusive focus on African Ameri- analysis is being undertaken does not treat "race" as an ap-
cans among archaeologists who face the significance of propriate or useful category for making sense of human or
race in their work, Orser encourages his colleagues to cultural remains; however, the results should advance our
bring race-cognizant lenses to the study of whites, particu- knowledge of the impact that racism had on the everyday
larly those ethno-nationally defined European "sub- sociocultural lives and bodies of that ethnically diverse
races" who were not always accepted as members of the population of enslaved Africans and African Americans
privileged racial category. The best documented and de- (La Roche and Blakey 1997).
bated case is that of the Irish, about whom a large number For a historical archaeology of race to develop along the
of scholars have written (e.g., Allen 1994: Ignatiev 1995; most productive and democratic lines. Singleton (1995:
Patterson and Spencer 1994; Roediger 1991), including 134-135) strongly insists that her colleagues confront the
cultural anthropologist Smedley (1993) in her history of problem presented by the paucity of racially subordinate
the race idea and worldview in North America. Similar to peoples' perspectives within the subfield.1* Integrating
the Jews, about whom anthropologist Sacks (1994) has perspectives from the racially subjugated themselves can
written provocatively, the Irish were once subjected to a be accomplished in a number of ways: by diversifying the
form of racial Othering in Anglo-dominant U.S. society. field's ethnoracial representation, using more diverse ar-
That Othering, in the Irish instance, had its origins in the chival sources, cultivating a more formalized web of con-
British Isles, where (as Smedley elucidates in her essay nections with ethnic studies specialists, and including ra-
here and in much greater detail elsewhere) English colo- cially subordinate communities in all stages of research,
nial identity was constructed in opposition to the "Irish most importantly in "generating questions . . . and [inter-
savage." Orser points out that in the United States Irish ad- preting] results." This, of course, would mean a real shift
mission into white society was contingent upon their "[re- toward a more participatory and collaborative research
pudiating] therightsof those deemed non-white" (p. 665). methodology that would permit archaeology to develop a
Not surprisingly, that repudiation and struggle for higher role that would give it a more visible and. perhaps re-
status was often directed against enslaved African Ameri- spected, position in public discourses.
cans. The power dynamics of race in many settings in ur-
ban and rural America was, then, more complicated than Cultural Criticism and the Biopolitics of
the conventionally conceived black-white tensions. There Binary Opposition
was a more complex racial hierarchy involved, with "buff-
er races" (Patterson and Spencer 1994) and Euro-ethnics Shanklin (1994), who has played an important role in
shifting position along pipelines potentially leading to lo- clarifying anthropological perspectives on race, addresses
cations of whitened privileges." The potentially retriev- the historical development of color blindness and vision
able material dimensions of this historically contingent within the profession. She emphasizes anthropologists'
racial mobility and social whitening is certainly worth ar- negligence in examining in any depth the folk concept of
chaeological attention. race, which here in the United States equates race with skin
Orser queries how historical archaeologists can be- color and treats racial differences in terms of bipolarity—
come more involved in public discussions on the histori- namely the binary opposition between black and white.19
cal depth and contingency of race, especially in view of This construct is difficult to uproot, even in the current
rampant popular stereotypes that relate the subfield to the context of an increasingly multicolored and multicultural
spectacular or to the claims of pseudoscience. In local set- society in which racial formation assumes a multiplicity of
tings across the country, archaeology is already taking on forms, many of which vigorously contest the hegemonic
a more public face and contributing to community-based constructs of whiteness and blackness (Basch et al. 1994).
education and historical consciousness. Probably one of Shanklin's view underscores that teaching is a form of
the most nationally visible instances in which historical praxis that many anthropologists engage in either by in-
archaeology is playing an important public role is in the in- tention or default Teaching affords an important opportu-
terdisciplinary biocultural research project on the historic nity to affect the way students think and view the world
African Burial Ground in New York City. This project and to challenge them to rethink the relations of racism
grew out of heated and, in many respects, racially polar- that produce privileged as well as oppressed positions of
ized public debates over the historical significance of that power. The most strategic contexts for this kind of con-
archaeological site for New York City and the larger Afri- scientization are introductory courses in which anthropo-
can American "community," elements of which de- logical ideas are introduced to a wide cross-section of
618 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 1 0 0 , \ O . 3 • SEPTEMBER 1 9 9 8

undergraduates. Emphasizing that there are real political struct is timely, because Americans have to learn to talk
consequences of what we do and do not teach, she reports about racial and cultural differences in terms much more
that, overall, anthropology textbooks are teaching color complicated than the simple black/white opposition per-
blindness by seriously neglecting to give substantive cov- mits. Indeed, the dichotomy also inhibits a levelheaded
erage to questions of race and racism.20 Only a minority of discussion on the heterogeneity—in terms of class, cul-
introductory texts deal with race in any real detail. In the tural and regional variations, genealogical origins, and po-
majority of the texts surveyed, the surface of race is super- litical orientations—among both blacks and whites. In
ficially scratched, often confusing it with or reducing it to other words, as homogenizing categories, black and white
ethnicity or class. This state of affairs, she rightly argues, could stand some serious unraveling.22
is especially problematic when over the past several years In the less-known history of American anthropology, a
a proliferation of widely debated books on race have been few precedents were established for unraveling the folk
published. Anthropologists have not seized the chance to binary. For instance, Foster (1931) and Willis (1971) both
intervene in a public discourse that "[uses] the black/ went against the grain of anthropological conventions to
white dichotomy unselfconsciously" (p. 672). address a structure of race relations more complicated
Shanklin argues that to become more effective cultural than what the white/black bipolarity suggests. Both were
critics, anthropologists should reexamine and recast the concerned with race, culture, and power in triracial set-
knowledge and insights that the discipline has already tings of the U.S. southeast in which "whites," "blacks,"
produced. In her view, we can adjust our vision to restore and "reds" (Native Americans) interacted in a variety of
its "living color'—not just black and white, but many ways—including in a few instances black/red alliances
shades of pinks and brown as well—by using the Fou- and fusions—over historical time and sociogeographical
cauldian lens that has already had an important effect on space.23 Their scholarship elucidated the historical contin-
the anthropological gaze, which now can unmask the vio- gency of shifts in racial meanings in the context of a state
lence of apparently neutral and innocuous institutions— racism in which biopolitically manipulated polarizations
including institutions that, according to the parameters of and distances, based on a triangular set of folk and official
law, have been desegregated and cleansed of overt racism. meanings, were constructed to maintain and reinforce the
Drawing on Stoler's (1995) penetrating reading of Fou- political, economic, and cultural supremacy of whiteness.
