Dismantling the Racism Machine

A Manual and Toolbox

Karen Gaffney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040319673
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Index: Social Sciences

This significantly updated second edition serves students and general readers alike who seek to learn what is often not taught, a basic history of race and racism in the US. If we are to dismantle systemic racism and create a more just society, people need a place to begin.

This accessible, introductory, and interdisciplinary guide can be one such place. Grounded in critical race theory, this book uses the metaphor of the Racism Machine to highlight that race is a social construct and that racism is a system of oppression based on invented racial categories. It debunks the false ideologies that race is biological, that race has always existed, that systemic racism is over, and that anti?White racism is real. As a manual, this book presents clear instructions for understanding the history of race and how a small elite created a racial hierarchy to protect their power through a divide?and?conquer strategy that lives on today.

As a toolbox, this book provides a variety of specific action steps that readers can take to address racism in a post?civil rights era where extremists have weaponized the study of race and racism.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsement Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Read This First
• Step 1. Chip Away at the False Ideology that Race Is Biological
• Step 2. See the Racism Machine
• Step 3. Examine the Racism Machine’s Powerful Mechanisms
• Step 4. Analyze the Racism Machine’s Recalibration after the Civil Rights Movement
• Step 5. Take Apart the Racism Machine
• Index