Available From UC Press

Relational Formations of Race brings African American, Chicanx/Latinx, Asian American, and Native American studies together in a single volume, enabling readers to consider the racialization and formation of subordinated groups in relation to one another. These essays conceptualize racialization as a dynamic and interactive process; group-based racial constructions are formed not only in relation to whiteness, but also in relation to other devalued and marginalized groups. The chapters offer explicit guides to understanding race as relational across all disciplines, time periods, regions, and social groups. By studying race relationally, and through a shared context of meaning and power, students will draw connections among subordinated groups and will better comprehend the logic that underpins the forms of inclusion and dispossession such groups face. As the United States shifts toward a minority-majority nation, Relational Formations of Race offers crucial tools for understanding today’s shifting race dynamics.
 

Natalia Molina is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at University of Southern California and the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is the author of two award winning books, How Race Is Made in America: Immigration, Citizenship, and the Historical Power of Racial Scripts and Fit to Be Citizens?: Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1940.

Daniel Martinez HoSang is Associate Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration at Yale University.
 
Ramón A. Gutiérrez is Professor of American History at the University of Chicago.

“These fine scholars argue persuasively that the next new direction in the field of Ethnic Studies should be to study race relationally: an old idea made new again by building on the robust scholarship produced in comparative and transnational ethnic studies during the past three decades or so.”—Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Professor of History, American Studies, and Ethnic Studies, Brown University

“Studying race as a relational formation is more than powerful—it is necessary. This important gathering of essays challenges even the most radical thinkers on race to repattern the ways we understand social justice, human rights, and struggles that form in mutual action toward a common good. Together, these essays refuse the dominance of whiteness in studies and enactments of racial relations, generating new theories and conversations that reveal historic and powerful connections among freedom seekers across the globe.”—Gaye Theresa Johnson, author of Spaces of Conflict, Sounds of Solidarity and coeditor of Futures of Black Radicalism

“Studying Race Relationally demonstrates beautifully the insights produced by examining systems of race alongside each other. This generative, exciting volume offers essential contributions to critical Ethnic Studies and American Studies.”—Emily K. Hobson, author of Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left

“What if we could think about race and racism differently? Go beyond thinking about race mainly in terms of whiteness and its ‘others’? Dispense with fatuous denunciatoions of ‘groupism’ and recognize the centrality of racialization in the construction of our world? In Relational Formations of Race, some of our most profound race theorists do just that. They explore how racial identities and racialized groups interact and overlap. They show how racial formation involves permanent conflict with the U.S. empire-state and simultaneously constitutes that state. Exclusion and inclusion; conquest and social control; struggles over racialized labor, gender, migration, and, indeed, U.S. imperialism and ‘nation-building’—all are reconceptualized here. Our understanding of race and racism is both deepened and broadened by this exceptional book, which will certainly become a central text across the disciplines. A tour de force and a must for course adoption!”—Howard Winant, coauthor of Racial Formation in the United States

“This is a must-read for everyone in American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Africana Studies, and, indeed, for anyone who wants to understand how and why difference and disadvantage are created and perpetuated, and how we are all, in some way, complicit in this creation and perpetuation. It is destined to become a big-hearted model of scholarly praxis on race, a core text for the next generation of young scholars who recognize that activism and deeper understanding are joined at the hip.”—Matthew Pratt Guterl, author of Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe