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In his 1993 book, Racist Culture, David Goldberg argued that race and racism are absolutely central to modernity. Rather than seeing racism as an aberration or as incidental to a more central modern commitment to human equality, Goldberg attempted to demonstrate in this earlier work that "Race is one of the central conceptual inventions of modernity" and that "we have come, if often only silently, to conceive of social subjects foremost in racial terms" (3, 1). Western philosophy, on Goldberg's account, is complicit in this, with both empiricism and rationalism facilitating racism from the seventeenth century onward (ch. 2). But the chief philosophical and political culprit, Goldberg suggested, is liberalism, which at once promises liberty and equality and at the same time rationalizes racial inequality.

In The Racial State, Goldberg extends this line of thought, focusing on the role of the state in creating racial categories and enforcing racial exclusion or oppression. Throughout the book Goldberg argues "that race has marked modernity and its development constitutively, that the racial state is in this sense the paradigmatically modern social formation" (148). On Goldberg's account, the constitution is mutual: race is constitutive of the state in that racial classification and exclusion is a central raison d'être of the modern state, which in turn takes a leading role in creating the meaning and implications of race. The modern state, Goldberg emphasizes, is a homogenizing state, which means that those whom it sees as Other must be excluded - either literally, as in segregation, or figuratively, by requiring assimilation. Both of these tendencies are manifestations of the central racist impulse behind the modern state.

This distinction between exclusion and assimilation corresponds to a distinction that Goldberg returns to again and again throughout the book, and that might fairly be said to be the central theme of the work. This is the distinction between what Goldberg calls naturalist and historicist racism. Naturalist racism, or simply naturalism, conceives of racial differences (and racial inferiority) as being permanent and irremediable - a function of biology. Historicism, on the other hand, sees racial differences as being a matter of culture and development; therefore these differences, on this view, might someday (but never quite yet, Goldberg emphasizes) be overcome. Both of these, it is important to stress, are for Goldberg forms of racism. In taking this position, then, Goldberg rejects that view that racism necessarily refers in some way to biological race. On this latter view, what Goldberg calls historicist racism is not racism at all because it denies the existence of biological race; it is, instead, ethnocentrism. Goldberg never presents an explicit argument for why historicist racism is not (merely?) ethnocentrism, which is odd given the centrality to Goldberg's argument of the naturalist/historicist racism distinction.

The distinction is central in part because, Goldberg suggests, the two forms of racism correspond to two types of states. Naturalist racism is associated with more coercive states that, precisely because they conceive of racial differences as irremediable and of racial inferiority as inherent, tend to engage in more brutal forms of racial oppression. Historicist racism, on the other hand, is associated with less coercive states that tend to be capitalist, are committed to limited state power, and rely on racial policies that are more assimilationist than overtly segregationist. While he admits that the distinction between the two kinds of states and their correlation with the two versions of racism are far from perfect, Goldberg relies on this mapping as a heuristic throughout the book.

Goldberg is clearly possessed of a sophisticated and fertile mind and many of the discussions in the book yield genuine insights. For example, he criticizes what he calls the current "romance with hybridity" (1) and effectively shows that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, this idea inevitably reinforces the very categories that it attempts to overcome (24-35). Goldberg is also very persuasive when arguing that we should be ambivalent about the use of racial categories for anti-racist ends, because the use of the categories risks reinforcing the racism on which they were originally based (113-14). This latter point has certainly been made before, often by opponents of any use of racial classification, even for anti-racist ends, but Goldberg is particularly eloquent on the issue.

One source of the subtly in Goldberg's discussions is the intellectual tradition on which he draws. In the great divide between "analytic" and "continental" philosophy, Goldberg is squarely in the latter camp. Some of my misgivings about the book are perhaps predictable complaints of a more analytically-minded reader as s/he reads the dense and sometimes obscure prose of a continentalist. At times this reader was unsure exactly what claim was being made in the text, what evidence supported it, what evidence might count against it, etc. Goldberg often begins a paragraph "It follows that ...," but I was often unsure if what he said followed actually did follow. To some extent these complaints may merely reflect differences in views on the most useful level of abstraction in discussions such as this.

