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Unmarking Whiteness and the New American Racism

Race and Racism in Western Science and Society, Volume 3

Michael L. Blakey

$305

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English
Routledge
18 July 2025
This book criticizes recent performative solutions to racism (""diversity"" programs at universities, for example) and White people’s ""Fragility"" or intolerance of mature criticism. These ideas are locked in an intellectually gated and defensive conversation that effectively denies the ongoing, particular abuses of White supremacy. This book instead proposes expensive educational and economic changes (including reparations) as necessary to achieve real equity. Once imputed by the eugenical effects of World War II and the Civil Rights Movement’s opposition to White racism, the word ""race"" was largely stricken from scientific writing. But biological determinism remained deeply ensconced in an institution of science that assumed the natural world to be determining, making natural science its most authoritative means. Authoritative heritability estimates and genetic correlations, though spurious, continued to imply that obvious racial and class inequalities (including their dire health effects) were natural and acceptable. White people often attempted to ""unmark"" their racial identity and assumed that of the uniquely normal people as though an act of anti‑racism (Frankenberg shows). On the contrary, it served to deny their skin color privileges while enjoying benefits of ongoing structural racism as the only real, complete human beings in the room. This book uses an ethnology of anthropology to show White people’s equivocal views of ""other’s"" equality in their formal analyses, museum collections and exhibitions, and treatment of colleagues in recent times. They remained deliberately deaf to critical African diasporic scholarship. Thus, ""Unmarking"" gives an anthropological analysis of the social history of White supremacy and shows what it is like for some to confront it. In constructing this historical and sociological counternarrative, the author provides a critical new social history that illuminates a tangled and turgid past for contemporary readers, students, and researchers with vital insights for anthropology, sociology, history, cultural studies, philosophy, and American studies.
By:  
Imprint:   Routledge
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 234mm,  Width: 156mm, 
ISBN:   9781032827124
ISBN 10:   1032827122
Pages:   370
Publication Date:  
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Primary ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Foreword by Johnetta B. Cole Preface AcknowledgementsOverview of Volumes I and II 1. Unmarked Whiteness and Anti-Racial Racism at the End of the 20th Century 2. The Crime Scene 3. Race was the Surrogate for Genetics, Now Genetics is the Surrogate for Race 4. Diversity and Diffusion 5. The Circumstances Under Which I Live and Work: My Canary in the Mine Shaft 6. The Untenable Personality of Whiteness 7. Conclusions, Arrival Here and Now

Michael L. Blakey, National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and American Studies and Director of the Institute for Historical Biology, is a leading anthropologist at William & Mary, whose training and productive research career (80 publications in major journals) integrates human biology, history, and culture, including critical writings on the history and philosophy of science. He directed the unparalleled bioarchaeological and interdisciplinary project on the African Burial Ground, today a U.S. National Monument in Manhattan. He is the recipient of many awards, including two President’s Awards of the American Anthropological Association, the Legacy Award of the Association of Black Anthropologists, an Honorary Doctor of Science from CUNY, and the Plumeri Award.

Reviews for Unmarking Whiteness and the New American Racism: Race and Racism in Western Science and Society, Volume 3

""Anthropology is inherently interdisciplinary, and is inordinately implicated in the making of race and racism. This means that, as a field, it ends up today with tools able to understand racism and white supremacy and how all of that happened. Michael Blakey, in this new work, offers a skillful and panoramic view of how anthropology can add to our understanding of race and racism. This work will offer the opportunity to foster inter- and transdisciplinary conversations that aren’t always possible or prioritized. There are not enough books with this kind of ambition and innovation!"" Christopher Driscoll, Associate Professor of Religion, Lehigh University ""The methodology of ethnography, alongside the telling of the making of racism through biology and anthropology, is exciting and valuable. Such an approach can help readers to understand the very human implications of choices made and rejected in science. As such, this work by Michael Blakey will be useful for university courses on race that explore its production and reproduction in science. It will be especially attractive as a textual resource on Western campuses wherein significant sectors of society and science remain attached to racial determinism. This will make a valuable contribution to the variety of texts on the social construction of race and is a welcome invitation to interdisciplinary conversation."" Jacqueline Battalora, Professor of Sociology, Saint Xavier University in Chicago, author of Birth of a White Nation (Routledge, 2021) ""This work by Michael Blakey is both timely and will remain of enduring relevance for many years. The persistence of racism and surge of white backlash to efforts to address racial inequality, anti-Black violence, including and prominently in education, makes this work especially important in the contemporary moment. At the same time, the time-depth and scope of the book will mean that it maintains relevance for years to come. Taking the volumes together, I know of no single work that addresses and synthesizes the invention of race, the history of racism, and the contemporary dynamics of racism and politics of race, and science about race to the extent that this project does."" Mark Anderson, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz ""Many books and articles have been published on the subject of race. Michael Blakey’s thoroughness, scholarship, and lived experience makes his three-volume set stand out from the pack. It is an essential resource for anyone seriously interested in the topic."" Jeffrey C. Long, Professor Emeritus, University of New Mexico


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