cault's unpublished lectures on the biopolitics of race, Recent social analysis suggests that even in our increas-
Shanklin points out that race, as "sexuality "s twin," arose ingly multiracial society, where in only another few de-
as an instrument of the state's biologizing power. In this cades Euro-Americans will no longer constitute a major-
view, race is part of a discourse of state power which tacti- ity, the folk dichotomy remains resilient (Harrison
cally deploys the binary opposition between an internal 1995:59). It has not only come to inform our perceptions
biologized enemy and the society that must be prepared to of the obvious poles of difference that demarcate the apex
defend itself. and base of the ethnoracial hierarchy, but it has also come
Shanklin insists that anthropology must use Foucault's to permeate the hierarchy. For example, Ong (1996)
insights but go beyond them by extirpating itself from the claims that differences among Asian immigrants and
fallacious black-white dichotomy that undergirds so Asian Americans based on national origins and class loca-
much of popular and academic discourse. We need to un- tions are being construed in discursive terms of whitening
ravel and deconstruct that folk concept and examine seg- and blackening. In these oppositional terms, the "model
ments of society that contest and express dissent against minorities" (disproportionately Chinese and Japanese
the established categories and binary oppositions, which who are deserving of cultural citizenship, are entrepre-
are the constituent units in the racial worldview that neurial, and have high levels of educational attainment)
Smedley (1993) elucidates so well. She suggests the pos- are being contrasted against the minorities (e.g., Cambo-
sibility that we can gain some useful clues regarding how dians) dependent on the state and tactics of political agita-
folk dichotomies might be dismantled, who is most likely tion to get ahead. The stigma being attached to the latter
to challenge them, and under what conditions and con- population is being constructed very similarly to that asso-
texts, by investigating the lived experiences of noncon- ciated with African Americans.
form-ists.:' Research also suggests that in many of the sociocultural
Resistance and opposition to the folk dichotomy are contexts where there is a more complex Tacial classifica-
evident in the rise of "multiracial" or "mixed-race" voices tion system or a color continuum that culturally marks a
in public debates on race (Root 1992,1996; Zack 1994), in multiplicity of human shades, the meanings assigned to
new immigrants' contestations of hegemonic constructs whiteness, blackness, and the colors in between may be as
of race (Basch et al. 1994), and in the growing size and in- problematic and harmful as those obtaining in the U.S.
fluence of established nonblack minorities, notably Lati- folk dichotomy. In many Caribbean and Latin American
nos and Asian Americans. Shanklin's criticism of the contexts, despite the valorization of mestizaje (mixed-
limitations and negative consequences of this folk con- ness), whiteness (achievable through whitening, or
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 619

blanqueamiente) tends to symbolize power, wealth, eco- period a race-cognizant discourse acknowledging racial
nomic advancement, rationality, and civilized culture, differences and inequalities has been elaborated, particu-
while blackness signifies the natural, sensuality, hy- larly in certain streams of multiculturalism. Frankenberg
persexuality, athleticism, musicality, laziness, intellec- also observes that elements from different discourses
tual deficiency, and cultural deprivation or pathology frequently commingle and interact, forming discursive
(e.g.,Robotham 1993; Twine 1998; Wade 1993). A possi- repertoires. The discursive repertoires of considerable
ble implication of Torres and Whitten' s (1998; analysis of numbers of white voices today obscure race—indeed ada-
blackness in the Caribbean and Latin America is that, to mantly deny its relevance—without erasing its insidious
some extent, the opposition that Puerto Ricans, Domini- meanings. Although race-denying discourse is subtle, it
cans, and other Caribbean and Latin American immi- nonetheless has racializing effects that work "between the
grants express against U.S. racial classifications impli- lines" and "beneath the texts." In social contexts in which
cates their ambivalence toward and denial of blackness, overt racism is no longer publicly acceptable, more subtly
which they, too, often assign to the social bottom of both raced language appears to be more socially appropriate
the U.S. and their home societies.24 The complicated "ra- and morally defensible. This apparent legitimacy makes
cial calculus" and color continuum that anthropologists this form of racialized discourse all the more powerful.
have documented have ideologically glorified mixedness Hills insightful essay makes us more aware of the spe-
and "racial democracy" while denigrating and, in some in- cific linguistic features and dynamics of the various dis-
stances, erasing blackness from the national discourse and courses that racialize subjects. She perceptively eluci-
consciousness. Even when conceptually and discursively dates the way that vulgar racist discourse, elite racist
structured as a continuum or a tripartite or even more mul- discourse, and, the main focus of her analysis, covert racist
tileveled hierarchy, racial classification systems of vary- discourse operate in a "culture of language" among racial-
ing kinds make distinctions that are never neutral or in- ized subjects—both marked and unmarked—whose ac-
nocuous. If the United States relinquishes its black-white cents and ability to speak the standard language form feed
dichotomy in favor of a more multishaded discourse, will into racial formation processes. Her reflections on the in-
that discursive structure facilitate the democratization and ner and outer spheres of speech illuminate how racializa-
dismantling of race, or will it reconfigure and mask an en- tion occurs when the dominant linguistic order is breached
during stigmatization of blackness? These are the kinds of in outer spheres where language boundaries are carefully
questions that anthropological analysis, with its compara- disciplined and policed. Linguistic breaches signal disor-
tive perspectives on the cultural politics of worldviews, der, danger, and inherent difference—meanings invested
social classifications, and identities, can begin to address. in racial Others. The criteria for breaches, however, are
not restricted to linguistic rules, for, as mentioned earlier,
Covert Discourses in White Public Space there are specific outer spheres in which racial subordi-
nates can exhibit linguistic differences without being
According to Frankenberg's (1993:14) explication of evaluated as disorderly and subjected to boundary polic-
the social construction of whiteness, there have been three ing. The Puerto Rican folklife festival is one such instance
major racial discourses among American whites: one in of this. In this very time- and space-limited context, it ap-
which race is essentialized and biologized in explicitly pears that the racial hegemony accommodates linguistic
racist terms; another in which race and the power differen- difference by setting its performance on a liminal stage
tials structuring intergroup relations are evaded or denied; separated from everyday life and the experience of daily
and a third discourse that is conscious of the double-edged normalcy and difference. This distance from everyday ra-
character of race and is articulated from the vantage points cialization creates the space for the performers' publicly
of racial subordinates themselves. These discourses might recognized "ethnification." On the other hand, Hill's
be thought of as distinct phases in the historical develop- analysis suggests that the outer sphere display of linguistic
ment of race in this country, for at different moments one difference that teaching Ebonics in public schools repre-
discourse is likely to be more widespread or dominant sents is clearly taken as a serious breach of linguistic,
than others. Clearly during the nineteenth century, moral, and institutional order. The performance of Afri-
whether in the South Carolina low country or in major uni- can American English in this public space is perceived as a
versities in the Northeast where U.S. anthropology was sign of danger, dysfunctionality. and academic deficiency
professionalized, a race-essentialist discourse was preva- rather than a marker of the legitimate cultural distinctive-
lent, in varying popular and academic permutations. In the ness that is respected and permitted in the cases of popula-
current context of the post-civil rights era, a race-evasive, tions with nonracialized ethnic status.
