Systemic Racism Theory

The mainstream social sciences remain unable to develop a comprehensive, meaningful theory of matters of white-imposed racism, as we demonstrate in previous pages. Therefore, we agree with Mustafa Emirbayer and Matthew Desmond’s recent intimation that no grand theory of these racial matters presently exists.¹ However, unlike Emirbayer and Desmond, who search out principles for race theory by turning to the conceptual schemes of white European social theorists, many of whom never seriously studied racial matters, we suggest that contemporary social theorists of Western racial matters would do much better to evaluate and build on the work of the many critical and insightful black theorists and other theorists of color. Social theorists of color, particularly African American social thinkers, have experienced and documented social reality from the front lines of systemically racist societies and have not been as subject to the white racial framing that shapes the perceptions of a great many white social scientists and other social analysts.