When Theory Meets Practice: Challenging Racial Inequality in a Post-Civil Rights Era

Abstract

Knowledge about racial inequality is important because it can inform racially just practices. To this end, multiple scholars have shown how racial inequality operates and how it can be challenged in various facets of social life. However, what does challenging racism look like when theory meets practice? Building on racial formation theory, this thesis examines a racial justice organization's (RJO) training and consulting services through the lens of a political project that is rearticulating the meaning of race and thus, the role of race in the social structure. Evidenced by observations and interviews with RJO staff and their clients, this process includes the disorganization of color-blindness and post-racialism as dominant racial ideologies and the construction of racial justice as an oppositional framework.