color-blind discourse has become more widespread Hill's article is most insightful in elucidating the lin-
among people who, for naivete or self-serving purposes, guistic permissiveness conferred upon white people in the
deny the continued existence of racism now that segrega- outer sphere contexts that constitute white public space,
tion and discrimination are proscribed by law. Also in this where racial hegemony is symbolically and materially
620 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

enacted and reinforced without whiteness being made vis- can educators the authority to develop curricula around it
ible (Page and Thompson 1994). In white public space, so that black working-class children have the right to par-
linguistic behaviors are differentially evaluated and moni- ticipate in a bidialectal learning environment customized
tored by race. Using thg interesting case of "Mock Span- specifically for their learning styles and needs. The white-
ish," Hill demonstrates How whites are permitted to mix dominated linguistic order stigmatizes Ebonics as unem-
ungrammatical and substandard Spanish in their public braceable even in school systems that the majority of local
speech while code switching among Puerto Ricans and white folks have abandoned.
Mexican Americans is penalized for being disorderly and Hill points out that the black indexicality of some cross-
threatening. In white public space, white speakers' disor- overs is suppressed and, therefore, much more difficult to
der is rendered invisible and normalized as "colloquial" or discern than in the case of Mock Spanish. However, both
"cosmopolitan" while racial subordinates' linguistic of these linguistic incorporations along with the newer
breaches are set up to be hypervisible objects of the moral trend in "crossings" among white youth growing up in
panics and political campaigns constitutive of a backlash. multicultural settings present promising opportunities for
If we consider the implications of Hill's analysis, which further linguistic-anthropological investigation.
points to language being an important dimension of racial Although Hill's focus is on how covert discourses con-
"subject-ification" (see Ong 1996), and apply them to an struct white public space, she also acknowledges the po-
earlier era, we can perhaps assume that a linguistic disci- tential for de-essentializing discursive forms to subvert
pline similar to that imposed upon contemporary racial the linguistic order of racism. Anthropological linguists
Others was deployed in the past to police the language can contribute a great deal by exploring the interplay be-
boundaries that marked the relationship that dominant tween de-essentializing and essentializing discourses.
Anglo-Americans had with the Irish, Italian, and Jewish
immigrants whose whiteness was not automatic by virtue More Lessons from History
of their European origins and fair pigmentation. The ex-
tension of Hill's approach to the cultural history thatOrser Smedley gives us an invaluable lesson on the history of
and Smedley address would be apt, especially in view of identity construction in human societies, underscoring
the fact that the European "sub-races" were more visible that the rise of racial identities represents a profound de-
as ethnoracialized Others in their language practices than parture from earlier epochs. She points out that although
in their phenotypes. Hence, it would seem that language the current public discourse gives the impression that mul-
disorder would have been particularly salient as a focus of ticulturalism is a new phenomenon, intercultural and
moral panics and racial discipline. A historicized anthro- interethnic relations have long been integral features of
pological linguistics would be able to contribute to an in- human history and development. Long before European
vestigation of the discursive processes that mediated colonial expansion, Old World societies were shaped by
those immigrants' upward racial (and class) mobility. short- and long-distance trade, empire expansion, alliance
Hill writes convincingly of Mock Spanish as a racist making, intermarriage, and flows of cultural knowledge
discourse at once elevating whiteness and racially Other- across extensive geographical distances. Smedley also
ing Spanish speakers. This process is not achieved correctly questions the widespread assumption that multi-
through the means of explicit hate language. Instead, it is ethnicity inevitably leads to conflict and cultural struggles
accomplished through a covert discourse characterized by over identity.
indirect indexicality. The ability of Mock Spanish to re- She explains that the cultural grammar of intergroup in-
produce white racist attitudes is rooted in its hidden and in- teraction has differed over historical time and sociocultu-
direct character—that is, its ability to mobilize widely un- ral setting. In ancient societies, ethnicity was more malle-
derstood nonreferential meanings or indexes. Mock able and context-specific. Identities based largely on
Spanish's intelligibility is contingent on its speakers' "ac- place of birth and language changed as individuals and
cess to racializing representations" (p. 683) of Spanish- groups moved to new localities and became incorporated
speaking people. Knowledge of these racist images is pre- into new groups. Other factors that influenced identity
supposed by the "jocular or pejorative 'key' " that is construction were kinship connections, principles of de-
embedded in the several communicative practices that scent, occupation, and religion. Rank and class were also
characterize Mock Spanish. important indicators; however, even in socially stratified
The incorporation of linguistic heterogeneity in white contexts, the status ofslaves was not a permanent one, nor
public speech draws not only on appropriations of Span- was it correlated with specific ethnic, phenotypic, or geo-
ish. African American English crossovers are even more graphical origins. Indeed, as Drake's (1987,1990) anthro-
pervasively entangled in White English. Ironically, the so- pological history of "black folk here and there" in Old
cial linguistic double standard allows whites to exten- World antiquity shows, Negroid persons, who came to be
sively appropriate "embraceable" (Page 1997) forms of targeted for the transatlantic slave trade, were not specifi-
African American English while denying African Ameri- cally earmarked for slavery, and blackness, specifically
 HARRISON ' INTRODUCTION 621

Negroid physiognomy, was not a mark of stigma. Accord- age Irish and civilized English with them when they set-
ing to Drake's interpretation of the records, when color tled in the American colonies, and the historically specific
prejudice existed it was not premised on the phenotypi- conditions there gave rise to the ideational and institu-
cally different having an exploited, low-status social loca- tional contexts in which one of the most rigid forms of ra-
tion; nor was this prejudice a component of an elaborate cialization emerged and became entrenched.
cluster of ideas on the kinds of essentialized differences The invention of whiteness is a matter that Smedley.
