Overview

Racial experiences vary widely in everyday life and in different social contexts. They range from damaging to fulfilling, spanning discrimination, unquestioned assumptions, and political solidarity. Drawing on years of cross-cultural ethnographic research, Gabriel Alejandro Torres Colón develops an innovative theory to grasp racial experiences in their full sociocultural complexity, with vital implications for both social science and antiracist politics. This book demonstrates how people draw from their experiences to fashion ""styles for flourishing""-embodied strategies for survival in racialized societies that can both reproduce and contest racial orders. In performing their styles, individuals embrace their racialized selves and communities, helping them flourish in broader social worlds. They are able to creatively reconfigure racialized existence into desires for recognition, expressions of resistance, and aspirations for alternative political orders. Torres Colón explores how styles develop within ""racial niches"" through nuanced considerations of a boxing gym in the U.S. Rust Belt, Afro–Puerto Rican community organizing in an ancestral mangrove forest, and Muslim political activism in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in North Africa. Each case highlights nuanced dimensions of racial experience to question how local efforts are seen in political ideologies and governance. Bringing together humanistic, social scientific, and biological approaches with compelling ethnographic detail, this interdisciplinary book provides generative theoretical insights regarding race and critical new perspective on racial inequality in liberal democracies.

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9780231215305

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For so many racialized others, assimilation or accommodation seem to be among the few ways to adapt or flourish. Torres Colón deftly explores how some communities develop distinctive styles within “racial niches” in order to flourish and celebrate their collective culture. Although these embodied strategies can both reproduce or contest racial orders, each community analyzed marshals their agency, and autonomy to craft a style that creatively challenges societal expectations. -- Lee D. Baker, author of <i>From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954</i> Torres Colón creates an intellectually, ethnographically, and methodologically robust account for antiracist theorizing and action. This is a highly accessible and wholly engaging book for scholars and students alike. -- Agustín Fuentes, author of <i>Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature</i>

For so many racialized others, assimilation or accommodation seem to be among the few ways to adapt or flourish. Torres Colón deftly explores how some communities develop distinctive styles within “racial niches” in order to flourish and celebrate their collective culture. Although these embodied strategies can both reproduce or contest racial orders, each community analyzed marshals their agency, and autonomy to craft a style that creatively challenges societal expectations. -- Lee D. Baker, author of <i>From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954</i>

Author Information

Gabriel Alejandro Torres Colón is assistant professor of anthropology at Vanderbilt University. He is a coauthor of Genetic Ancestry: Our Stories, Our Pasts (2021).

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