Over the nearly 250-year history of the United States, there have been many moments of political and social discord that have tested the strength and depth of the American character, and such crises have often led to positive social changes that have expanded the American community through passage of constitutional amendments and laws that expanded voting rights, defined and expanded citizenship, codified racial and gender equality, protected workers’ rights, increased economic opportunity, and provided greater access to equal educational opportunities, among many other advances. Yet, it is also the case that the American past never fully recedes from the body politic; there has been an ongoing tug-of-war between forces seeking to overturn social and economic progress and those forces working to solidify and expand rights that have often been rights in name only. What has occurred in the past is never excised from national memory and can reappear in virulent forms; the immigration-restrictionist policies and actions that characterized the darkest aspects of the Americanization movement in the early decades of the twentieth century have come full circle in the American presidency of Donald J. Trump.

In this chapter, I ask us to consider raciosemiotics – a way of examining signification, or semiosis (producing meaning through signs), that rigorously attends to bodies, feelings, histories – as means for testifying to Black life and death. I offer a raciosemiotics framework as one way to bear witness, or testify, to practices of making meaning through and about Blackness that either hinder or sustain Black life. I cast raciosemiotics to capture past and future work that centers meaning making about and through racialized signs (including the racialized body) and I imagine it as a possible tool in an abolitionist linguistic anthropology, following Savannah Shange’s offerings. The second half of the chapter applies a raciosemiotic lens to testify to multimodal practices that mete out “discursive-material” harm; and a collective practice of publicly censuring acts that threaten Black life and living (i.e., naming whiteness). In this discussion, I also briefly attend to everyday practices of Black expression that refuse or disregard anti-Black epistemes.

Like Europeans all over the Global South, settlers and administrators in East Africa used the concept of race as a weapon to oppress, elevating themselves and for decades enjoying the luxury of immunity from having their “race” used against them. However, in the context of post-independence, whites came under an uncomfortable spotlight as many Kenyans of African descent questioned their entitlement to belong to the nation in light of their enduring and extreme privilege. The typification of whiteness in the Kenyan discourses traced here thus emerges as a backlash against a history of colonial theft and frames whites as outsiders, conspicuously Other. Time is folded and flattened in these formulations; even whites born long after independence, or who bought their land from Africans, become “white settlers” or “land-grabbers,” and decidedly not “Kenyan.”

In this chapter, I analyze a genre of travel writing on Kuwait that has surged over the past decade. I specifically explore a series of self-published travelogues written by Western, white women who have previously taught in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education in Kuwait. These narratives, which are couched in white supremacist and eugenicist ideologies, offer insights into discourses of racialization and white superiority in Kuwait. I use these travelogues as a starting point to think about whiteness in Kuwait and its connection to global white supremacy. I argue that one needs to read these self-published travelogues as ethnographic data to understand how gendered race/whiteness (and white supremacy), as deployed in the self-reported experiences of Western, white traveloguers, plays out in various educational settings across Kuwait, a country that is not considered by anthropologists to be a fruitful site for ethnographic or racial inquiry.

Our starting point in this book is that across the globe, race – and its articulations with other forms of identification, ideology, and practice – remains one of the key conceptual tools to secure sociopolitical dominance, develop cultural politics of resistance, and engage in self-identification. Yet race opens up a major field of contradiction and misunderstanding. On the one hand, the ideas and practices of race that emerged with European expansion and colonization have impacted all modern societies – even as we should be sensitive to the particularity of histories and experiences in different places. On the other hand, the general accepted view is that there is no such thing as biological race; race is socially constructed, and its meanings are created for sociopolitical ends. Along with many others, we take the view that, while biological race is not “real,” “folk” ideas about it continue to proliferate as if race were natural, shaping sociopolitical relations and cultural practices.

This chapter explains how white supremacy evolved and adapted after the US Civil War and the abolition of slavery across the British Empire. Rather than weakening, white power structures found new ways to maintain racial hierarchies through scientific racism, Social Darwinism, and eugenics. These scientific frameworks provided intellectual justification for continued oppression while appearing objective and dispassionate. The period saw the rise of immigration restrictions, voter suppression, and systematic segregation across English-speaking societies, all designed to preserve white political and economic power. New “race perils” reflected white anxieties about demographic change, while eugenics aimed to protect racial “purity” through sterilization programs and anti-miscegenation laws. Particularly significant was the denial of capital accumulation to nonwhites through housing discrimination, job discrimination, and business restrictions. Although many voices challenged these racist theories and practices as false and cynical, they were consistently overpowered by institutional forces desperate to maintain white supremacy.

