Using Heideggerian tool ontology to investigate antiblack racism in the United States, Ontological Branding: Power, Privilege, and White Supremacy in a Colorblind World provides a novel account of race and racial justice. Bonard Iván Molina García argues that race is best understood as a tool to brand persons of color, particularly Black persons, as subordinate in order to privilege whiteness as the proper state of persons in a world created by and for persons and in which all (and only) persons are equal. Persons of color, particularly Black persons, are thus excluded from full participation in the rights and privileges of personhood and instead relegated to ways of being in service to the white world. This white supremacist system was created through law, and despite significant changes, U.S. law’s current approach to racial justice through colorblindness only serves to safeguard white supremacy. Racial justice instead requires a critical race consciousness that accounts for the ontology of race. Racial justice requires ontological justice.

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Ontological Branding offers some important insights on the superstructure of inequality in America and beyond, demonstrating how racism and other forms of oppression can persist beyond the conscious acts of malicious individuals. Here is a framework worth expanding upon in future scholarship, especially as regards the role of class throughout history, given that the bodies of serfs or the proletariat were literally regarded as tools for their rulers and employers. Molina García offers a real model for the application of Heidegger’s tool ontology far beyond matters of race and American history, potentially reshaping how we regard the nature of oppression at large.