that later came to be defined as "race." along with Orser and Hill, addresses in her assessment of
Giving us a sweep through thousands of years, Smedley the factors that gave rise to a racial worldview in which,
paints a picture of intercultural tolerance and minimal eventually, a black/white opposition was naturalized.26
strife, even under the conditions of state and empire ex- Describing the background and the aftermath of the 1676
pansion, which entailed the mobilization of violence, or Bacon's Rebellion, she describes how the colonial state
its threat, both militarily and ideologically. However, mobilized against the crisis of legitimacy that led inden-
based on her reading of historical sources (including the tured servants, poor freedmen, and slaves to join forces
Bible), she extrapolates that in ancient societies' world- against propertied classes in a major episode of political
views, including those of highly stratified, politically cen- unrest and disorder. In response, colonial administrators
tralized social orders, even "barbarians" were transform- codified laws that divided the laboring classes along clear
able, a point underscoring the belief in human malleability (and artificial) racial lines. White-skin privileges were es-
and reinvention. Perhaps this ontological orientation off- tablished to seduce exploited Euro-Americans into com-
set or contained whatever tendencies that might have ex- pliance. The cross-class alliance—premised on the pay-
isted for invidious forms of ethnic stratification and ethnic ment of a psychological wage (Du Bois 1935: Nonini
segmentation of labor, rendering the mass of newly incor- 1992) that racial privilege represented to otherwise dis-
porated people vulnerable to exploitation. As Paynter's empowered Euro-American settlers—provided a basis
(1989) reflections on the archaeology of social inequality for disciplining and containing the disorder that the in-
suggest, the "complex societies" that emerged overevolu- digenous and African presence engendered. However,
tionary and historical time were structured according to Smedley makes the important point that the poor settlers
principles of dominance and exploitation. Conventional benefited from more than a psychological wage. Then-
models of social evolution that treat as a given the func- whitening was also mediated by what one might consider
tionality and stabilizing effects of increasing complexity to be the nation's first "affirmative action" policy. After
evade, if not erase, the tensions and struggles that fed into the rebellion, the colonial state "provided resources and
and perhaps even drove the historical ebbs and flows of so- benefits to poor, white freedmen" while the rights and op-
ciocultural change. Those struggles over political power, portunities of peoples of color were severely restricted.27 It
economic resources, and the culturalrightto (re)define re- should not be surprising that at that historical moment the
ality and legitimate some meanings over others in the con- economic significance of racial slavery grew and that the
tested space of public culture were likely to be informed, phenotypic and cultural differences characterizing Afri-
in one way or another, by competing and conflicting cul- cans and their descendants became ideologically marked
tural identities. and, hence, hypervisible.
The historic record, however, convinces Smedley as Smedley's essay is most poignant when she discusses
well as numerous other scholars (e.g., Drake 1987,1990; the psychocultural assaults that racism levels against ra-
Snowden 1983) that those early conflicts, no matter how cialized segments of society, particularly African Ameri-
intense or even bloody they may have been, did not create cans who have been racially targeted in particularly in-
the conditions for a racial worldview. Racial meanings, vidious ways due to their positioning as the binary
signaling the social salience of superficial phenotypic opposites of whites and the social bottom of the racial hier-
differences, did not crystallize until the eighteenth cen- archy. All racially subjugated peoples have had to struggle
tury, and by the nineteenth century the relatively new folk with the dilemma of constructing a positive, valorizing
ideology became the preoccupation of a modern "sci- identity to offset the negative representations projected by
ence," which elevated the folk naturalization of difference the wider society, but black folk have had to deal with an
to one of society's most powerful legitimating realms. As ideological assault that has historically represented them
Smedley states, at that juncture, race took precedence over as the antithesis of civilization, intelligence, and eco-
"religion, ethnic origin, education, class, occupation, nomic advancement—factors claimed as the constituent
[and] language" (p. 695)." The racial worldview affected elements of whiteness.
not only conquered Native Americans and enslaved Afri- Smedley situates Afrocentrism in this psychocultural
cans but also racially suspect European "sub-races." Like context, while offsetting the tendency to isolate this par-
Orser, Smedley examines the Irish situation as a prime ex- ticular discursive opposition as unique. She rightly notes
ample of ethnic chauvinism bordering on racial Othering. that Afrocentrism is one among a number of other minority
The English brought this binary opposition between sav- ethnoracial discourses that have developed as responses to
622 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

American racism, but these other discourses lack the po- separating cultures and races—which Smedley. tran-
litically charged visibility of popular and academic Afro- scending Boas, understands to be social categories rather
centrisms, whose most essentialist streams have come to than biological types—are not coterminous, yet much of
represent it in media accounts. Afrocentric scholarship is the discussion on multiculturalism seems to assume that
not as monolithic as it is usually depicted. It ranges from "cultures" and "races" neatly coincide. Racially distinct
clearly essentialist inversions of biodeterminism (as in the segments of American society share a great deal of com-
melaninists [e.g., Barnes 1988], who attribute special ca- mon culture, but these similarities are not adequately rec-
pabilities and powers to dark skin color) and mythic glori- ognized by multiculturalists who emphasize differences.
fications of the "African motherland" to reasonable analy- Early (1996:58) has also written on some of the conse-
ses that acknowledge race and African origins, among quences of this overstated emphasis on difference and
other dimensions of identity, as a salient axis that, in some separation. In view of Herskovits's influence, we should
way, informs—but not determines—one's intellectual perhaps consider that some of the differences in the way
standpoint. Afrocentrism is a locus of debate over the sig- racially differentiated Americans experience and partici-
nificance of race, culture, gender, class, and power in the pate in the variants of American culture may have some-
lives of peoples of African descent (e.g., Asante 1987; thing to do with the legacies of their distinct cultural ori-
Collins 1991). Drake (1987) offered one of the best treat- gins. For example, an African-derived cultural grammar—
ments of the various discursive streams in the historical not necessarily most significantly manifested in the cur-
development of Afrocentrism and other forms of black rent commodification and consumption of kente cloth
vindicationist intellectualism. Illuminating Afrocentrism fashions—may be operative in informing black Ameri-
as a mode of everyday practice, Y. Jones (1997) analyzes cans' interpretation of cultural values and their distinctive
the popularization of these ideas as expressions of cultural styles of cultural participation and performance. More-
nationalism in a variety of local settings, including study over, to the extent that African reinterpretations still sur-
groups and small retail businesses. vive in U.S. society, they may, as entangled and reinter-
Another important issue that Smedley confronts is the preted "crossovers," underpin and permeate "white"
rise of mixedness as a locus of contestation over estab- culture (especially among southern whites) as well
lished racial categories that does not necessarily subvert (Philips 1990).