Chapter 5 examines how white supremacy manifested itself in different forms across English-speaking societies from roughly 1800 to 1865. It reveals a fundamental tension between claims of white people as uniquely freedom-loving and their role as colonizers and enslavers. The chapter explores how even self-styled “enlightened” whites often justified slavery and oppression through paternalistic arguments about racial “degradation” rather than explicit racial hatred. It details various strategies for removing nonwhites from white spaces, including deportation schemes, forced relocation, and cultural elimination through boarding schools. It highlights how violence against indigenous peoples in the USA, Australia, and Canada often culminated in genocide, while colonial authorities blamed such violence on “degraded whites” to justify further oppression. Throughout this period, white supremacy demonstrated remarkable adaptability, shifting between seemingly benevolent paternalism and outright elimination of nonwhite populations. Though the US Civil War ultimately established Black citizenship rights, white supremacy persisted by finding new ways to maintain racial hierarchies.

This chapter shows the evolution and tenuous persistence of white supremacy from the middle of the twentieth century to the present. It begins by analyzing racial terrorism and lynching in the USA. It connects these acts of violence to broader patterns of economic exclusion and political dominance across English-speaking societies. The analysis reveals deep connections between American segregation and Nazi Germany, demonstrating how racist ideologies reinforced each other globally. While civil rights movements achieved significant victories, white power structures adapted through subtler forms of oppression, including discriminatory policing, housing discrimination, and coded political messaging. The chapter shows how anti-colonial and civil rights movements worldwide recognized their common struggle against a global system of white supremacy. The election of Barack Obama marked a crisis point, triggering an intense backlash that culminated in Trump’s presidency and Brexit. These recent manifestations of white nationalism, while politically successful, may represent desperate attempts to preserve a crumbling system rather than signs of strength.

The introduction begins a comprehensive examination of white supremacy, defining it as both a system of racial dominance and the ideology that justifies it. It emphasizes that white supremacy manifests itself not only through overt racism but also through inaction, false inclusion, and seemingly benevolent actions. The introduction explains the book’s focus on the English-speaking world, citing the British Empire’s role as the largest force in creating and maintaining white supremacy globally. While acknowledging that other empires developed their own forms of white supremacy, it argues that the British case is distinctive because of its scale of human trafficking and settler colonialism. The text stresses that white supremacy is neither inevitable nor natural, but is historically constructed, and therefore can be dismantled, despite powerful forces maintaining it.

This essay explores the deep and longstanding relationship between African Americans and the Declaration of Independence. From the 1770s to the present, black activists and thinkers have consistently excoriated the paradox of an American democracy that proclaims inalienable rights while systematically denying black citizens’ rights. Drawing on figures such as Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Frances E. W. Harper, Anna Julia Haywood Cooper, and Shirley Chisholm, the text illustrates how African Americans have employed the Declaration as a foundation for their demands for the abolition of slavery, civil rights, and equality. It examines black protest rhetoric’s critique of white supremacy, hypocrisy, and the failure of the United States to live up to its foundational principles. And it emphasizes the crucial role black women have played in advancing black liberation and expanding the scope of equality to include gender and race. Through the centuries, African Americans have called for the United States of America to reconcile its practices with its founding document’s principles of equality and justice for all.

Chapter 2 examines Joel Augustus Rogers’ semi-autobiographical debate novel From “Superman” to Man (1917), which features an erudite Pullman porter methodically debunking the anti-Black racist arguments of a Southern senator traveling on his route. Signifying on the pseudoscientific foundations of Jim Crow bigotry, the New Negro porter turns what Eric Lott calls the “black mirror” back on the senator to reveal, ultimately, the utter abjection of white supremacy. Having already “proved” the Negro’s humanity through his erudition, the porter’s explicit reading of a gruesome lynching becomes a catalyst for the senator’s “liminal crucible” moment, a moral transformation great enough that he offers the porter a job in his film studio now devoted to producing some films that “create a better understanding of the Negro.” By examining the revisions Rogers made to his 1917 novel in his 1923 serialization, I reveal Rogers’ increasing anger over the growing brutality and frequency of white mob violence as well as the race-baiting newspapers that fomented it.

Chapter 3 argues that the virulent racism Ghanaians – students, diplomats, and workers – faced in the United States, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, and Ghana were vital in creating and shaping a global Ghanaian national consciousness. These were, what I argue, “Racial Citizenship Moments.” Calls for protection to the Ghanaian state against racism in many walks of life were central to articulating ideas of citizenship and (re-)framing the state’s duty to its people. This bottom-up pressure, bottom-up nationalism, and social diplomacy shaped the functions of the Ghanaian state apparatus, both domestically and internationally. In addition, the chapter also seeks to dispel the myth that racism functioned ‘differently’ in the Eastern bloc. It moves past the idea of Soviet and Eastern European exceptionalism, particularly its estrangement from the processes and movement of white supremacist ideas. The spread of people and ideas – a truism in life – meant that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were not inoculated from white supremacist ideas. While the Communist Bloc’s foreign policy statements and private diplomatic cables expressed racial equality and solidarity, through the trope of “Black Peril,” I show how anti-Black racism in the Eastern Bloc looked uncannily familiar to other parts of the globe and how its reproduction in the Eastern Bloc was devastating to Black subjects.

