1st Edition
American Antiblackness Examining the Fields of Contemporary Racism
Foreword
George Yancy
American Antiblackness
Philip Ewell and Joe R. Feagin
1. Systemic Antiblackness in Education: Pathways to Understanding and Intervention
Christine A. Stanley, William A. Smith, Dave A. Louis
2. Intersectional Solidarity Through Linked Fate: A Strategic Challenge to Antiblackness and Liberal White Supremacy in Higher Education
Angie Beeman
3. Keeping it REAL: Countering Antiblack Racism in and through American Sport
John N. Singer
4. State Repression and White Media Complicity in Attacks on Black Journalists
Ryan Sorrell and Lewis Raven Wallace
5. American Antiblackness in Astrophysics
Jarita Holbrook
6. Antiblackness and American Medicine
Linda A. Clayton and Ricardo Guthrie
7. The Two Faces of Classicism: Antiblackness and the Classics in the Twentieth Century
Christopher Stedman Parmenter
8. Antiblackness in Psychology
Nia Holland, Kevin Cokley and Lisa Spanierman
9. Antiblackness in Music Theory
Jason Yust
10. W. E. B. Du Bois’s Toolkit Opposing Antiblackness: Methodological and Theoretical Innovations
Aldon Morris
11. Antiblack Hispanicness and Black Hispanic Counterframing in U.S. Hispanic and Hispanic American Literary Studies
Alain Lawo-Sukam and Yaír André Cuenú-Mosquera
12. Antiblackness Targeting Black Women
Sean Elias
13. Discipline English: AmeriKKKa in Antiblack and White
David Sterling Brown
14. Liturgies of Antiblackness: Race and Spiritual (De)Formation in American Religion
Brock Bahler
Biography
Philip Ewell is Professor of Music Theory at Hunter College of the City University of New York. His specialties include race studies in music, African American Music, Russian music theory, and Russian opera. His work has been featured in news outlets such as the BBC, the CBC, The Conversation, Die Zeit, NPR, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and WQXR’s Aria Code. He is the founder and series editor for the Oxford University Press book series Theorizing African American Music and the founder and co-editor of the online open-access peer-reviewed journal Black Music, in Theory.
Joe R. Feagin is University Distinguished Professor (Emeritus) in Sociology at Texas A&M University. He has written or co-written 80 scholarly books and 230-plus scholarly articles in his social science areas. His books include Systemic Racism (2006) and Racist America: Roots, Current Realities, and Future Reparations (2025). He was the 1999–2000 President of the American Sociological Association.
“This book addresses a vital topic of debate and offers a critically salient perspective on the political moment we are in. The editors are notable scholars of race and racism in higher education (and beyond), and they have assembled a volume that will be essential to scholars, students, and readers engaged in trying to understand the dynamics around race, systemic racism, anti-blackness, and the concomitant backlash(es) surrounding these issues.”
David G. Embrick, Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies, University of Connecticut
“American Antiblackness is a brilliant and powerful book which delves deeply and unsparingly into this four centuries-old phenomenon. Through the incisive contributions of leading scholars across different fields, Phil Ewell and Joe R. Feagin offer an unparalleled view into the pervasive structure, intentionality, and intersectionality of anti-blackness. As such, this important book is an indispensable resource for scholars and practitioners seeking to move forward on the pathway to greater social justice and inclusion.”
“In American Antiblackness, Phil Ewell and Joe R. Feagin have assembled an impressive team of critical thinkers from a variety of academic and non-academic disciplines who argue convincingly that throughout its history anti-blackness has been at the core of American society and boldly challenge us to reimagine what this nation could be without it. Such acknowledgement and reimagining are especially needed today during this Trump-era of American race relations, the most intense and dangerous period of anti-blackness since Jim Crow.”
Noel A. Cazenave, Professor of Sociology, University of Connecticut, and author of Cazenave Eyes: Memories of Racism and Racism Studies
“American Antiblackness makes a bold statement that Americans must begin thinking very differently about race and racism in American society. The scholars who have contributed to this volume demonstrate that it is impossible to understand American intellectual thought without understanding the centrality of anti-blackness within it. To advance such thought, one must courageously confront and strive to eradicate the anti-blackness inherent within it. This work is not simply designed to be read, but to inspire action.”
Alford A. Young, Jr., Edgar G. Epps Collegiate Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan
“Phillip Ewell and Joe R. Feagin, leading race scholars from disciplines not commonly adjacent, have assembled a stellar cast of race scholars from diverse fields to address how antiblackness operates in their disciplines. American Antiblackness breaks new ground, broadening our understanding of antiblackness beyond our own academic niche and hopefully generating collaborations across fields. An excellent contribution, and a true must-read!”
Rogelio Sáenz, co-author of Latina/os in the United States: Diversity and Change
“Anti-Blackness functions like a many-headed hydra, rooted in racialized chattel slavery, private property, law, the political economy, racial capitalism, and everyday interactions. It cannot be reduced to individual bias or institutional failure; it is a durable system that has organized land, housing, wealth, labor, citizenship, and belonging by marking Black people’s quest for liberation as a threat to social order. Joe Feagin and his co-authors offer a powerful and necessary account of anti-Blackness, naming its constitutive parts while showing how they work together across time, location, and everyday life. This book provides a clear blueprint for understanding anti-Blackness as a unique social, historical, and political project that must be studied on its own terms, and Feagin has assembled the right people to lay this system bare.”
Waverly Duck, North Hall Endowed Chair of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, author of No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing (2015), and co-author of Black Lives Matter: Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analytic Studies of Race and Systemic Racism in Everyday Interaction (Routledge, 2020)
