Racism and Cultural Studies

In Racism and Cultural Studies E. San Juan Jr. offers an historical-materialist critique of practices in multiculturalism and cultural studies. Rejecting contemporary theories of inclusion as affirmations of the capitalist status quo, San Juan envisions a future of politically equal and economically empowered citizens through the democratisation of power and the socialisation of property. Calling American nationalism the new "opium of the masses," he argues that American nationalism is where racist ideas and practices are formed, refined, and reproduced as common sense and consensus. Individual chapters engage the themes of ethnicity versus racism, gender inequality, sexuality, and the politics of identity configured with the discourse of post-coloniality and postmodernism. Questions of institutional racism, social justice, democratisation, and international power-relations between the centre and the periphery are surveyed and analysed. San Juan also fashions a critique of dominant disciplinary approached in the humanities and social sciences and contends that "the racism question" functions as a catalyst and point of departure for cultural critiques based on a radical democratic vision. He also asks urgent questions regarding globalisation and the future of socialist transformation of "third world" peoples and others who others who face oppression. As one of the most notable racial theorists in the United States today, San Juan presents a provocative challenge to the academy that will compel the attention of scholars in each of the disciplines in which race is a focus of concern.