Racecraft

Common wisdom holds that racism is a response to visible differences between people, as though race existed first and prejudice followed. Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields reverse that sequence. In their account, the practice of racism is what manufactures the belief that race is a natural fact, and they give this process a name: racecraft. The book traces how racecraft runs through other forms of inequality in American life, showing up in the nation's past, its economic reasoning, its politics, and ordinary habits of thought. Because it is so widespread, it often escapes notice altogether.

The authors contend that the expectation of a post-racial society has not come to pass, and they locate part of the reason in a gap in public discourse. Americans, they argue, lack a sound vocabulary for describing and debating inequality, and that shortcoming has consequences for the civic health of the country.

Karen E. Fields is a sociologist and translator, known for her English version of Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Barbara J. Fields is a historian at Columbia University. Their collaboration brings together sociological and historical perspectives on race in the United States.