Chapter 1 examines the fragility and unenviability of Black independence. It shows how Black Marxists and anticolonial figures navigated and negotiated Soviet and communist linkages from the 1940s to the 1960s against attempts by white Western imperial and colonial powers to weaponize the term “communism” to suffocate anticolonial movements and suspend Black independence. Once independent, the chapter shows that the Ghanaian government’s wariness of hastily establishing relations with the Soviet government arose not only from Western pressure but from genuine fears of swapping one set of white colonizers for another. The chapter then questions the totalizing analytical purchase of using the Cold War paradigm to understand the relationship between Black African nations and white empires – whether capitalist or communist – during the 20th century. It posits that a framework highly attentive to race and racism in international relations and diplomatic history must also be employed to understand the diplomatic actions of African states during this period. By so doing, Chapter 1 follows other pioneering works to argue that Ghanaians and the early African states had agency and dictated the paces and contours of their relationship with the USSR and other white imperial states.

Just three years after the passage of the federal income tax, Congress enacted the federal estate tax. Instrumental in its passage were Sen. Furnifold Simmons (D-NC) and Rep. Claude Kitchin (D-NC). Both had represented the Second Congressional District, known as the Black Second. Both orchestrated the infamous 1898 election that effectively ended Black voting in North Carolina for sixty years. One cannot ignore this connection.

Amidst the Great Depression, Congress reprised the federal gift tax and stiffened the estate tax in a desperate search for tax revenues. Over the next forty years, the two taxes functioned relatively effectively at taxing intergenerational wealth transfers, raising revenue, and limiting the concentration of wealth. Although loopholes remained unchecked, the top tax rate stayed at 70 percent for decades.

Over the past half century, one that accords with the post-Civil Rights period, Congress has continually and relentless dismantled the wealth transfer tax system. Since 1976, real household wealth has tripled while the rate of filers, real taxable estates, and real collected taxes have all declined.

This dismantling will assure that more of the wealth received from the past will get transferred to advantage mostly Whites in the future, thereby cementing White supremacy.

Sometime in 2021, the US economy became capable of making every American household a millionaire if wealth is spread equally. Of course, it is not. Indeed, it is one of the most unequally divided economies in the world. Whereas the typical Black household earns 60 percent of what Whites make, Blacks typically hold less than 10 percent of the wealth of Whites.

The tight link between wealth and race that is exhibited in the current racial wealth gap is simply the reflection of our nation’s history. From the earliest beginnings through constitutional protections of chattel slavery, disparate land policies, support of legalized segregation, and redlining, federal policies have created and cemented the link between wealth and race.

For many reasons, White Americans fail to acknowledge the yawning gulf that is the modern racial wealth gap. This failure along with the innate power that personal wealth brings creates a system that meets the requirements of Wilkerson’s caste system as well as offering a case study in stratification economics.

Six tax expenditures can trace their existence to the enactment of the federal income tax. Swept into office after nearly a half century of Republican control, Democrats moved quickly to enact a tax on incomes. Tasked to write a draft law, Rep. Cordell Hull (D-TN) wrote a fifteen-page bill that experienced modest resistance and was largely adopted. Simultaneously, the Wilson Administration was moving to segregate the federal bureaucracy as lynchings and Confederate monument building reached their apex across the country.

While all the tax expenditures clearly favored the wealthy, almost all were enacted for other equally persuasive reasons. Life insurance benefits and charitable giving were given preferential treatment as they would limit demands on public services. Preferences given to state and local bond income as well as state and local tax payments were made in deference to constitutional concerns.

Over time, these tax expenditures have taken on increased value and generated powerful allies. Attempts to close the estate step up in basis exclusion and later the exclusion on capital gains were quickly rescinded.

Most of the changes over the past half century of supposed racial reconciliation has been to make these expenditures more valuable to wealthy, mostly White households.

The ultimate cause of the American Civil War was White supremacy, not simply slavery. That prejudice brought on war and also affected the treatment of prisoners of war and the consequences of Southern surrender. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the incorporation of Blacks into the Union army infuriated the Confederates and doomed the traditional practices of the cartels. When Black troops were recruited, Confederates refused to exchange captured Black soldiers, deeming them to be escaped slaves. The North responded by ending exchange and parole altogether. Now prisoners on both sides endured long-term confinement in prisoner of war camps, a practice that became the rule in Western warfare. The surrender of the Confederacy came through the surrender of its individual armies because the state was inoperative. But, although the conventional war ended in 1865, the fighting did not cease. Surrender transformed the conventional conflict into White supremacist terrorism and insurgency during Reconstruction, 1865–77. Ultimately, the will of the federal government and the Northern population tired of trying to establish racial equality in the South, and the occupation of the South ended. In an important sense, the South ultimately won by preserving White supremacy in its government, society, and culture.