the deepest precepts concerning race. She rightly under- Smedley closes with an optimistic statement on the pos-
scores that mixed-race peoples and multicultural realities sibility of more "universal" identities emerging in light of
are not new phenomena, not even for Americans. Indeed, the growth of cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism dur-
whiteness and blackness were among the inventions de- ing the current global age. Will the rapid diffusion and in-
ployed to contain mixed people's potential for subverting terchange of commodities and cultural forms obviate
the dominant order of power. Smedley's picture of the so- race—or intensify it? Is it possible for human beings to re-
ciocultural past and present nicely complements Temple- turn to more malleable, fluid expressions of ethnicity and
ton's and CaitmiU's accounts of the biocultural record, transcend the limits of a racial worldview? At the present
which indicates that interchanges among socially andphe- moment, ethnicity in many parts of the world is vulnerable
notypically distinct populations have been an integral part to the forces of racialization, despite the global accessibil-
of our species' history. The protohistory of the kinds of so- ity of Coca Cola, jeans, and dreadlocks, which are prob-
cial forces that Smedley illuminates accompanied and ably more likely to be emissaries of capitalist commodity
mediated the population range expansions and recurrent
consumption than of universal solidarity. According to
gene flows that have shaped humanity's biological evolu-
Friedman's analysis of global processes, "there is a logical
tion. However, drawing on Friedman's (1994:209) and
connection between the decentralization of world accu-
Smedley's insights, we should note that the scientific facts
mulation [that is characterizing this stage of global capi-
of extensive biocultural interchange do not necessarily
translate into the social acts necessary for (institutional- talism] and the fragmentation of identities" (1994:210).
ized) multicultural identities. Moreover, the emergence of Attempting to reconcile Smedley's view with Fried-
a mixed-race or multiracial identification and identity has man's, the question then becomes, how can we offset and
historically specific ramifications beyond the open recog- counterbalance these differentiating conditions so that the
nition of the facts of miscegenation. At a juncture when global culture that we do in fact share may inspire us to
white dominance is being restructured and realigned in the "imagine a universal community" (Anderson 1983) de-
face of an eroding white predominance, are mixed-race scended from a single ancestral lineage?
identities vulnerable to being appropriated as a buffer for
buttressing white supremacy (Spears in press)? Racial Redemption and the Politics of Memory
Smedley's analysis also reminds us of a basic tenet Smedley's essay levels a poignant cultural critique
from Boas's antiracism: that race, language, and culture against the racial worldview and culture of racism that en-
are distinct and not mutually determining. The boundaries genders the suppression of self-esteem and distorted
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 623

forms of consciousness in the lived experience of racial to African antiquity. Although many Afrocentrist claims
Others. She uses her erudite knowledge of the past to con- reflect the limitations of an ahistorical racial essentialism
textualize the present-day dilemmas that racial identities that serves as a trope for constructing a contemporary
present for both selfhood and peoplehood. Early contin- identity politics, more methodologically cautious schol-
ues this concern with questions of history and the relation- arship (e.g.. Bernal 1987, Drake 1987) has argued that es-
ship between then and now, but he directs his attention to tablished Egyptology itself has been a site of contestation
how racial Others themselves, specifically African over ancient Egypt's relationship to Africa as a locus of
Americans, (re)construct the past through a cultural poli- culture and cultural variation. In other words, this is not an
tics of memory.2"5 While Smedley emphasizes the power of issue that Afrocentrists initiated themselves. It has also
the racializing order to impose invidious identifications, been an issue for hegemonic narratives of world history,
Early focuses on the role that the self-conscious construc- which have been no less immune than Afrocentrism from
tion of race plays in forming a useable, enabling identity. mythmaking. According to Bemal's research, as white su-
Drawing on Du Bois's ([1903]1990) insights, he under- premacy took its hold on institutionalized know ledge pro-
scores the virtually inevitable double-mindedness and duction in Europe and North America, earlier research
double-edged character of black identities, whether as that accepted Egypt's Africanity—based on the under-
early-twentieth-century Negroes or as late-twentieth-cen- standing that •African" denoted a great deal of cultural
tury African Americans. heterogeneity—was peripheralized and discredited,
A prominent cultural critic whose essays are widely while scholarship that dismembered Egypt from Africa,
published in academic and literary outlets, Early shares constructed then as "the dark continent." set the new stan-
his thought-provoking reflections on the contested con- dard for whitening Egyptian civilization.
structions of the past and memory. Using a teaching expe- In his attempt to place Afrocentrism in context, Early
rience at a historically black university as an engaging gives us a brief, but quite instructive, glimpse into the in-
point of departure, he examines the sacred and profane di- tellectual history of African Americans and their counter-
mensions of memory as the key to identity. Among Afri- parts from the Caribbean and the African continent who
can Americans in particular, contesting Euro-American subscribed to Pan-Africanism and other forms of Africa-
claims to a superior history has been an integral compo- and race-focused ideology. In this examination, he illumi-
nent in the struggle against racism. This contestation has nates interesting aspects of the thinking, politics, and, in
assumed the therapeutic form of claiming an equally (and, some cases, even the personalities of distinguished think-
according to some claims, more) civilized past in Africa. ers, writers, and activists, who, although sharing a basic
The "dark" and "savage" continent promulgated in racist commitment to dismantling racism and colonialism, did
discourses is redeemed through a recognition of ancient not form an intellectual or political consensus. Early also
EgyP t s Africanity and blackness. Early explains that broaches the subject of anthropology's influence on cer-
Egypt has been the focus of the "races in antiquity" de- tain figures, notably Du Bois and Hurston, both of whom
bates that Afrocentric and early Ethiopianist discourses had relationships with Boas.30 In this respect, he aptly re-
have stimulated, because Egypt is the only monumental minds us that anthropological voices have long been part
civilization in Africa that Europeans have recognized, ad- of a broader interdisciplinary discourse that extends far
mired, and appropriated as the roots of their own.29 In other beyond the boundaries of academic departments and pro-
words, Afrocentrists have absorbed, in inverted form, fessional associations. Anthropological ideas have stimu-
Eurocentric values and terms of reference concerning the lated struggles to redeem racially subjugated people. Can
criteria for civilization, a history worth remembering, and they now inspire struggles to transcend "race" as we know
race. Early points out that even Garvey, whose success at it?
mobilizing mass support for his repatriation project was a
distinctive historical achievement, built his African na- Concluding Remarks
tionalism around a double-edged admiration of the British
Empire, which was responsible for oppressing him as a Drawing on an expression from Jesse Jackson, who ex-
black Jamaican. Ironically, because of this indebtedness posed the "stuttering" inhibiting the nation's dialogue on
to the terms and structure of hegemonic discourse. Afro- race, Orser wams us of the dangers of becoming satisfied
centrists tend not to be interested in the very African states with "race entertainment," that is, broaching the subject of
and empires that figured prominently in the historical de- race, scratching its surface, without probing deeply and
velopment of the peoples from whom black Americans redressing its most significant and fundamental problems,
are directly descended. including those that are not readily perceived as "racial."
