State of White Supremacy investigates how race functions as an enduring logic of governance in the United States, perpetually generating and legitimating racial hierarchy and privilege.
The deeply entrenched patterns of racial inequality in the United States simply do not square with the liberal notion of a nation-state of equal citizens. Uncovering the false promise of liberalism, State of White Supremacy reveals race to be a fundamental, if flexible, ruling logic that perpetually generates and legitimates racial hierarchy and privilege.
Racial domination and violence in the United States are indelibly marked by its origin and ongoing development as an empire-state. The widespread misrecognition of the United States as a liberal nation-state hinges on the twin conditions of its approximation for the white majority and its impossibility for their racial others. The essays in this book incisively probe and critique the U.S. racial state through a broad range of topics, including citizenship, education, empire, gender, genocide, geography, incarceration, Islamophobia, migration and border enforcement, violence, and welfare.
"Sober and angry, gut-wrenching and thought-provoking, this volume gives lie to the liberal concept of nation and citizenship, tracing the long history of U.S. imperialist expansion and the associated military actions, legal rulings, and administrative policies and practices that have served to erect and police racial boundaries. The essays illuminate the ways white supremacy is enshrined in major state institutions such as education, welfare, law enforcement, incarceration, and immigration control. This is essential reading for all who still aspire to democracy and social justice."
