Racism operates as a repository of techniques and logics, not just functional practices.

Evidence

Bringing to light the many ways in which the global economy works to make people and things into objects of circulation and consumption is a major task of this book. This process is not a mere abstraction; it consists of a set of material e√ects produced by the inequalities of global capitalism that are present in everyday lives. By placing working-class migration in the foreground of the global racial system, my intention is to expose how labor migrants are made illegal in the global economy and the connection to the reign of racial terror and violence that is at the heart of the imperial War on Terror. … I argue that racism is not merely a functionalist relationship of actions and practices but a vast repository of techniques, strategies, logics, and tactics. Generations of scholars have toiled to expose the systemic basis of oppressions such as racism, while others have dismissed this work as misguided. Now more than ever, as an expanding racism propels its victims toward premature death, it has become urgent for studies of race to uncover the overlooked, the understated, and the taken for granted. — Junaid Rana, Terrifying Muslims, 892

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the book’s core redefinition of racism away from functionalist action-and-practice toward a ‘repository of techniques, strategies, logics, and tactics.’
• SEED: A potential essay on how treating racism as a ‘repository of techniques’ rather than a set of deliberate actions shifts how we attribute blame and design remedies.