Deconstructing blackness as fiction does nothing to shift racial power relations

Evidence

I recall struggling mightily with the concept of race as a social construct when I was first introduced to the idea in graduate school. Given the virtually impenetrable black-white divide I experienced growing up, my first reaction was skepticism. Even if race was a social invention, as far as I could tell, it would not change much in the world I knew. But looking back now, I believe that reaction stemmed from my assumption that this insight would be applied primarily to understanding the constructed nature of nonwhite racial identities. And the academic deconstruction of the category “black” or “African American” seemed woefully inadequate to the task of producing any shift in black-white power relations. Even if every white person in the country became convinced of the fictional nature of blackness, it seemed unlikely to unravel the deeply held and strongly defended notions of race and racial hierarchies. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 64

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the argument in works like Black Marxism that mere intellectual construction-critique leaves material racial hierarchy untouched, connecting to the reader’s economic order analyses. — connects to: Racialized reasoning’s coherence rests on narrative force, not logical sense — Sherene Razack, Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims…, 138; Racism based on power structures is not aggregate interpersonal antipathy; Mixed-race blackness destabilizes both black and Latino literary categories (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The asymmetry insight — that deconstructing the oppressed group’s label changes nothing but deconstructing the dominant group’s label is what unseats power — is genuinely paradigm-shifting and central to the whole project.

Broader Connections

• Critical deconstruction of racial ideology can become ideology itself #responds-to (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 2774
• Black-on-black oppression escapes condemnation by being misread as not-racism #complicates (0.78) — Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism…, 321
• Racism based on power structures is not aggregate interpersonal antipathy #expands (0.75)
• Mixed-race blackness destabilizes both black and Latino literary categories #exemplifies (0.75)
• Racialized reasoning’s coherence rests on narrative force, not logical sense #qualifies (0.72) — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 138
• Perceiving racialized identities as relational enables alliance but guarantees no action. #qualifies (0.70)