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7 - Theories of Race, Ethnicity, and the Racial State

from I - Theories of Political Sociology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 February 2020

By
Joe R. Feagin  and
Sean Elias
Edited by
Thomas Janoski ,
Cedric de Leon ,
Joya Misra  and
Isaac William Martin
Thomas Janoski
Affiliation:
University of Kentucky
Cedric de Leon
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Joya Misra
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Isaac William Martin
Affiliation:
University of California, San Diego
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Summary

A systemic racism approach to understanding racial states like the United States is well-validated in much historical and contemporary social science research. Here we emphasize a number of the key contributions of this contemporary approach to assessing the US racial state. We use “state” to mean a socially and territorially bounded community with a national government complex and many local government institutions. We include aspects of the state accented by the classical theorist Max Weber – national states’ territorial sovereignty and their monopolization of coercion – and also the state’s executive bureaucracy, legislatures, courts, legal norms, and overall political operations (2015 [1919]).

Keywords

intersectionalitynationalismraceethnicityracial stateracial stateracist stateracializationsystematically racist stateJim Crow
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Handbook of Political Sociology , pp. 191 - 215
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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