More than Prejudice: Restatement, Reflections, and New Directions in Critical Race Theory

Abstract

Racism has always been “more than prejudice,” but mainstream social analysts have mostly framed race matters as organized by the logic of prejudice. In this paper, I do four things. First, I restate my criticism of the dominant approach to race matters and emphasize the need to ground our racial analysis materially, that is, understanding that racism is systemic and rooted in differences in power between the races. Second, I reflect critically on my own theorization on race (the racialized social system approach) and acknowledge that I should have explained better the role of culture and ideology in the making and remaking of race. Third, I describe some of the work I have done since this early work. Fourth, I advance several new directions for research and theory in the field of race stratification.