Africa's cultural and biological diversity encompasses After an extended hiatus, anthropology has again reached
both the N ile Valley and West Africa. That diversity is not a moment in its history when it cannot evade the pervasive
adequately acknowledged in Afrocentric discourse, power of racism. At a time when racial inequalities are be-
which ahistorically applies "U.S.-centric" notions of race ing denied as a reality and as a priority for public policy.
624 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

anthropologists have a special responsibility to help form on race, power, and culture as they affect the black world and be-
and mobilize a critical consciousness that can challenge yond have been chronicled in newsletters (beginning with News
both government and citizens to fulfill the promise of from the Natives and its successor, Notes from the ABA), the
democratic justice. To this important end, we must recog- relatively new journal, Transforming Anthropology, and a sub-
stantial body of publications that originated at least in part from
nize the importance of translating the results of our schol-
organized and invited sessions convened at annual meetings of
arship into an accessible language for democratic par- the American Anthropological Association (AAA). It is prob-
ticipation; otherwise, we run the risk of reproducing ably fair to say that black anthropologists, given their particular
anthropology's alienation from potentially strategic pub- location in an ethnoracial hierarchy that consistently relegates
lic arenas. Our unique disciplinary holism gives us the po- blackness and sub-Saharan African origins to the lowest level,
tential and the opportunity to enrich and extend the pub- have played an important part in recapturing anthropology from
lic's consciousness and to point in fruitful directions for its no-race retreat. In rethinking anthropology'srecenthistory, it
rethinking and change-provoking intervention. is important to recognize that before die past 10-15 years, an-
thropologists who dared to interrogate the power of race and ra-
Three decades after the profession's last major upsurge
cism often found their scholarship peripheralized, if not erased
on race (e.g., Mead et al. 1968),31 growing numbers of an- (Harrison 1988,[1991]1997a, 1992). The kind of intellectually
thropologists are finally seizing the moment to interrogate honest anthropology that Shanklin's essay urges us to expand
and rethink race as it is constructed and as it operates both must grapple with the social forces that influence the disci-
overtly and covertly in post-civil rights America and the pline's shifting "politics of reception" (Vincent 1991).
late-twentieth-century world, in models of the evolution- 2. Robotham (1997), drawing on Scott (1996), points out
ary and historical past, and in the discipline itself. It is our that the juncture and condition designated as postcoloniality is
hope that the several articles in this Contemporary Issues characterized by the loss of the "happy assumptions" regarding
Forum will provoke more of our colleagues to accept the the potential for change and development (including noncapi-
challenge of, and the responsibility for, critiquing, theo- talist and socialist paths) that were associated with the non-
rizing, and creatively intervening in the everyday cultural aligned movement before die collapse of die eastern Communist
bloc and the consequent "triumph of capitalism." Bell (1992)
logic of "race."
and Winant (1994) seem to have relinquished the happy as-
sumptions on racism that seemed to characterize antiracist intel-
Notes lectuals and activists before the entrenchment of the post-civil
Acknowledgments. I would like to express my thanks to eve- rights (and now post-affirmative action) "racial project" (Wi-
ryone whose personal communications, suggestions of refer- nant 1994).
3. During a 1997 AAA Annual Meeting public forum on af-
ences, sharing of materials, and other kinds of supportive input
firmative action, anthropologist Glynn Custred, coauthor of the
made my writing this essay and this Contemporary Issues Fo-
California Civil Rights Initiative, or Proposition 209, made the
rum possible. Special appreciation is extended to Yolanda T.
statement mat affirmative action is a coercive set of government
Moses and Robert Sussman, whose combined vision and initia-
regulations that represents die "transmutation of Jim Crow" into
tive made this special issue a reality. I am especially indebted to
a racism directed at whites. We can assume that this political
Robert S ussman for all his effort over the past two years in mov - stance is informed by Dr. Custred's expertise as an anthropolo-
ing the project toward its successful completion. Thanks also go gist who has devoted much of his career to the study of Latin
to Laura Ahearn, Lee Baker, Michael Blakey, William Conwill, America. Although white proponents of anti-affirmative action
Yvonne Jones, Alice Kasakoff, Ann Kingsolver, Tom Leather- campaigns have included (or appropriated the experiences of)
man, Arthur Spears, and Marilyn Thomas-Houston, who were Asian Americans in dieir arguments on discrimination and pref-
there for me when I needed informed conversation, feedback, erential treatment, a number of insightful analyses of how
and encouragement Beatrice Medicine, John Rickford, and Asiansfitinto post-civil rights era racial politics have been done
Paule Cruz Taskash also recommended names, shared articles, (e.g., Takagi 1993,1994). The "model minority" status of Asian
and offered constructive collegial critique that informed my ap- Americans has been extensively critiqued (e.g., Ong 1996;
proach to the project, even when I was unable to use them in os- Takaki 1979; Yanagisako 1993). Indeed, Ong (1996) argues
tensibly direct ways. I am also indebted to Leonard Lieberman that the least economically and politically privileged categories
for his exemplary ethic of cooperative work and inspiring 30- of Asians, such as the Cambodians, are subjected to a racial Oth-
year record of antiracist research. Finally, I would like to ac- ering process that blackens them while more privileged catego-
knowledge Linda Sussman's careful copyediting, which im- ries of Asians (e.g., Chinese and Japanese) undergo a whitening
proved the essay's readability. that confers cultural citizenship and "subject-ification" upon
1. Johnnetta B. Cole, along with other members of the Asso- diem.
ciation of Black Anthropologists (ABA), has frequently urged 4. For a recent review of anthropological analyses of race
anthropologists to face the power that racism, with its clear im- and racism, see Harrison (1995). The article offers an "anthro-
plications for human rights, still exerts in American society. pology of knowledge" perspective on canonical and noncanoni-
Over the course of the association's more than twenty-year his- cal trajectories of antiracist scholarship; a discussion on the in-
tory, the ABA has consistently addressed racism, both within tensification of racism and theriseof new racisms in the current
the profession and in the wider society and world, in its sessions global context; a comparative view of how race is constructed
and publications. The association's long-standing discussions around the world, including in sociocultural settings for which
 HARRISON INTRODUCTION 625

race-cognizant inquiry is fairly new for the anthropological United States mat exposed the cultural and structural forces of
gaze; an examination of the rethinking being done on Latin racism (e.g., Berreman 1972 [whose work was conceptual and
American "racial democracies"; a consideration of how race is theoretical but addressed the U.S. situation]; Blu 1979, 1980;
being contested and reconfigured in an increasingly multicul- Davis 1945; Davis andHavighurst 1948; Davis and Hess 1951;
tural U.S. society; and a discussion on the growth of investiga- Drake 1966; Leacock 1969,1977; Ogbu 1978).
