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Cet ouvrage est issu d’un cycle de journées d’étude organisées par quatre américanistes des universités de Toulouse-Jean Jaurès et de Paul Valéry à Montpellier. Sous leur direction, ses onze chapitres abordent la question raciale aux États-Unis de différents points de vue, ceux de sociologues, d’historien.nes, de politistes et de spécialistes des médias. La variété des thèmes abordés (l’éducation, le sport, le cinéma, la cuisine, les études migratoires) permet de rendre compte de la complexit...

En interrogeant la tendance post-raciale à la despécification du racisme par la prolifération d’expériences minorées, l’article propose d’analyser, dans une perspective de théorie critique, comment l’« éliminativisme racial » qui sous-tend les projets post-racialistes, a cristallisé en des formes particulières de déni racial que nous étudions à travers la figure contemporaine du non-racisme. À la différence de l’anti-racialisme qui discute la pertinence des catégorisations raciales comme facteur d’analyse sociale et politique, le non-racisme se caractérise par une manière de (re)définir le racisme qui met à distance ou « déréalise » la race en tant que, à la fois, phénomène historique et expérience vécue, d’une part ; s’ancre sur la primauté de perspectives morales, d’autre part. Trois facettes seront plus particulièrement étudiées : l’opposition postulée entre race et classe ; l’« inutilité » contemporaine présumée du racisme comme schème explicatif ; l’antiracisme comme un combat des « élites ». Focussing on the postracial drive to undermine racism through its purported universalization, the paper is aimed at analyzing, from a critical race studies perspective, how the ‘racial eliminativist’ demands, that underlie postracialist projects, paradoxically, crystallize into new forms of racial deniability, which I study through the contemporary expressions of ‘not racism’. Thus the argument is not about the existence of race as a factor determining social and political relations, hence ‘anti-racialism’, but rather about the establishment of definitions of racism that either sideline or deny race both as an historical phenomenon and as experienced by racialised people, on the one hand ; push for a dominant interpretation of racism as a moral one which sutures it to assessments of individual character, on the other hand. Three key facets of this ‘not racism’ will be put under scrutiny : the tendency to oppose race and class ; the alleged ‘unhelpfulness’ of racism; and the so called ‘elitism’ of antiracism. Post-racialismo, negación del racismo y crisis de la blancuraCuestionando la tendencia post-racial a la despecificación del racismo por la proliferación de experiencias minorizadas, el artículo propone analizar desde una perspectiva de teoría crítica cómo el "eliminativismo racial" que subyace a los proyectos post-racialistas ha cristalizado en formas nuevas de negación del racismo que estudiamos aquí a través de la figura contemporánea del no-racismo. A diferencia del anti-racialismo, que discute la relevancia de las categorizaciones raciales como factor de análisis social y político, el no-racismo se caracteriza por una forma de (re)definición del racismo que marginaliza o "deroga" a la raza como fenómeno histórico y experiencia vivida, por una parte; se está asentando en la primacía de perspectivas morales, por otro lado. Se estudiarán tres facetas de dicho fenómeno: la oposición postulada entre raza y clase; la presunta "inutilidad" contemporánea del racismo como esquema explicativo; el antirracismo como lucha de las "élites".

According to many in the American and international press, the 2008 presidential election of Barack Obama has heralded a possible era of “postracialism” in the United States. The election, and Obama himself, has given this term social capital worthy of deep consideration. If we understand “postracialism” to be congealing into a “color-blind” ideology that ruptures the historic hegemony of the bichromatic (black-white) American binary (as some journalists posit) we have to look at media discourses that position Obama as “postracialism’s subjective signifier” to understand postracialism’s failure to function as it’s imagined to do so. Far from accomplishing a simplistic and idealistic end to discourses of race and practices of racialization in America, postracialism has served to reify public racial obsession, and Obama has been made the locus of attention on which these discourses circulate. Obama is consistently conscripted in racialized projects from those individuals and groups attempting to use him to advance their political cause. Obama is also actively engaging in a discourse of universalized nationalism that uses color-blindness to articulate itself. This article will seek to complicate mass media articulations of the postracial, to help broaden it from what appears to be its limited lines of inquiry. Perhaps the salient question to ask is whose “postracialism” are we referring to, and what might this term signify if we imagine it to mean more than what it clearly is not? Might we read postracialism as an articulation of “post-black,” if we consider “black,” in an American context to be historically understood and legitimized as African American? In other words, might “postracial” have salience as a means to invite a larger cultural conversation of different articulations of blackness in America, one in which immigrant blacks are considered and given voice? This is a particularly relevant question in relation to Obama due to his second-generation immigrant identity, and due to the fact that his “blackness” comes not from African American ancestors, but from his African father. This article aims toward a meditation of the potential for immigrant blackness to offer a more inclusive, and more accurate representation of a progressively variegated, “post-racialized” American culture in need of social legitimacy for its potential to disrupt bichromatic racialization and coterminous universalized nationalism.

With the election of the first black president, commentators and pundits said that Americans could now believe that African Americans had achieved racial equality, or at least that they would achieve it in their lifetimes. As Barack Obama used a universalist message and adopted a racially transcendent strategy which might seem at odds with his self-definition as an African American, he came to be defined as a postracial candidate, in a postracial America. The promise of an electoral victory indeed called for a strategy that would avoid race-specific issues, while at the same time reassured voters that their interests would be best served. This article argues that postracialism can thus be understood and used as an effective electoral strategy aiming at downplaying the individual and collective roles race and racism play in structuring group hierarchy and interaction, so that black or other nonwhite candidates can appeal to white voters. Using recent public opinion data, this paper will then attempt to understand how the contemporary political environment transforms the use of race as a political and/or social construction and whether it matches the evolution of black public opinion as it relates to understandings of race and racism.