Review of Three Studies of African Americans and Cultural Politics

Abstract

A decade into the new century results in much greater precision about social racialization. The talk about racialization is not simply a matter of debunking the concept of race. Writers adequately did this during the twentieth century at least; scientists adequately did it. The new century literatures extend the historical interrogation of racialization by remembering the uses of race. Therefore, their task is immediately twofold. On one hand, the powerful used race in particularly insidious ways. On the other hand, those targeted for subordination used power in unique ways. Baker, Wagner, and Grandt each contribute lucid studies to our understanding of the uses of racialization in their respective foci on the microphysics of cultural power vis-a-vis racialization. Baker produced a critique of academic anthropology from the position of "smartass belligerency" (p. xi). His primary act of belligerency is to complicate racialization by insisting on comparative textual analyses of race within subordina-