tions that focus on whiteness. 11. See Rickford (1997) for a more detailed explanation of
5. Paule Cruz Taskash (1998:50) has criticized die AAA's die Oakland School Board's language policy and the competing
privileging of a black-white dialogue in highly visible sessions linguistic theories on Ebonics' historical development and con-
(notably the 1997 Presidential Sessions on race) at the expense temporary characteristics as a "systematically rule-governed
of widening the disciplinary conversation to include the vantage speech variety" (1997:82).
points of other racialized subjects. Unfortunately, the selection 12. For an excellent overview of the meanings, bodi
of perspectives represented in this special forum is also limited hegemonic and counter-hegemonic, invested in blackness in the
in this very respect; however, an attempt was made to organize circum-Caribbean and Latin America, consult Whitten and Tor-
this "expanded discourse" around an intellectual diversity res (1998), especially Torres and Whitten (1998).
reflecting theoretical, subdisciplinary. and ethnoracial differ- 13. Of course, these categories have had a contrapuntal rela-
ences. Due to any number of reasons and circumstances, every- tionship widi much more offensive terms of reference, includ-
one who was initially invited to contribute could not. Limita- ing savage, darlde, and nigger. See Baker (1998b) for a useful
tions of both time and space led us to restrict the issue to these treatment of the sociocultural and politico-legal underpinnings
seven articles and essays, which articulate the thought-provok- of the movement from "savage to Negro."
ing perspectives of a most distinguished group of scholars. 14. I would like to acknowledge that my characterization of
6. Although it is not at all uncommon for news media to call this watershed discourse as "revolutionary" has been influenced
upon anthropologists to clarify questions on the scientific valid- by the approach mat biological anthropologist Russell Reid
ity of "race" (e.g., see science editor Charles Petit's "No Bio- took in a lecture on race he delivered to a race and ethnic rela-
logical Basis for Race, Scientists Say," San Francisco Chron- tions class I taught in the early 1980s at the University of Louis-
icle, February 23, 1998), some of the most visible public ville. The clarity and cogency of his synthesis of that literature
intellectuals called upon to be spokespersons on race and related was simply compelling and made an impact on me and, hope-
cultural matters, whether in print (e.g., "op ed" articles in The fully, my students.
New York Times) or electronic media, tend to be "cultural crit- 15. Perhaps an implication of Lieberman and Reynolds's
ics" trained in the humanities rather than in the social sciences. analysis is diat a greater presence of persons who have experi-
Which anthropologists have the stature and platforms that phi- enced social marginality (by virtue of gender, ethnicity oredinic
losopher Cornel West, literary critic Henry Louis Gates, and origins, having grandparents who were immigrants, etc.) would
now historian John Hope Franklin (the distinguished senior drive the paradigm shift forward so diat anonracialistposition is
scholar whom Bill Clinton appointed to lead the President's In- accepted as normal science, the new scientific hegemony. It is
itiative on Race) do? While their celebrity may be well deserved, interesting that Lieberman and Reynolds did not collect data on
the relative inaudibility and invisibility of anthropologists are, social class backgrounds, although this variable may have been
nonetheless, troubling. implicit in ethnic and immigrant background. Or did the re-
7. See Visweswaran (1998) for a critical discussion on the searchers assume that me population they were studying was
distinctions Boasians made between race and culture, and their largely bom into the middle class? It would be interesting to
general acceptance of a biological definition of race separated know to what extent class figures in "underdog" status and expe-
from the negative evaluations stemming from racism. Mon- rience.
tagu's approach marked a major shift; however, it shared the as- 16. Goldberg (1997) has a similar view of the social and po-
sumption that race, despite its untenability, was a biological no- litical significance of "counting by race," which he admits puts
tion rather than a social and cultural fact. us in a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" position. Despite
8. A number of feminist andiropologists, especially in their this paradox, he argues that "race codes past and present dis-
third and current phase of intellectual development (Moore crimination, offering a rough and ready indication of opportuni-
1988) in which questions of difference are being probed, have ties that were (un)available at different moments in time. It
recognized race's salience in mediating gendered identities and serves as a 'measure' merefore of the sorts of odds against or un-
experiences among women—and men. der which middle-class black persons . . . attained or retained
9. For one approach to anthropology's history that under- their middle-class status, or of the degree to which poorer blacks
scores these issues as they relate to the earliestgenerations of Af- have been denied socioeconomic mobility. Counting by class
rican American anthropologists, see Harrison and Harrison (in doesn't quite do, for . . . it undercounts the racially marginal-
press). ized, but also benefits the whitened marginalized at the expense
10. During the 1960sand 1970s andiropologists (e.g., Harris of me black" (1997:56-57). He also states that reference groups
1964, 1970; Sanjek 1971) did investigate the "racial calculus" are needed for implementing compensatory justice, if we are
used witfiin Latin America, particularly in Brazil. However, committed to it.
much of diis work accepted many of the assumptions underlying 17. There was also a process of darkening or blackening in
mestizaje, which support the ideology of racial democracy and operation, hi some settings intermediate "races" were recog-
leave the Latin American variant of racism unchallenged. Be- nized and codified in law. The legal status of Native Americans,
fore the current wave, a number of anthropologists went against free people of color, and Asians (e.g., the Mississippi Chinese)
die grain of established trends in order to conduct research in the shifted up or down depending on the sociopolitical and economic
626 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST • VOL. 100, No. 3 • SEPTEMBER 1998

climate. Over time, all persons of known African origins were 22. Green (1970,1978) outlined some promising directives
blackened. For instance, this is reflected in the elimination of the for researching the diversity among African Americans. For fur-
"mulatto" category from the census by 1930. This category was ther discussion on her approach and its implications for decon-
used in all but one census from 1850-1920. In 1890 there were structing race, see Harrison (1998a: 184).
