Missing race’s role in modernity yields a false story of failed progress.

Evidence

If we consider the evictions from law described in this book as racial processes, we can begin to challenge the idea of the modern itself, and find the courage to imagine a better world. If, however, we miss how race structures modernity, we are likely to get caught up in the powerful fiction that what is principally wrong with the world is that some people have mysteriously failed to progress into modernity while others excel at it. — Sherene Razack, Casting Out, 395

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the reader’s existing thinking on how unexamined ideological frames (like ‘failed progress’) distort analysis—parallel to the social-capital and trust literature’s caution against taken-for-granted concepts.
• SEED: Spur for an essay on how ‘failed to progress’ narratives silently smuggle in natural inferiority claims across domains (development economics, governance, technology adoption).