More serious problems may arise in Goldberg's treatments of figures in modern political philosophy and of liberalism itself. For example, Goldberg cites Hobbes as a thinker who supported the naturalist version of racism and Locke as a case of historicist racism (39-46). Both of these claims are highly debatable. Goldberg cites no evidence that Hobbes viewed racial differences as permanent or irremediable, and as far as I know none exists. If anything, there is more evidence that Locke believed that Africans were less (than) human: this hypothesis would at least explain the apparent contradiction between his just war theory of slavery and his participation in the slave trade. Goldberg's characterizations of Rousseau and Kant are also questionable on grounds of accuracy and evidence (46-49).

It is Goldberg's treatment of John Stuart Mill, however, that is most troubling. Goldberg devotes a chapter to the debate between Mill and Thomas Carlyle on the issues of slavery and black inferiority (ch. 3). In the usual accounts of this debate, Mill is portrayed as the enlightened liberal who opposed slavery and Carlyle as the retrograde racist. Goldberg is certainly correct in eschewing this interpretation, since Mill is not without his condescension toward nonwhites, as evidenced by his support of colonialism. His belief in the cultural superiority of Europe makes him a historicist racist, in Goldberg's terms. However, Goldberg goes too far in trying to portray Mill as equally racist as Carlyle. Goldberg points out, correctly, that Mill's response to Carlyle's infamous essay, "Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question," focuses on the issue of slavery rather than on the issue of black inferiority. He concludes from this, incorrectly, I believe, that Mill objected less to Carlyle's claims on the latter, characterizing Mill's attitude on the issue as "understated" and "ambivale[nt]" (64, 70). Mill makes very clear in his response to Carlyle that he objects to both the latter's support for slavery and his views on racial inferiority, but he chooses to focus on the former. Mill writes, "I have so serious a quarrel with him about principles, that I have no time to spare for his facts." Mill states many times in his essay that he disagrees with Carlyle on the (empirical) issue of black inferiority, but he "renounce[s] all advantage from facts"; even if Carlyle were right on this issue, he would be wrong about the (moral) question of slavery. It is true that Mill reserves most of his attention for this issue, but it does not follow that he is ambivalent in his views on racial inferiority.

This would be less troubling if Goldberg did not take Mill as an instance of a general tendency in liberalism to support racism. Although liberalism is a prime target in both this book and in Racist Culture, Goldberg never confronts the best liberal thinking on issues of race and culture. Despite the fact that the last fifteen years have seen important developments in liberal theory in this area, Goldberg declines to seriously engage this work. He refers far more often to Dinesh D'Souza than he does to, say, Will Kymlicka or James Tully. The latter pair he dismisses in a single paragraph (254-55), whereas he repeatedly takes D'Souza as representative of contemporary liberal views on race - granting him far more importance than he surely deserves (e.g., 229).

For those interested in contemporary normative questions related to race, the last two chapters will be of greatest interest. In chapter eight Goldberg demonstrates very effectively how formally "Raceless States" can nevertheless be racist if the underlying, material reality over which they govern has been decisively shaped by past racist practices. He shows that while contemporary states have rejected racism, this has consigned racism to the non-state action, where it continues to do its work. At the same time, while rejecting explicit racism, contemporary states also often reject the power to police racism in the "private" realm. The contemporary state, then, acts or fails to act "for the sake of preserving the right to private 'rational discrimination' of whites" (228). While surely correct about the larger point, Goldberg overstates his case here. After all, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gives the federal government the power to prohibit many forms of "private" racial discrimination. However uneven its enforcement or effectiveness, one cannot say that contemporary states - let alone contemporary liberal theory - are opposed to prohibiting private racial discrimination.

It should be emphasized, however, that this book is not primarily a work of normative theory. Rather, Goldberg says, the "prevailing narrative" of the book is focused on "where and when" developments related to race took place. He is content to leave normative considerations to "lurk in the shadows" (201). This may explain the lack of development, in the concluding chapter, of Goldberg's proposals for racial justice. He speaks in vague terms of recognizing the humanity of all, of sensitivity and civility, of respect - all eminently liberal values - of rethinking citizenship and making room for heterogeneity, but is content to leave any specifics for future work (276). This postponement of serious normative argument allows Goldberg to dismiss those who have thought seriously about how to rethink citizenship and make room for heterogeneity, like Kymlicka, and allows him to ignore others like Iris Young, whom he strangely never cites.

This reader was left wishing that Goldberg had applied his considerable gifts to the engaging the substantial contemporary discourses on how contemporary states might be nonracist. But then, this would require Goldberg descend from grand historical narrative to more practical, concrete issues, and would require him to seriously engage work he prefers to dismiss.

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