The class reductionist case for the centrality of race

• In Event: 3520 - Section on Race, Gender, and Class Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 8. Theorizing Intersectionality

Abstract

This paper makes a case for weak class reductionism. In particular, we attempt to do the unthinkable: we reduce race to class. Once you acknowledge that race is not itself a prime mover, but rather something to be explained, class as an explanans turns out to be a strong candidate. We provide a general defense of functional explanations, make a specific argument that capitalist class relations can functionally explain the construction and persistence of race, and finally, delineate the limits of that explanation. Contrary to standard class reductionist arguments suggesting that race is epiphenomenal, the nature of functional explanation requires the explanandum to have important effects in the world; this puts race at the center of any discussion of capitalist class relations in racialized societies and explains it on the basis of its effects rather than its causes.

Authors

• David Calnitsky, University of Western Ontario

• Michael Billeaux, University of Wisconsin-Madison