The denial of slavery in contemporary American sociology

Abstract

American sociology has largely neglected enslavement as a topic of study, despite slavery’s being one of the most foundational, pervasive, and far-reaching social institutions in the West. In this paper I explain this scholarly neglect as stemming from three factors. First, disciplinary parochialism has blinded US sociologists to the complex interweaving of enslavement with the systems of oppression that sociology has decided to care about. Second, presentism, an ahistorical “account” of the past that culminates in a preference for present-day events and institutions, has relegated slavery to history. Finally, theoretical frameworks that revise enslavement as “ennobling” erase the long-term effects of psychological and physical violence on the descendants of enslaved peoples.