Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground by Barbara J. Fields

Fields is Professor of History at Columbia University, author of Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground: Maryland During the Nineteenth Century and coauthor of Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War. 'Fundamentally challenged some of my oldest and laziest ideas about race.' - Zadie Smithīarbara J. 'Barbara and Karen Fields show that racism creates race, not the other way around. That failure should worry everyone who cares about democratic institutions.

That the promised post-racial age has not dawned, the authors argue, reflects the failure of Americans to develop a legitimate language for thinking about and discussing inequality. So pervasive are the devices of racecraft in American history, economic doctrine, politics, and everyday thinking that the presence of racecraft itself goes unnoticed. Fields argue otherwise: the practice of racism produces the illusion of race, through what they call 'racecraft.' And this phenomenon is intimately entwined with other forms of inequality in American life. Most people assume racism grows from a perception of human difference: the fact of race gives rise to the practice of racism. Praised by a wide variety of people from Ta-Nehisi Coates to Zadie Smith, Racecraft ought to be positioned, as Bookforum put it, at the center of any discussion of race in American life.

A new edition of a celebrated contemporary work on race and racism

Slavery and Freedom on the Middle Ground by Barbara J. Fields