TY - JOUR
T1 - Anthropology and the Riddle of White Supremacy
AU - Rana, Junaid
N1 - Funding Information:
As an anthropologist committed to US ethnic studies and located in the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois, it gives me great pleasure to recognize the scholars of color who were at the forefront of making this possible. First and foremost, Jemima Pierre and Aisha Beliso-De Jesús, who first invited me to the panel titled “Anthropology of White Supremacy” at the 2016 AAA meeting in Minneapolis and later conceptualized this as a joint project. I presented portions of this work at Penn State University, Berlin, and the University of California, Riverside. Thanks to Courtney Morris, Iman Attia, and Sherine Hafez for these invitations. I owe a great debt of gratitude for the life work of my colleague Faye Harrison. Many years ago, I had a conversation with Kamala Visweswaran about A Rap on Race that set me on the path to writing this essay. Additionally, I would like to thank Deborah Thomas for constructive feedback and the three anonymous reviewers who helped to improve this work. I am blessed to have a solid team around me. Many thanks to Maryam Kashani, Su'ad Abdul Khabeer, and Sohail Daulatzai who helped me think through concepts as we talked about the challenges around us.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 by the American Anthropological Association
PY - 2020/3/1
Y1 - 2020/3/1
N2 - This article considers how anthropology can grapple with white supremacy by conceptualizing it as global and in relation to religion. Drawing on the exchange published as A Rap on Race between anthropologist Margaret Mead and the writer James Baldwin, I address the connection of religion and moral belief to racism, white supremacy, and the critique of racial liberalism. In their conversation, Mead and Baldwin discuss Christianity and white supremacy revealing a complex conjuring of Islam and Muslims that I describe as racecraft. The racialization of religion and the theological components of white supremacy have a particular relevance to the construction of anti-Muslim racism. To describe how ethnography and anthropological theory can intervene, I offer an example of the study of white supremacy and discuss the implications. [racism, religion, white supremacy, Margaret Mead, James Baldwin].
AB - This article considers how anthropology can grapple with white supremacy by conceptualizing it as global and in relation to religion. Drawing on the exchange published as A Rap on Race between anthropologist Margaret Mead and the writer James Baldwin, I address the connection of religion and moral belief to racism, white supremacy, and the critique of racial liberalism. In their conversation, Mead and Baldwin discuss Christianity and white supremacy revealing a complex conjuring of Islam and Muslims that I describe as racecraft. The racialization of religion and the theological components of white supremacy have a particular relevance to the construction of anti-Muslim racism. To describe how ethnography and anthropological theory can intervene, I offer an example of the study of white supremacy and discuss the implications. [racism, religion, white supremacy, Margaret Mead, James Baldwin].
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85077904238&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85077904238&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/aman.13355
DO - 10.1111/aman.13355
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85077904238
SN - 0002-7294
VL - 122
SP - 99
EP - 111
JO - American Anthropologist
JF - American Anthropologist
IS - 1
ER -