Structural racism built over historical time can be rebuilt by choice.

Evidence

Race is unstable, flexible, and subject to constant conflict and reinvention. Rather than seeing the present moment —whatever moment that is—as distilling the longue durée of racial politics, we in the United States should recognize that we live in history. Especially in this country there is a desire for instant solutions for problems, even for deepseated conflicts: Just add boiling water, just heat and serve. If the bad news is that there are no quick fixes for structural racism, the good news is that we live in history. We built this society over historical time; we can rebuild it as well. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 9

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• APHORISMS: The closing line ‘We built this society over historical time; we can rebuild it as well’ is genuine, reusable life-advice about agency over inherited structures.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how the ‘we live in history’ frame connects to the authors’ longue-durée historical method.

Related

• Race is not fixed but is perpetually reinvented through historical conflict (similarity 0.88)
• Empire is a mutable structure that keeps reconfiguring race. (similarity 0.80)
• No one can stand outside race because society and identities are constituted by it (similarity 0.80)
• Race structures all major US institutions from the colonial era onward (similarity 0.79)
• Race is an unstable, fully-fledged social fact like class or gender (similarity 0.78)