Modern civility is racially structured at its foundations

Evidence

In short, civil society and its attendant modes of civility are the spaces of accommodation to existing relations of social domination and order, racially inscribed. Civil society, to riff on an oft-cited line about race and class, is the modality in and through which social order is lived, acted upon, acted out. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 231 (#expands, via linked claim)

Conceived thus, civil society is the negotiation of – and therefore, through such negotiation, some sort of engagement with – distinction, with heterogeneity. Heavy racial investments in trans-population identity or sameness, ultimately in cultural or biological clones, thus constitutes the threat of the death – the suicide – of civil society, the end of the necessity of civility as the modes and spaces of negotiation. No need for civility if my neighbors or fellow-citizens are just like me. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 225 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The Enlightenment laid the basis for modern ideas of race; A society’s civility has a racial and perceptual character distinct from its specific civilities. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 233; Eighteenth-century civility and state formation were structured by racial dominance — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 241 (+12 more)

Broader Connections

• Civil society is a racially inscribed accommodation to social domination #expands (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 231
• Civility depends on negotiating difference and dies with racial sameness #complicates (0.75) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 225