the skinny malinky

In which I take a break from my usual grind to engage in some study. The arrival of a book I’d ordered months ago and forgotten about, White Logics, White Methods: Racism & Methodology, has sent me on a Google Scholar chase that thus far knows no limit. Especially occupying my mind: Tracking down Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s 1997 ASR article “Rethinking Racism: Towards a Structural Interpretation” led me to a critique of the piece by Mara Loveman (December 1999 ASR), which then sent me to Bonilla-Silva’s reply (obvs, also December 1999). I’m trying to sort my head around a sense of how this argument in the sociology of race/ethnicity parallels (or perhaps underwrites?) a debate in political sociology of the welfare state about whether or not racialized disparities in social entitlements are a side-effect of something else (i.e. class subsumes race), or whether (and of course this is where my intellect/politics lean) we should understand the structure of the U.S. welfare state as itself a product of racialized social strucutrers, i.e., a “weak”* federal government and “states rights” as mechanisms developed to maintain racial apartheid or inequality. I don’t even know what I’m typing at this point…

*I think weak is the wrong word for the U.S. federal government. I understand this classifcation is meant to point to the lack or relative limits of universal programs in the U.S. But my diss research suggests that the federal government exercises quite strong authority over programs it does not directly administer, a power of delegating tasks that also produces pockets of power at subnational levels. Or something. What am I thinking? This is not way to lure back readers!