An acute and incisive explanation of racialization as a mechanism of institutional power instead of individual intentions.
In this follow up to his book, The Rule of Racialization—which considered the way class structure is formed in the United States—Steve Martinot examines how the structures of racialization reside at the core of all social, cultural, and political institutions in the United States. In The Machinery of Whiteness, Martinot examines how race and racism are produced in the United States, analyzing the politics of racialization and the racial segregation and racial deprivation that have kept the United States a white-dominated society throughout its history. Martinot dedicates this work to expunging white supremacy from the earth.
The Machinery of Whiteness investigates how "whiteness" came to be foundational to the process that then produced the modern concept of race. Martinot addresses the instrumentalization of women as a necessary step in the formation of the concept, furthering the debates regarding the relationships of race and gender. He also addresses U.S. international interventionism, the anti-immigrant movements, and white racist populism to describe the political forms that white supremacy takes.
Martinot brings together these ideas to analyze the underlying cultural structures of racialization that have driven and conditioned the resurgence of white supremacy and white entitlement in the wake of the civil rights movements. This book is a call to transform the cultural structures of the United States to make justice and democracy—which depend on inclusion and not segregation—possible
