Abstract
There has long been a debate on the use of race as a concept in sociology, especially related to its application beyond the United States. Some scholars posit that we cannot extrapolate unilaterally from the American experience, and that different places across the world retain idiosyncratic ways of classifying people beyond Black and White; on the other hand, other scholars counter that race is becoming a lingua franca of sorts in explaining essentialized forms of social differences, and that many actors across the world invoke the term to explain their predicament. Of course, when examined closely, the exchange is not just about nomenclature. There are bigger theoretical and historical stakes involved in whether one embraces the term race, and scholars have justifiably debated these stakes for some time.
The Global Journey of Racism firmly takes one side in this debate, namely that of “yes” on race, and may have dealt a decisive blow to the other side with the sheer weight of secondary literature it amasses. Author Michelle Christian judiciously reviews a wide variety of studies on race and racism across the globe and carefully showcases how these seemingly unique cases relate to each other. Christian persuasively puts forward an argument for a globalized system of racial dominance, in which all people and institutions grapple with race under the gravity of white supremacy and anti-blackness.
Critics may rush to condemn this argument as another attempt at essentializing race, but it is far from it. From the beginning, Christian firmly takes the historicized view of race, noting that European expansion and ensuing colonial violence was at the roots of race and racism. “We all live in a racist world” (p. ix), Christian writes on the very first page. But Christian’s aim is not to exaggerate or homogenize racism across the world, but to “describe how every geography is touched by European-created global racism in direct-indirect, visible-invisible ways” (p. x). In other words, the key in understanding the global journey of racism is to simultaneously appreciate the unity of its origin but also the diversity of its manifestations. In the following six chapters, Christian lays out how this state of the world came to be. “The global racial system emerged in the crucible of racist modernity and empires” (p. xi). The major pillars of modernity—liberalism, science, and (modern) cultural spectacle—all bear the marks of race and racism, according to Christian, and as such, all those who embraced the modernity have been influenced by those harmful ideas, though in varying degrees.
In chapters dedicated to “traveling racism” and racial states, respectively, Christian weaves together an impressive number of secondary sources to present a panorama of racial dynamics across all the major regions of the world, including Antarctica (p. 29). I especially appreciated the skillful ways in which Christian brings together diverse topics, including but not limited to racial capitalism, border control, militarism, and K-Pop, under the single narrative of race. Christian strikes a careful balance between presenting too much and too little detail on each case, giving readers a rich yet manageable amount of information. In addition to the main body, the footnotes of these chapters are very useful as they contain incisive commentary on ongoing scholarly debates in race scholarship as well as numerous references to works from diverse disciplines, such as history, ethnic studies, psychology, and anthropology.
While the diversity in cases and unity in theoretical argument are clearly strengths of this book, there are moments in which the tensions between these two themes are exposed. Throughout the book, Christian explains the global racial system as structured by white supremacy on top and anti-blackness at the bottom, with many different places and peoples caught in between. Again, the force of racism, just like gravity, is all-encompassing but not completely deterministic, granting pockets of idiosyncratic zones here and there. For the most part, the descriptions of these instances are dynamic, in the sense that a particular configuration of racial order is sufficiently flexible and fluid. In a few instances, however, the writing resorts to the familiar trope of “but white supremacy and anti-blackness,” namely that any variation can be interpreted through the cunning of racism and that we are naïve to assume otherwise.
This deterministic, mechanistic tendency is most conspicuous in schematic presentations—most notably in the grouping of Australia, New Zealand, and East Asian countries in a common entangled racial zone (p. 90) and in the figure representing the ladder-like hierarchy of malleable whiteness (p. 123). In the so-called “Pacific zone,” white settler colonial outposts (Australia and New Zealand) battle rising newcomers (East Asian countries) for the racial hegemony over the Pacific. While the explanations for other zones were more persuasive, this one felt like the author was trying to impose a predetermined narrative. The actual history of the region is much more complicated with the complex entanglement of European colonialism, U.S. military influence during the Cold War, and East Asian economic development. In the case of malleable whiteness, Christian is careful to note that many groups compete for proximate positions to “full whiteness,” and the system of positions is constantly in flux. Yet the figure presents fixed positions of groups, giving the impression that the concept of malleable whiteness is more static than it actually is. Critics, especially those who are skeptical of the race concept altogether, may zero in on these parts and argue that this book is another mechanical application of an overly political idea onto complicated social terrain.
Those critics would do well to pay close attention to Chapter Six, titled “Global Colorblindness.” In this chapter Christian masterfully blends the diversity and unity and explains the contours of dominant racial ideologies across the globe. Christian is sensitive toward variations within Europe—between, for example, the well-known cases of France and Germany and others such as Netherlands and Spain. Christian also pays careful attention to the historical and geographical contexts of latecomers, such as India, Iran, and China, narrating the interesting conundrums of racial ideologies espoused by these former empires. In the process, Christian clearly shows that the so-called “ethnic homogeneity” espoused by these countries is also embedded in global racial dynamics, even though its purveyors loudly proclaim cultural and historical uniqueness. Most importantly, Christian also analyzes how different “colorblind” ideologies are facing common challenges, as global economic and political forces put all of them into crisis, making it difficult to sustain the smooth fabric of a race-neutral society. This chapter serves as the strongest argument in favor of the global application of race, as Christian clearly proves that global trends are forcing the convergence of many historically disparate racial regimes.
As with other great books, Christian’s contribution generates further questions. How are we to conceptualize the global configuration of race? The white supremacy/anti-blackness pairing is a useful heuristic but not the end of the conversation. The core issue, as mentioned above, is the tension between diversity and unity, or the clash between overarching deterministic forces and specific variations. Are these the only terms through which we can describe the global journey of race, or are there more detailed and fine-tuned frameworks? For a hundred years or so, Marxists across the globe have quarreled and continue to quarrel over the relationship between base and superstructure, debating how and to what extent the economy determines other forms of social organizations. “Relative autonomy” is perhaps the cliché many invoke from the discussion, but we cannot deny that the quarrelling was immensely generative for Marxism as well as social theory more broadly. Perhaps Christian’s book signals the opening of a similar arc in race theory as well: rather than debating the use of race, we should begin grappling with the task of developing different models to account for the global configuration of race.