The Machinery of Whiteness

Studies in the Structure of Racialization

Steve Martinot

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781439900529, 9781439900512
• eBook ISBN: 9781439900536
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

In this follow up to his book, The Rule of Racialization—which considered the way class structure is formed in the U.S.—Steve Martinot now examines how the structures of racialization reside at the core of all social, cultural, and political institutions in the U.S. In The Machinery of Whiteness, Martinot examines how race and racism are produced in the United States, analyzing the politics of racialization, and the preponderance of racial segregation and racial deprivation that have kept the U.S. a white dominated society throughout its history. Martinot dedicates this work to expunging white supremacy from the earth.

The Machinery of Whiteness investigates how "whiteness" came to be as foundational to the process that then produced the modern concept of race. Martinot addresses the instrumentalization of women as a necessary step in its formation, furthering the debates regarding the relationships of race and gender. And he addresses U.S. international interventionism, the anti-immigrant movements, and white racist populism to describe the political forms that white supremacy takes.

Martinot puts these together to analyze the underlying cultural structures of racialization that have driven and conditioned the resurgence of white supremacy and white entitlement in the wake of the Civil Rights movements. This book is a call to transform the cultural structures of the U.S. to make justice and democracy, which depend on inclusion and not segregation, possible.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Motherhood and the Invention of Race
• 2. The Racialized State
• 3. A Structural Concept of Race
• 4. The Political Culture of Whiteness
• 5. The Boundaries of the United States and Immigration
• 6. The Dual-State Character of the United States
• 7. The Structures of Racialization
• Notes
• References
• Index