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AbstractThis analysis addresses race knowledge or the connection between race identity and the ability to designate what is socially legitimate. It problematizes race inequality in light of neoliberal, post-Civil Rights racial reforms. Using qualitative data from interviews with second-generation Muslim Americans, the analysis maps their understanding of the racialized social legitimacy of Brown, Black, and White identities. Findings address how racial hierarchy is organized by racial neoliberalism and the persistence of White supremacy. They show that White racial dominance continues in spite of claims of post-racialism. Moreover, second-generation Muslim Americans position their Brown and Black racial identity as subordinate to White racial identity, but Brown and Black races are different rather than hierarchically positioned in reference to one another. The respondents bring neoliberal globalism as well as U.S. racial dynamics to bear on their understandings of racial hierarchy and racialized social legitimacy.

Theorizing the social influence of racism and race has long been a concern of sociologists. Theories have addressed how racism, race and race inequality are organized and changed. Yet they have not addressed why racism and race are persistent despite social change. A social process theory of racism and race is proposed that analyzes their flexibility and persistence. It posits that racism is a social process where the meanings of race identities are traded across macro, meso, and micro levels of society. These trades legitimate social policies, are used to define a society as moral, and inform experiences. Black and white identities in light of the civil rights movement and its retrenchment, and the post-9/11 identity of Muslim Americans provide examples for applying the theory. I discuss the implications of the social process theory of racism and race for the future of race inequality in American society and sociological research.

This research examines newspaper reporting to question how the media represented the ideological interests of Western nations concerning symbolic representations of Islam in public following 11 September 2001. Critical discourse analysis is used to examine 72 stories that were published in the New York Times and Washington Post between 2004 and 2006. The stories covered the ban on hijab in France, the debate about niqab in Britain, and veiling by Muslim women in the USA. They show that knowledge about veiling in Western nations must include their national identities as well as their concerns about Muslims' assimilation/integration and Islamic terrorism. American newspaper media positioned France, Britain, and the USA as ideologically alike in spite of their different framings of religious freedom. Reporting supported the interests, values, and hegemony of the West with representations that created the common sense that Muslim women would not veil in public.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have redefined the meaning of religious minority identity for Muslim Americans. When religious identities are central to U.S. political conflicts, they shift from supporting adaptation to American society to facilitating inequality. Using newspaper articles published in the northeastern region of the United States and The Washington Post between May 2002 and May 2003, the following analysis investigates how Muslim religious identity comes to mimic the inequality of race identity via essentialist images of Islam, government policies, and experiences of discrimination. Benign markers of difference no longer exist in American society; instead, any identity that designates a group boundary can be used to organize social inequality. The religious minority identity of Muslim Americans following 9/11 signals the complexity of social inequality and, therefore, the difficulty of achieving social justice.

This article analyzes political responsiveness to minority communities through a case study of municipal employment opportunities in Richmond, Virginia. Using equal employment opportunity reports, it analyzes racial exclusion (the representation of minority workers within occupations) and racial subordination (the distribution of minority and nonminority workers across occupations) among Richmond's public sector workers. Additionally, it looks at percentage point changes in the representation of minority and nonminority workers in municipal jobs, to provide a more detailed analysis of the quality of opportunities that are made available as the city's dominant council coalitions changed from a White conservative coalition to a Black liberal regime to a multiracial conservative coalition. Qualitative data from interviews with the city's political actors clarify and support the patterns found in the employment data. The analysis demonstrates that the substantive resources Blacks are likely to gain differ significantly by political regime.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Confronting Racial Neoliberalism in Race Studies Courses -- 1 Feeling Race -- 2 Teaching Race -- 3 Feeling Teaching Race -- Conclusion -- Epilogue -- Appendix: Methodological Reflections -- Index.