Racecraft: The Soul of Inequality in American Life

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.

• The History of White People
• Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class
• Mistaken Identity: Race and Class in the Age of Trump
• American Slavery, American Freedom
• American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
• The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap
• The Strange Career of Jim Crow
• The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
• Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America
• Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II