Tackling the myth of a post-racial society

Most people assume that racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Sociologist Karen E. Fields and historian Barbara J. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call "racecraft." And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed.
That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions.

"With examples ranging from the profound to the absurd-including, for instance, an imaginary interview with W.E.B. Du Bois and Emile Durkheim, as well as personal porch chats with the authors' grandmother-the Fields delve into 'racecraft's' profound effect on American political, social and economic life." - Global Journal

"Karen E. Fields and Barbara J. Fields have undertaken a great untangling of how the chimerical concepts of race are pervasively and continuously reinvented and reemployed in this country." - Los Angeles Review of Books

"The neologism 'racecraft' is modelled on 'witchcraft' . It isn't that the Fieldses regard the commitment to race as a category as an irrational superstition. On the contrary, they are interested precisely in exploring its rationality-the role that beliefs about race play in structuring American society-while at the same time reminding us that those beliefs may be rational but they're not true." - London Review of Books

"Demanding and intelligent." - PopMatters

"This is a very thoughtful book, a very urgent book." - The Academic & The Artist Cloudcast

"[Racecraft] should be more widely read than it is-no matter its current reach. In it, the authors achieve an intelligence and agility that is rare in discussions of identity, racism, and inequality." - Nation

"Liberal mores against overt racism are crumbling in the face of Trump. We must build them better...The Fields sisters dive through sociology, history, and science to reach the material truth: races is a product of racism, not the other way around." - Paste Magazine

"Ostensibly 'antiracist' politics that treat racial categories as if they were real...perpetuate what they purport to resist. As this form of counterproductive antiracism becomes hegemonic in our culture, the Fieldses' insights are increasingly salient." - Washington Examiner