The Afterlife of Race

The ideology that underlies the concept of race has a long history. For centuries that ideology has spun supernaturalist and scientistic stories about ostensibly natural differences between different groups. The concept of “race” is in scientific decline, but the intertwined ideology and rhetoric behind it live on, and indeed prosper.

In this groundbreaking fusion of philosophy and color-conscious politics, philosopher Lionel K. McPherson enlists sweeping historical and empirical evidence to challenge fascination with the race concept. His lively, incisive analysis illuminates why social lineage matters far more than any “race” thing ever could, and why race ideology-rhetoric is more a distraction from gross injustice than a primary source. The Western label “black” was merely a figurative description for African peoples and African ancestry. The idea of continental races came later--with philosophers, theologians, and eventually scientists adding some important but elusive racial factor to visible continental ancestry.

McPherson argues that the race concept's main business was to sponsor absurd pretexts for Western slavery and colonialism, and their active legacies of nonrepair. Rejecting endless debate about the possible nature of race, he unpacks how color categories in America are a caste device that marked Europe-identified (white) freedom versus Africa-identified (black) enslavement. This caste reframing paves the way for a de-raced account of Black American national specificity and political solidarity, distinct from flat blackness. The Afterlife of Race concludes with a vision of tangible justice and social equality for descendants of American slavery: color aside, Americans of conscience would finally prioritize dismantling their country's foundational caste division, with its entrenched wealth and well-being chasm between White and Black America.