Sociology

The main point of this opinionated book concerns a comparative analysis of state-created racial distinctions as these racial distinctions relate to both the processes and the effects of nation-building through exclusion and inclusion.  In order to better understand and analyze the potential connection between racial conflict and the construction of nation-states, the author sets forth his analytical framework in terms of a number of questions that need to be answered.  The first question, framed rather generally, asks the reader to consider what underlying factors may have contributed to race relations in the twentieth century.  These factors are to be determined through a comparative analysis of race relations in South Africa, the United States of America, and Brazil.

A number of further questions are then asked in order to determine the historical origins of race relations in these countries, how racial distinctions arose and became reinforced as a result of specific types of political and economic processes that were integral to nation-building efforts, and how protests from below emerged and affected nation building in these countries (Marx, 2).  These questions are answered with a thesis that adopts a state-centered argument (Marx, 2) in which the states are said to have created racial distinctions in an effort to protect dominant political and economic elites from threats to their privileged positions.  The key actors, however, were more complicated than a simple elite and non-elite.  In effect, as the author argues, there were intra-white struggles in both South Africa and the United States of America that led the political and economic elites in those countries to create or otherwise exacerbate racial distinctions in order to insure social stability while simultaneously warding off white threats to their dominant positions (Marx, 11).

Blacks, in this way, were often caught in the middle of larger struggles and manipulated in a larger battle for political influence, economic power, and social stability.  Social stability, in turn, offered the elites the appearance of legitimacy and contributed to their efforts to further institutionalize policies and structures that would allow them to consolidate their power, claim widespread political legitimacy, and force through the social conditions necessary for their continued economic prosperity.  The central thesis, therefore, is that race relations were an integral feature of nation-building in which race was used a political device to maintain social order by unifying the whites and preserving the privileged positions of the dominant elites.

The political process of creating nations, as set forth by the author, consists of a number of struggles and reactions in which dominant elites continuously struggled to fend off political and economic threats from white challengers and to use racial distinctions as a means of frightening the white population into unity and submission.  Indeed, as stated by Marx, Racial domination had the unintended consequence of consolidating and legitimating subordinated racial identity into a potential base for resistance (20).   The elites, in effect, created their own threat and then used it to persuade others to fall into line.

This political process was essentially state-centered and it was a manifestation of an elite desire to maintain social stability.  When nation-building was able to proceed through a comparatively harmonious process of cooperation and cooperation it did on the other hand, when harmony was displaced through conflict, ideology and coercion were invoked (Marx, 21-22).  Some of these conflicts arose from white on white conflicts as evidenced by the British-Afrikaner conflicts in South Africa and the social divisions leading to the American Civil War.  It was when white loyalties were most dangerously divided, and when the dominant political and economic interests felt that there interests were most seriously threatened, that state race creation became state policy.

The author points out how the elites cleverly, and perhaps immorally, maneuvered in order to stamp out conflicts.  The elites, particularly in South Africa and the United States of America, essentially sold out the blacks by appealing to a larger notion of white nationalism (Marx, 12).  Policies of inclusion and exclusion were created or reinforced.  Nationalism, a racial type of nationalism, was created or reinforced in order to foster notions of unity in order to stave off social conflict.  When protests from the excluded arose, the elites fell back on racial distinctions in order to rally the whites around their particular cause.  In short, in order to avoid having intra-white conflicts devolve into open war, the elites created racial distinctions in such a way as to manipulate both the white challengers and the people being excluded.  The political process articulated is very much like a puppet show in which race relations was the critical string.

Racial distinctions, being so beneficial to the dominant political and social elites, were consolidated and always available for manipulation against perceived threats to social stability or perceived legitimacy.  The manipulation and the racial distinctions were especially pronounced in both South Africa and the United States of America this was because white on white conflict was much more severe in these countries than it was in Brazil where racial distinctions, while made and reinforced, assumed a more moderate form (Marx, 11).  Racial distinctions were not irrelevant in Brazil.  They did, however, assume a more subtle role in nation-building than was the case in either South Africa or the United States.

In the final analysis, the central thesis of this reading is that a state-centered elite both created and reinforced racial distinctions as an integral part of its nation-building tactics and strategies.  The elites primary goals were social stability, white unity, and creating the conditions and institutions necessary for continued political and economic dominance.