Post-Naturalistic Racialization in the “Post-Racial” United States: On the Shifting rather than Declining Significance of Race

This essay contends that a 1950s-1970s shift from coercion-based to “consent”-based modes of US racial ordering corresponded to a contemporaneous shift from naturalistic to “post-naturalistic” modes of US racial identification. My sketch of these transformations points to the limitations of critical theories that work with naturalistic conceptions of race for understanding post-civil rights era US racial politics. While anti-black racism continues to tend toward naturalistic articulations, other racial exclusions and dominations tend to be enacted on post-naturalistic grounds. I conclude that the United States is a post-naturalistic racial rather than a post-racial society.