It has to do with varieties of anti-racism. JD’s falls squarely in the camp of “no nothing” anti-racism, which drives us bananas. “no nothing” anti-racism insistently locates racism at a convenient scale. What we mostly face in the classroom are students who vociferously insist that while there might still be some scary tribes of racists out there (they usually point south, fabled homeland of the last living groups of uncontacted cretins who might hold such retrograde views), they think racism isn’t such a big deal because they look into their own hearts and see none, and into the hearts of their near and dear ones and see none there, either (oh, except grampa joe. and aunt ellen. golly, maybe their brother-in-law, too, and, well, anyway, definitely not MOST of the hearts in question).
That racism might be a social-stuctural problem as much as an individual one is a point they Stubbornly. Refuse. To. Concede. And they embrace any and all evidence to the contrary. In my own classroom, I try to illustrate the point with reference to Durkheim’s suicide study, which produced the startling piece of knowledge that something that seemed so personal in fact manifested patterns if studied on a different scale. People are willing, in fact accustomed, to think sociologically about those sorts of problems. But racism? In no time they are damply reciting the famous bits of MLK’s oratory in order to tell you how wrong you are.
Okay, so a book like GG&S really hits our buttons. Is is another variety of no-nothing anti-racism, here writ REALLY REALLY LARGE (into geography) rather than really really small (into individual hearts and minds). It helps make impossible the kinds of thinking about race, power, and history that sociological/anthropological scholarship indicate are necessary to bring about (1) genuine causal understanding and (2) change. It obviates what we take to be the all-important “middle part” between human origins and human psyches. - Ozma