two additional categories (quadroon and octoroon) coding the 23. See Harrison (1998a) for a discussion on how Foster's
extent of miscegenation among people of African descent, and and Willis's scholarship can be revisited for its clues for rehisto-
ten years later no distinctions were made according to black ricizing the category of race in the colonial and early postcolo-
"blood" amounts. However, in the very next census the black nial history of the U.S. southeast. Also see Moses (in press) and
and mulatto distinction was reintroduced, reflecting, as Gold- Sanday (in press) for intellectual biographies of these neglected
berg (1997:41) suggests, "the struggle to balance blackness with anthropologists. See Forbes (1993) for a thought-provoking
the self-evident effects of miscegenation." In 1930, when the analysis of relations, and in somecases fusions, between indige-
homogenizing trend for African Americans took root, the cen- nous and African people in the Americas.
sus put all African descendants into a single category ("Negro") 24. B asch et al. (1994) point out that in many Caribbean con-
while the number of categories for Asians increased consider- texts postcolonial nationalist discourses have redefined black-
ably. Goldberg attempts to explain this shift in terms of "the pre- ness in more positive terms. Segal (1993), however, suggests
vailing institutional mandates of racialized segregation and im- that the subtext of the elaborate color terminology that is com-
migration restriction .. . [prompting] seemingly precise monly applied to people of varying combinations of African and
[according to ideological definitions] specifications for report- European descent suggests that lightening represents social im-
ingrace"(1997:41). provement in both racial and cultural terms.
18. Also see Franklin (1997) for a report on the dearth of Af- 25. Smedley emphasizes the role of the United States as the
rican American archaeologists. major locus for the crystallization of race and as an epicenter
19. Although the folk ideology of race in the United States from which racial ideology diffused throughout the world. Al-
clearly emphasizes skin color in its idiom, cultural principles of though the United States was certainly a major source of the ra-
descent—specifically hypodescent in the case of African cializing ideas impacting many other parts of the world, it is im-
Americans—govern the racial designation, regardless of actual portant to consider that there were also particular internal
dynamics within other areas of the colonized and formerly colo-
color or phenotype. Forexample, a phenotypically white person
nized world that gaveriseto a variety of racial formations and ra-
belonging to a family of known African descent is not racially
cial worldviews, few of which were as systematized andrigidas
classified according to skin color but according to customary as-
those that evolved in the United States and southern Africa.
sumptions concerning socially salient ancestry. In this instance,
Stoler's (1989) work on colonial Asia and Whitten and Torres's
that person would be categorized as "black."Darker-colored in-
(1998) work on the neglected racial dynamics in the history of
dividuals of publicly recognized European, North African, or Latin American societies are just two examples of the revised
Western Asian origins are defined as"white." See Smedley'ses- cultural histories to which anthropological research is con-
say for insights into the social construction of identification and tributing.
identity among African Americans. Color and phenotype have 26. Forbes (1993) and Goldberg (1997) show that during
more weight elsewhere in the Americas, where the first hypo- much of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries,
thetical person described above would be designated differ- U.S. racial classifications reflected public recognition of many
ently, perhaps even as "white," depending on such factors as so- of the "shades of human color" to which Shanklin's essay refers.
cial class. The meanings of negro, mulatto, mestizo, and so on shifted over
20. Shanklin's concern with the color blindness articulated time and space, making it difficult to know exactly which popu-
in textbooks was addressed in a series of sessions and work- lations were the referents.
shops collaboratively organized by the Association of Black 27. For a discussion on the history of "preferential treat-
Anthropologists and the Association for Feminist Anthropol- ment" in U.S. politics, see Harrison's (1998b) counterpoint on
ogy in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Transforming Anthropol- affirmative action, which examines how the federal government
ogy's theme issue, Teaching as Praxis: Decolonizing Media subsidized white upward mobility at various points of the na-
Representations of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender in the New tion-state's history. The period following Bacon's Rebellion
World Order (Maxwell and Buck 1992), is one outcome of appears to be one of the earliest instances of this state-sponsored
these events. Other outcomes may perhaps be found across the practice of racially differential preferential treatment benefiting
country in classrooms where anthropology is being taught. Just whites and groups that have been incorporated into whiteness by
as an example, Pern Buck, who teaches community college stu- shifts in social definitions and political priorities.
dents in a central Kentucky town, developed her own custom- 28. See Bond and Gilliam (1994) for several thought-
ized text from a "decolonizing perspective" that treats the social provoking essays on the social construction of the past.
inequalities of race, class, and gender as integral factors shaping 29. From his unique perspective on anthropology and his-
sociocultural landscapes throughout the global order. Buck was tory, Drake (1970) wrote a compelling essay on Ethiopianism
especially concerned that her students, mostly poor whites, have and religious forms of resistance in African American and Afri-
exposure to an accessible treatment of race and class so that they can Caribbean intellectual history. The themes initiated in this
could come to understand their own location in relations of ra- early scholarship are addressed more fully in his later work, par-
cism. ticularly in Black Folk Here and There, Volume 1 (Drake 1987).
21. Anthropological insights into nonconformity and dis- 30. See Harrison (1992, 1995), Muller (1992), and Baker
sent can be found in Gwaltney's The Dissenters (1986). (1994) for more detailed treatments of these relationships.
 HARRISON ' INTRODUCTION 627

31. Niara Sudarkasa participated in the 1960s' AAA plenary Greece, 1785-1985. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Univer-
session on race that resulted in the coedited book Science and the sity Press.
Concept of Race (Mead et al. 1968). During a discussion follow- Berreman, Gerald D.
ing the presidential session on race at the 1997 AAA meeting, 1972 Race, Caste, and Other Invidious Distinctions in So-
Sudarkasa remarked on the cyclicality of the unresolved issues cial Stratification. Race 13(4):385-414.
of race. Offering some hindsight, she pointed out that the 1997 Blu, Karen
discussion echoed many of the same issues raised in the earlier 1979 Race and Ethnicity—Changing Symbols of Domi-
session. After Montagu's early 1940s' intervention, it took an- nance and Hierarchy in the United States. Anthropology
other twenty years before his no-race position crystallized in the Quarterly 52:77-85.'
advances made during the 1960s. Now, three decades later, an- 1980 The Lumbee Problem: The Making of an American
thropologists have built up momentum on the race issue again. Indian People. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bond, George C, and AngelaGilliam, eds.
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